Free Score Writing Software Mac

I received an email from a blog reader who had recently bought a MIDI keyboard so they could start practicing a bit of piano at home.

My previous blog posts on MIDI keyboards had all said something along the lines of “plug in your MIDI device and open up you DAW software to play”. But what if you don’t want to purchase any expensive software for writing and producing whole musical tracks? What if you just want some free software for practicing piano or messing around?

So following that I set out to find the best FREE MIDI keyboard software out there on each of the most common platforms Windows, Mac/ Apple and Android so you can plug in your MIDI keyboard and start playing straight away. This article summarises what I found.

But first, some context:

How does MIDI Work?

First things first, I always find it useful to briefly explain how MIDI works. If you, like me, came from playing a traditional acoustic instrument such as a piano or guitar, the world of MIDI and digital music production may be a little confusing. If you already know how it works feel free to skip this section!

Crescendo Music Notation Free is the easiest way to create, save, and print all your music compositions. With this program, you can write sheet music for your original songs, scores or soundtracks. Crescendo provides a wide variety tools and a free form layout to give you optimum control over your arrangements.
: Writing down notes as you like You can write down any notes in the score. Pens of 3 sizes & 6 colors, easy stamp input, text writing are available.: Smart Browsing By developing the original engine, the page-turning speed of Piascore quickens. Many user interfaces are easy to use, including one-tap first/last page-turning.
Free Music Notation Often Means 'Cheap' Music Notation. There are several companies out there that offer free music writing software packages. You have probably heard of the big names like Finale Notepad (see more below) and the online, free music notation editor Noteflight, but there are other cubs in the pack that may also fit your needs.
The best free or non free music notation software available is Lilypond.It differs from most other programs in that you create a file using a markup language (like you do in HTML or using Reddit's markup) and then the software compiles that into a score.

Software for generating high-quality songbooks, with guitar scores, quickly and with a large flexibility. Windows: Freeware: 2010-04-29: 0: 55db: Songsheet Generator v1.5.1: Prints songsheets and songbooks for home, small group, or large group overhead use. Mac: Free: 2010-04-30: 0: 55db: Songwriter's Pad 3.0.

MIDI is a digital signal, basically a series of 1s and 0s that allows different electronic devices to communicate with one another (I know, it sounds very dystopian!). This code communicates all manner of things from the note pressed, to how hard it is pressed and when it is released.

This is different to traditional instruments that produce an audio signal you can hear either straight away for acoustic instruments or through an amplifier for electric ones.

With a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI device not producing an audio signal, it needs to be plugged into another device which can convert the code into something we can hear. In the modern era this is usually a laptop or computer.

Modern MIDI devices pretty much always plug in and communicate via a USB connection. But simply connecting the device isn’t enough. The computer will receive the code but to produce a sound it will need software of some sort.

That is where I hope this article will help.

Best Free Midi Keyboard Options – Windows

1) Piano Time for Windows 10

Piano time is a nice option if you simply want to plug in and play the piano.

It is an “app” but that doesn’t mean you need a tablet or phone to use it. Windows is changing to become more similar to Apple in the way they present software creating less of a disconnect between computers, tablets and phones. This means if you have Windows 10, you can now head to the Microsoft store and download apps to your computer.

There are paid apps in the windows store but as with the Apple and Android “stores” that you may be more familiar with on your phones and tablets, many of the apps are free to download and use.

Ease of Use

Piano time is really easy to plug in and get going. I plugged in my Novation Impulse MIDI keyboard and it instantly recognized it without me having to go into the settings.

Features

Piano time is meant to be simple and for mimicking the sound of a piano. For this reason, you can’t really adjust the sound. You won’t find different instrument sounds, reverb or delay for example. But this might be a good thing if all you want to do is play the piano.

You can record and save clips of what you are playing which is a nice feature, and this allows you to record one part, play it back and then play something else over the top. Handy if you are doing a bit of songwriting. However, be warned, on the free version these clips will only remain in place whilst the program is open, to save or export the tracks you record as MP3 files you will have to pay a small fee to upgrade.

It comes pre-loaded with a few very basic tracks for you to play along with, think Amazing Grace or Mary Had a Little Lamb. The keys will light up and show you how to play along and you can slow it down or speed it up to suit. Perhaps this is most suitable for the absolute beginner or for a child learning the piano. Also useful for anyone using this to learn the piano are a few basic scale exercises you can play along with.

Other features include a metronome that can be adjusted. I did find the clicking a bit annoying but it does the job.

As with most pieces of MIDI software, you can use your computer keyboard to play if you don’t own a MIDI keyboard. I would not recommend this as it is very hard to do, but Piano Time does have a feature called “key mapping” which will show the corresponding keyboard letters above the relevant keys to help you play.

Sound and Performance

I found the sound to be ok. A nice bit of sustain and reverb make it sound quite realistic. However, the lower notes can sound a bit quiet compared to the higher notes and chords don’t sound that great. This is annoying if you are trying to play notes with the left and right hand, as the right hand notes tend to drown out those of the left.

This can be frustrating as a quick ‘stacatto’ press of a key isn’t any different from when you hold it down. This makes notes merge together when you don’t want them to or not ring out for as long as you might have hoped.

For me, the app had virtually no latency (time between pressing a key and hearing the sound). This is partly due to the app, but will also be due to your computer. If you are trying to use it with a computer or laptop that doesn’t have much RAM or has a slow processor then this may not be the case. If you are experiencing MIDI delay check out this article.

Other people have noted that when adverts load it can cause the app to crash. This did happen to me once which was a pain. You can get rid of the ads by paying just a small fee so this might be worth doing if you are having this issue.

2) Piano 10 for Windows 10

Piano 10 is very similar in many ways to Piano Time. It is available for download from the Windows app store on any windows device.

Ease of Use

I plugged my keyboard in and it didn’t work straight away this time. The menus in the app are also not the easiest to find with a series of symbol buttons to press, so I had to do a bit of random clicking to find out how to do it.

A button saying “general MIDI” brings up a menu when clicked where you should be able to turn MIDI support on and then select your MIDI keyboard from the list.

So once you figure out what each button symbol means it isn’t too hard to use.

Features

Different to Piano Time, Piano 10 has a few different effects and amazingly 126 different sounds for you to chose from. Including reverb, sustain and echo but unfortunately only one of these can be turned on at once.

An auto-chords function is pretty cool and is a great way to help learn different chords and chord types as the keys of the chords light up whilst you play.

As with piano time you can record short clips of yourself playing. You can save these clips but only as .xscore files to re-open in Piano 10 another time.

A metronome is also included with adjustable bpm.

Sound and performance

When testing the default piano sound it was ok, but pressing the keys too lightly meant no sound was played. So if you are trying to practice playing softly you may find this frustrating.

However, when the sustain effect is turned on I thought it sounded much more realistic and it felt nice to play.

Although it is cool having 126 different sounds to choose from, be warned, most of them sound pretty terrible. Fun to mess around with but you would never want to use them in a performance.

Probably the most annoying thing about Piano 10 is the fact you can’t change the key size or get more keys to show on the screen. The whole keyboard will still play but you won’t see all the keys light up on screen.

Being a free app it also has a banner with ads at the top but these are fairly standard and don’t really interfere with the usability.

3) MidiEditor

If you want something a bit more advanced which will allow you to edit and export your MIDI tracks then MIDI Editor is free software that is a great introduction to some more advanced techniques.

Ease of Use

In terms of downloading and installing things are fairly simple. However, unlike the previous two options, this is a more traditional piece of software that you download from a website rather than the Windows App Store.

Once downloaded the settings are easy to find and here you can select your MIDI device and connect.

You should then hear a basic piano sound.

So in terms of getting a sound, it is fairly simple. However, if you are not familiar with MIDI you may find the software slightly confusing due to the more advanced features it has….

Features

The screen shows what is known as a ‘piano roll’. This is something to get familiar with if you plan on using MIDI in production.

As you play on your MIDI keyboard and press record you will see lines appear on the screen. This is a visualization of the digital code for each note. You can see it shows which note was played, how long for and other parameters such as velocity (how hard you played that note).

This is what separates digital MIDI data from a traditional audio recording. It is stored as a series of numbers (note, note length, etc) and then a sound is ‘overlayed’ on top of that. So you could play the original notes with a piano sound but then change that to strings or a flute for example.

Features such as quantize, which automatically moves mistimed notes onto the correct beat are cool to mess around with.

Sound and performance

As a basic free introduction to MIDI editing software, MidiEditor does a pretty good job.

There are a couple of things that frustrated me though.

For example, when you record a track you can’t see the notes appearing on the screen, you have to wait till you have finished recording and then they will appear. This just felt weird compared to the MIDI input I’m used to in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

There are also no other built-in sounds to test apart from the piano and I couldn’t find a way to import my own sounds either. Perhaps I’m expecting too much from free software.

Best Free Midi Keyboard Software on Mac (and Apple devices)

1) Garageband

Garageband has to be my favorite of all the free music making software available. I’ve written entire songs on the bus using this software on my iPad and have been happier with the sound than some tracks I spent weeks on in the studio!

It comes pre-installed on most Apple products but if not it can be downloaded from the app store for free.

Ease of Use

Garageband is quite a bit more advanced than some of the simple piano apps already mentioned in this article.

It is the closest you are going to get to proper a DAW without having to pay. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation. It is where all song artists create songs by piecing together tracks. There are many different ones with different people having different preferences. But if you are new to the music recording world then Garageband is a great place to start.

For this reason, it has massive potential but it does make it a bit confusing for the beginner. For example, when I connected my keyboard, it didn’t work straight away. I had to navigate to preferences and select my device and I also had to change the output so I could hear the sound.

It is a similar process when connecting to an iPad, however, you will have to buy a USB to lightning adapter (such as this one).

All that said it is still very easy to get started in comparison to most DAWs which can be very overwhelming. There are plenty of great videos on Youtube to help you if you get lost.

Features

This is where Garageband excels over the other simpler apps. The possibilities are almost limitless.

You can choose from hundreds of pre-loaded MIDI sounds. There are pre-made drum loops to add in and play along to. Then when you want to add even more sounds or effects you can download free ‘plug-ins.

Because it is a DAW you can layer up multiple tracks, MIDI or Audio to create full songs and there are great built-in features such as EQ and compression so you can even try your hand at mixing!

Sound and Performance

The pre-loaded sounds do sound quite robotic and it is hard to compose a full song that will sound professional using just the MIDI samples. That does, of course, depend on your genre, for some electronic music you can do a pretty good job.

This may not bother you if you just want to practice the piano.

The performance is pretty good, I rarely ever experience any latency when playing. This is dependent on your laptop age and spec.

2) Pianu.com

This option technically applies to Windows too but I couldn’t find another free app on the Apple app store that wasn’t either terrible or tried to give me a virus.

So Pianu.com is actually a web-based MIDI keyboard and is a great option if you don’t want to mess around downloading software and just want to get playing right away.

Ease of Use

This software is so simple to use (at least it was for me anyway!) Just head to pianu.com/keyboard-page and there you will see a big yellow button that says “Detect My Keyboard”. Press this and you will see the following screen.

You are then ready to start playing

Features

Pianu is not very complex and won’t give you all the features of Garageband. But many people have written to me to say they don’t want something as complicated as that and just want to play some piano. For this it is perfect.

What Pianu is really meant for though is learning the piano. For this it has lots of built-in lessons, starting with the absolute basics and building you up from there. What I like most is you can play along with a lot of contemporary songs (Coldplay, Taylor Swift etc.) rather than the usual Ode to Joy or Amazing Grace which you get on most apps.

Sound and Performance

You would never want to use this piano for recordings or live performances, but it sounds fine for learning. The one annoying thing is the notes don’t fully ring out and eventually just stop suddenly. But this is a minor issue when you are just practicing.

For a web-based application I expected performance to be dodgy, but it really wasn’t. In fact I would say I noticed less latency than many other apps and my laptop fan was whirring away.

Best Free Midi Keyboard Software on Android

Yes, that’s right, these days you don’t even need a computer to use a MIDI device. You can now plug your MIDI keyboard directly into your phone or tablet and use that to create music.

I bought this simple USB C to USB adapter for under $10 and it allows me to play my 49 key MIDI keyboard through my phone.

As with the other devices mentioned above, you will need to download some software (an app) to do this and there are plenty of great free options to choose from.

1) Perfect Piano

Ease of Use

You may already know how to connect your android device to a MIDI keyboard, but if you don’t it is very simple (you can find out in this step by step guide).

Once plugged in the Perfect Piano app should automatically detect that a MIDI keyboard is connected and it should work straight away without you having to mess around with any setup! A real bonus for those who just want to plug in and play.

Features

The app has a keyboard that is set as default to a piano sound. But additionally, you get the choice of many more from strings to synths and loads of additional free sounds to download.

There is a sustain button to create the effect of using a piano pedal and you can record your efforts either in MIDI format or in audio format.

The app has some nice additional features such as ‘learn to play’. Where you can play along as notes descend on the screen, very similar to guitar hero (if you remember that game) except you are actually learning a real instrument.

Sound and Performance

With my android phone (which is a few years old now) I had no noticeable lag which amazed me. I’ve experienced many issues with MIDI latency using computers and laptops over the years. I can’t guarantee you won’t have issues but if your phone is newer than mine I’m sure it will be fine!

The sounds are really quite impressive. The piano does have that programmed sound but no more so than most other MIDI pianos out there. The synths and strings are great fun to mess around too.

I like how you can adjust the number of keys on the screen. A feature often lacking from many mobile MIDI apps.

Concluding Remarks

Nowadays there are plenty of free MIDI apps and software programs to choose from. The key thing is to ask yourself, what do I need the software to do? If it is to simply practice piano or mess about then stick to something simple. But if you think you might want to create full tracks or use more advanced techniques there is probably something out there for you too.

Once you are ready to progress the best option is to move to a DAW of your choice. I personally use Ableton Live which is particularly good for MIDI. But there are loads of others to choose from. My suggestion would be to download a free trial, watch a few ‘how-to’ videos and see which one you find best.

The possibilities of music production using MIDI are pretty endless!

A good writing software program is crucial for all writers. It assists us get our work done when we do not feel motivated doing it. This is specifically so when we experience the commonly known “writer’s block”. With a composing software application, it can assist us to get unstuck. free writing software for a mac

Recently, as machine learning improves exponentially, AI composing software has likewise dramatically improved in their quality of posts. With it, we can produce material for our sites at a much faster rate. I believe this might simply be the game changer for writers in 2021.

We examine 5 of such software programs for you and also evaluate them based on the following criteria: free writing software for a mac

Readibility, Relevance and Quality of the post
Uniqueness of the short article – we examine them making use of Quetext’s and Grammarly Premium’s plagiarism checker and show you the results.
Pricing

To make sure the test is fair, we begin with a specific input for the post concept “How to Save Money” and also see what we receive in each instance.

Are you ready to figure out our examination outcomes? Keep reading more! free writing software for a mac

1) Writesonic

Writesonic is an AI-powered Saas tool that enables you to write material for many different purpose in simply a couple of seconds. Be it landing web pages, adverts, product descriptions or even more, the OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology will certainly be able to develop something beneficial for you.

In Writesonic’s dashboard, there are 19 different writing tools covering from blog articles, digital advertisement write-up, landing page write-up, eCommerce write-up. free writing software for a mac

To produce the post for comparison, we take advantage of the “AI Article Writer” tool. This takes us over a 4-step process, during which we are needed to input the post concept, as well as an intro paragraph of 100-150 words.

You can choose to compose the 100-150 words on your own to define what you desire in this write-up. Rather, I used 1 credit to generate this introduction paragraph making use of the “AI Article Intro” tool in Writesonic. free writing software for a mac

Writesonic consequently offers options for the short article synopsis, and also proceeds to produce the article based upon the outline I picked. This is the post created that utilized a total of 7 credits.

Readibility, Relevance and Quality

I truthfully preferred Writesonic’s write-ups the best out of all the produced short articles. It gave an introduction and a conclusion which offered a feeling of completeness for a short article. The content produced was on topic as well as offered a great depth on the topic. At 1,367 words, it is at a great size for a quality blog site article. It ticked the box of “High Quality” for me. free writing software for a mac

Content Uniqueness

Grammarly premium and Quetext gave a plagiarism offered a plagiarism rating of 4% and 11% for Writesonic’s write-up, respectively. These are considered commendable scores given that the topic is a basic subject which had various other internet sites covering it.

Pricing

Based on my screening, each high quality short article would require around 7 credits. With that said, I will be reviewing how many posts in each strategy.

The available rates tiers for Writesonic is as below:

Best for:

Busy Business Owners wanting excellent articles without excessive tweaking.

From my my testing, I find that Writesonic provides the best effort/article quality ratio. I made use of a mix of composing devices in Writesonic to ultimately arrive at the write-up, it wasn’t all that difficult. For that amount of work, I am excited by the short article standard. free writing software for a mac

P.S. Catch it at a good time, and you might be able to secure Writesonic at 60% off, like the promo that is currently ongoing…

2) Article Forge

Article Forge makes use of unbelievably advanced deep understanding formulas to immediately compose posts similarly like a human does.

Article Forge is really user-friendly. Just by giving the input of “How to Save Money” as the major key phrase, the short article can be created. There is an option to add sub-keywords to influence the instructions of the short article, yet I did not take advantage of it in this experiment. free writing software for a mac

The maximum post length available was ~ 750 words, so I opted for this option given that we would certainly choose long form for blog site write-up content. The following article was generated.

Readibility, Relevance and Quality

The short article produced provided on Article Forge’s assurance on composing articles the way human do. With simply a solitary phrase of input, Article Forge produced a short article with an excellent structure for simple reading. It additionally offered sufficient depth in the info provided, making it a high quality write-up at a length of 780 words. free writing software for a mac

Content Uniqueness

The plagiarism checks gave a rating of 1% on Grammarly Premium and 4% on Quetext. These are good ratings showing a large majority of unique content created.

Pricing

Article Forge’s prices framework is easy. There is just 1 plan which provides limitless post generation. It’s billed at $57/mth when paid monthly, or $27/mth when paid annually.

Best for:

Busy Business Owners that are great with write-ups < 1000 words.

Article Forge was a simple tool to make use of and can create a brief post with just a single expression input. The longest possible short article it can create remains in the range of 750 words. This would fall short of the long type short article length of 1500-3000 words which the search engines seek at times. free writing software for a mac

However, if post size is not a big problem for you, then Article Forge is a fantastic tool. Easy to use and also achieves its objective rapidly. It is likewise less costly compared to Writesonic.

3) Conversion.ai a.k.a Jarvis

Conversion.ai is a US-based business using machine learning to create tested, high converting copy for for ads, e-mails, web sites, listings, blog sites, and also much more. free writing software for a mac

Once logged into Conversion.ai, there are 39 different templates covering various uses from advertising structures, Instagram, YouTube descriptions to blog posts. Deep diving into the tools for blog posts, we can see 5 of them.

Right away what I discovered is that they do not have a choice to produce a full post in the tools. Thus, I utilized a mix of “Blog Post Intro Paragraph”, the “Blog Post Outline” and afterwards broadening on the points in the synopsis utilizing either the “Sentence Expander” or “Content Improver” templates..

Note: Conversion.ai’s Pro Plan does have a very highly raved “Long Form Assistant” tool to generate long form web content. Nevertheless, it was not available at this moment in time, so this evaluation is based upon the Starter Plan attributes. There will certainly also be a rate difference between both strategies which requires to be taken into account. free writing software for a mac

This is the write-up produced and 580 word credits were utilized.

Readibility, Relevance and Quality

Although the article was short at only 316 words, the article outline provided an excellent framework for readers. The language made use of flows well as well as can pass off quickly as human written web content. With even more tweaking using the other templates in Conversion.ai, I think the write-up can still be improved.

Content Uniqueness

The post received plagiarism scores of 10% and 14% from Grammarly Premium and Quetext respectively. This is the highest among all the 5 creating software application featured in this article, but it is still nonetheless a fairly low score for blog post. free writing software for a mac

Pricing

Conversion.ai begins at $29/month giving 20,000 word credits. If even more word credits are required, upgrades can be done within the member’s area. By the way, if you register by clicking the link below, you will receive an additional 10,000 word credits, that’s virtually 50% more!

From my testing, to produce a 316-word post, I made use of 580 word credits. If we were to generate a 1000 word short article, roughly 1800 word credits will be needed.

This offers 11 articles with the $29/month pricing plan, averaging $2.60/ post. This is quite similar to Writesonic. free writing software for a mac

Best for:

Content Creators that can master the learning curve to obtain outstanding write-ups.

There is a learning curve in using Conversion.ai. Among all the 5 creating software program covered in this write-up, I spent the absolute most time trying to determine just how to get a high quality write-up using this tool. I wouldn’t consider myself a master at this software yet however..

One really awesome function of this tool, is that we can set the tone of the writing. This is a distinct feature of Conversion.ai, which no other creating software has today. With this function, the words come to life and also can better involve readers, holding their focus better. free writing software for a mac

4) Kafkai

Kafkai is a machine-learning algorithm that can write posts from square one. It is established by Niteo, a SaaS studio established in 2007 with the mission of building solutions to empower small businesses online.

In Kafkai, the dashboard is categorized right into various particular niches. At this moment in time, there are 29 offered specific niches. Kafkai is still in the process of increasing the number of available particular niches in their system. Don’t be fretted if you can not locate your specific niche at the minute..

For the short article I intend to create, I picked the “Finance” niche, and input “How to Save Money” into the short article seed. I selected to produce 3 posts as well as among them, I found only 1 to be relevant to the topic I wanted. This is also the sample write-up I feature listed below. free writing software for a mac

Readibility, Relevance and Quality

The web content created is relevant to the topic. Some small edits will certainly be required to provide a little extra framework to the short article for viewers to find it simple to consume. The short article length is decent at 866 words, which is rather adequate for a quality blog post.

Content Uniqueness

Grammarly premium and Quetext offered a plagiarism score of 1% and 10% for Kafkai’s short article, respectively. This provides a vote of confidence on Kafkai’s claim that they can generate unique content with this machine learning formula.

Pricing

Kafkai has 4 different pricing plans.

Free Novel Writing Software Mac

Best for:

Budget-conscious Business Owners that require one-off small quantity of 100-250 write-ups which are < 1000 words .

Kafkai is simple to utilize, although not all posts created may be very relevant. The material created is unique and can be utilized in blog site material for much shorter articles. A preliminary eye the pricing plan appears to suggest that the cost of each article is on the lower end. Nonetheless, in comparison to Article Forge’s unlimited plan, then it pales in comparison.. free writing software for a mac

The only situation under which this plan would be helpful is when one only needs a small number of short articles, for example 100-250. Taking a Kafkai Writer or Newsroom plan would enable one to produce all the write-ups in a month and then end the plan after. This would be less costly than Article Forge’s regular monthly pricing plan at $57/mth.

5) Articoolo

Articoolo is an Israeli startup established in end 2014. It uses a content composing automation to produce unique posts with just a short expression of 2-5 {keywords|key words|keyword phrases|key phrases|search phrases.

Getting a post in Articoolo is very straightforward. Utilizing the “Create Article” option, simply type in the write-up concept in 2-5 words. However, inputting in “How to Save Money” did not manage to provide me a short article. Instead, a pop-up notification told me to rephrase my input. free writing software for a mac

After a few more tries, Articoolo accepted my input of “Money Saving Tips” and quickly produced me this short article.

Readibility, Relevance and Quality

The content created was relevant and coherent. It did not have the depth and also discussion to achieve the standard of a great top quality post. It was just 291 words long and would probably be adequately good for a section of a short article.

Content Uniqueness

Grammarly Premium provided a plagiarism rating of 8%, while Quetext said no plagiarism was discovered! Regardless, these are really reputable scores showing unique content from Articoolo.

Pricing

Articoolo is a lot more flexible in their pricing structure, allowing customers to either Pay-per-use or go with a regular monthly registration plan. free writing software for a mac

Best for: NIL

Articoolo’s post is of good relevance to the subject and also had low plagiarism ratings. It is good for short write of < 500 words. The price is much less competitive contrasted to Kafkai's costs. Weighing the various elements, we are incapable to picture a scenario in which utilizing this software program will be more valuable over the others. We have listed it nevertheless in case you were looking for an evaluation on it.

Conclusion