This post contains some thoughts about these free music notation programs:

• Sibelius First
• Dorico SE
• MuseScore
• LilyPond

Sibelius First

I made the mistake of downloading a free music notation program named Sibelius First.

It turns out that if you write your music in Sibelius First, you won’t be able to export the music unless you pay for the full version of Sibelius.

Sibelius First is holding some of my older sheet music hostage, and I can’t import it into another program without paying Avid.

I feel like the company doesn’t respect its users, and I recommend avoiding Sibelius First, because there are better alternatives.

Dorico SE

Dorico SE is a pretty good free program that lets you export to MusicXML, even with the free version. Exporting the music to MusicXML lets you import it into other music programs, which means that you aren’t being tricked into vendor lock-in.

Also, Dorico is much better software than Sibelius.

My one wish for Dorico is that the full version should be cheaper. If they had a $10/month or $100/year subscription, I would buy it, but the current price of $579.99 is too much for non-professional use.

There is a cheaper edition called Dorico Elements, but I don’t think it includes the ability to create custom guitar chord diagrams, which is a feature I would need if I’m going to pay for some software.

MuseScore

There’s another free program called MuseScore that is worth checking out, though I prefer Dorico.

In my opinion, either Dorico SE or MuseScore is a better choice than Sibelius First.

LilyPond

LilyPond is a lot of fun if you like computer programming, but if you aren’t a programmer, it probably isn’t what you’re looking for.

There are some graphical interfaces for LilyPond like Frescobaldi, Denemo, Spontini, and others, but I haven’t used them enough to have an opinion. I’m linking to them in case you want to check them out.