MC Musiceditor - free music notation software

MC Musiceditor is still maintained, although the release cycle is slow. Why? I used MC Musiceditor for writing a book on music theory without noticing any problems (preview chapter 1 and chapter 36). New releases will have only minor improvements. Thanks for using MC Musiceditor!

MC Musiceditor is free/open source (GPLv2 or above) music notation software. The two flavours, MCMusiceditor (full version) and MCMusiceditor-Lite ('Lite' while lacking -among others- some note entry tools compared to the full version), are made for Windows (XP and above). In addition, MCMusiceditor (8.5.7) and MCMusiceditor-Lite runs also fine on Linux under Wine (MCMusiceditor-Lite will not be developed any longer).

MC Musiceditor is developed by Reinier Maliepaard, psychologist, software engineer, musician and retired educator (music theory, music history and composition). Why? To make life of musicians easier when making scores. This resulted in a userfriendly editor which makes professional scores without requiring specific knowledge (other than musical basics)!

In short: MC Musiceditor is the easiest way to write, refine, hear and print professional scores. In addition: MC Musiceditor can share and interchange musical notation data of MC Musiceditor with WYSIWYG music notation editors like MuseScore, Finale and Sibelius (to mention only the most popular programs by my students).

MC Musiceditor uses a modification of the ABC-language which was invented by Chris Walshaw. The ABC language is simple to use and can create music scores from basic melodies to a complex symphony score. Our modification of the ABC-language makes it, in our opinion, all easier (why? study item 9 of the tutorial section).

For the convenience of ABC-users, MC Musiceditor 6.0.9 and later is a hybrid version: you can use the MC Musiceditor for MCM-code (default) and ABC-code! The trigger is L:mcm_default. If found, the code will be interpreted as MCM. If L: value doesn't equal to 'mcm_default', the code will be interpreted as ABC.

Basic features

• Note entry by mouse clicks, keyboard short cuts or just typing
• Chord entry by mouse clicks
• Export to PDF
• Export to Midi
• Previewer
• Pitch manipulations (transpose, pitch converter)
• Format functions (score, midi)
• File functions (rename, merge)

Why should you use MC Musiceditor?

• It is very easy to use
• It has a very fast note-entry: you can make a score very quick (well, at least as fast as typing a text in your texteditor)
• The scriptbased editor enables you to manipulate data with a great ease
• It has an external previewer, that refreshes itself constantly. So you see what you have composed!
• The sheet music (PDF) is of a high quality (Example: Magnificat (2004) of Reinier Maliepaard)
• The software is donateware, so free to use and free of charge. But users are encouraged to make a small monetary donation: see the donate buttons left.

In addition: making webapplications!

With MC Musiceditor 6.1.0 and later you can convert MCM and ABC code to a Javascript webstring which can be parsed by Abcjs. Abcjs is an open source parsing and rendering tool for ABC written entirely in Javascript, so it allows sheet music to be rendered with the browser. It was developed by Gregory Dyke and Paul Rosen. We made an example html page: click here. You can also download a zip file: unpack and run the index.html offline in your browser: click here

Visit our webgames: www.bestmusicteacher.com (section music theory)