Awesome Sheet Music

A curated list of awesome tools to create, edit and display sheet music.

Music Notation Software

• capella (commercial) - Create complete scores.
• dorico (commercial) - Desktop notation software created largely by former developers of the competing product Sibelius.
• finale (commercial) - Compose, arrange, notate and print engraver-quality sheet music.
• Gsharp - Interactive extensible score editor.
• LilyPond - Program and file format for music engraving.
• MuseScore - Create, play and print sheet music.
• opusmodus (commercial) - Software for music composition.
• sibelius (commercial) - Create and share scores.
• Unison (commercial) - Create sheet music by describing it with simple words.

Archives

• Bach digital - Platform to browse through original sources of J. S. Bach and his sons.
• CMME - Computerized mensural music editing and database of scores.
• CPDL - The Choral Public Domain Library, an archive focused on choral and vocal music.
• Digital Mozart Edition - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's works in digital formats.
• flutetunes.com - Free sheet music for the flute.
• IMSLP - The International Music Score Library Project to share the world’s public domain music.
• Kern Scores - Library of musical scores in the Humdrum **kern data format.
• Lilypond-Sheet-Music - Cello music typeset with LilyPond.
• MuseScore - Share your sheet music and comment on others.
• mutopia - Sheet music editions of classical music for free. Repository available at github.com mutopia.
• openbook - Open LilyPond real book for jazz musicians.

Software Libraries

• alda - Music programming language for musicians.
• alphatab - Cross platform music notation and guitar tablature rendering library.
• ChorData - Dummy chordbook for mandolin, ukulele and guitar.
• chord-mark - Reference implementation of the ChordMark notation.
• chordpro - Reference implementation of the ChordPro standard.
• Digital Music Stand - A simple browser-based viewer to display and search music sheets.
• EMViz - Visualize melodic patterns in MIDI files with arc diagrams.
• hmsl - Hierarchical Music Specification Language. Forth tools for experimental music from the 1980's
• Hum - Music notation language and synthesizer.
• lilynode - Node.js wrapper for LilyPond.
• lilyware - Node.js middleware for serving rendered LilyPond files.
• ly2video - Generating videos from LilyPond projects.
• Melo - Music notation language and compiler to MIDI.
• mscxyz - Manipulate MuseScore's XML based mscx files.
• Music Sheet Viewer - Wordpress plugin to embed sheet music with shortcode tags.
• music21 - Toolkit for computational musicology.
• musical.js - A sequencing WebAudio synthesizer that supports ABC notation.
• openLilyLib - Enhancement library for LilyPond.
• OpenSheetMusicDisplay - TypeScript library for rendering MusicXML in the browser.
• ScoreAnalyzer - Analyze piano sheet music for technical difficulties.
• SheetAble - Self-hostable server for organizing sheet music.
• Smude - A library dedicated to binarization and dewarping of sheet music images.
• verovio - An library and toolkit for engraving MEI music notation into SVG.
• zazate.js - Music theory and notation library for javascript and node.js.
• SeePlay - Webapp to teach sight reading of sheet music.

Websites

• ChordMark - Simple text format for the notation of lyrics, chords and rhythm.
• ChordPro - Simple text format for the notation of lyrics with chords.
• Clairnote - Alternative music notation to ease reading and understanding.
• flat.io (commercial) - The online music score editor for your compositions.
• flowkey (commercial) - Interactive app to learn how to play the piano.
• Fretmonster - Fingering charts app for Guitar, Ukulele, Bass, and Mandolin.
• Fretboard 1 - Chords, scales, and fingerings for string instruments.
• Fretboard 2 - Chord diagrams for Guitar.
• Guitar Dashboard - An interactive music theory dashboard for guitarists.
• hacklily - Online LilyPond based sheet music editor.
• Jellynote (commercial) - Sheet music, chords, and videos website and apps.
• lilybin - Web-based editor and GitHub project.
• my.vexflow - Publish content with music notation, guitar tablature and chord diagrams without the need for special tools.
• noteflight (commercial) - Browser based music notation creator and music composition community.
• playgroundsessions (commercial) - Learn how to play the piano with interactive lessons featuring your favorite songs.
• Soundslice (commercial) - Browse and create sheet music/tab synced with audio/video performances.
• synthesiagame (commercial) - Learn how to play the piano using falling notes.
• tunefl - Freely generate and share mini LilyPond scores with ease.
• La Partition Numerique - French speaking site dedicated to the future of musical scores.

Apps

• Composer's Sketchpad - Sequencer that combines musical staff paper with an artist's sketchbook (iOS only).
• Dodeka - App to learn how to play the piano (iPad only).

Notations

• Dodeka Music Notation - A simple yet powerful alternative music notation.
• Karya - Music sequencer and generalized notation.
• Vnote - Experimental isomorphic musical notation.

Resources

• freemusiced - Fingering charts, scale sheets, free sheet music and links to resources on the internet.
• List of Online Digital Musical Document Libraries - Wikipedia list of online archives.
• llllllll.co/… - Discussion about experimental music notation resources.
• MNX - XML based next generation music markup proposal.
• MEI - Music Encoding Initiative. Community-driven, open-source effort to define a system for encoding musical documents.
• SMuFL - Standard Music Font Layout.
• ViFaMusik - Information platform for research on music and musicology.
• W3C Music Notation Community Group - Standards group developing MusicXML, SMuFL and MNX-Common formats.

OMR (Optical Music Recognition)

• Audiveris - Optical music recognition app for scanned scores.
• Gamera - Toolkit for building document image recognition systems.
• Rodan - Web-based document recognition system.

Research

• Distributed digital music archives and libraries lab - Development and evaluation of practices, frameworks and tools for the design and construction of worldwide distributed digital music archives and libraries.
• MusicScoring - Automatically generate scores for difficult pieces of music.
• Notation and Thought - Notation design and how it affects thought.