Pizzicato

Pizzicato

Pizzicato is a professional open-source music composition and notation software. It allows you to write, edit, listen to and print music scores. Pizzicato offers a user-friendly graphical interface for entering notes and editing measures.
Pizzicato image
notation composition opensource

Pizzicato: Professional Music Composition and Notation Software

A professional open-source music composition and notation software, allowing users to write, edit, listen to and print music scores with a user-friendly graphical interface.

What is Pizzicato?

Pizzicato is a professional open-source music composition and notation software designed to help musicians write, edit, listen to and print music scores. It features a graphical user interface that allows for easy input of musical notes, measures, lyrics, guitar tabs and other musical notations.

Some key features of Pizzicato include:

  • Intuitive piano-roll and score editor for entering and editing notes
  • Support for a wide range of instruments and playing techniques like slides, bends, harmonics, etc.
  • Advanced score layout and formatting tools
  • Playback of scores with choice of instruments, tempo and transposition
  • Ability to extract parts and export scores to PDF, MusicXML, MIDI and more formats
  • Optical music recognition to convert scanned sheets into editable scores
  • Guitar tablature editor
  • Harmonization assistant and intelligent composition tools powered by AI

Pizzicato runs on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. The open-source nature coupled with the advanced tools for notation, composition and practice make Pizzicato a great free alternative for musicians compared to proprietary options like Finale and Sibelius.

Pizzicato Features

Features

  1. Graphical user interface for entering and editing music notation
  2. Support for various clefs, keys, time signatures, articulations, dynamics, etc.
  3. Playback of notation with sound fonts and VST instruments
  4. Ability to extract parts and transpose scores
  5. Export to PDF, MIDI, MusicXML and image formats

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Free and open source

Cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Active development and user community

Powerful notation and composition features

Cons

Steeper learning curve than some entry-level notation software

Limited third-party sound libraries compared to commercial options

No native support for guitar tablature or drum notation


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