It looks a bit confusing and not a very user friendly interface on first look, although I guess you must get used to that with practice.
Yeah, it can be confusing at first. It's one of those programs that seems strange in the beginning but after you get used to think it starts making sense why they did the things they did.
The little icons for the controls are tiny and it's hard to see what you might be clicking on.
Again, I agree. It's pretty tiny icons. But again, that's something that's nice in the long haul because it allows you to have lots of icons on the screen without taking up too much space. I'm so used to the program that I take everything for granted now. But like you, I wasn't very pleased with it at first sight.
And it seems to not lay out the staves in an A4 page format, but just one line like it does with the logic piano roll - but Melody Assistant doesn't seem to want to let me scroll across, so all I can see is the first few bars....
There a zoom feature so you can zoom in and out to see as many bars as you like. Although the more bars that show the tinier things get. At the bottom left hand corner there should be a magnifying glass icon. If you choose 50% a lot more measures will show up, but they will of course be twice as small then.
I'm not sure what the A4 page format is. The printing function has a bit of a learning curve too.
Another thing about viewing measures is that you can change how wide they are. If you select an entire staff (you can do that by using the select too and just clicking on the name of any staff) Then place your mouse pointer over the the end of the first measure marker (located above the staffs, it's number 1, 2, 3, etc.) Click and drag to resize the first measure and this will resize them all (assuming you have selected the entire staff). In this way you can make measures smaller if they are already too big. This will also make sure that every measure on the staff is the same size.
As far as printing. You should also be able to see where the print breaks will be. These will be colored vertical bars somewhere along the staff. As you resize the measures these print break bars will jump around showing how many measure will print out on each line. This will change depending on how wide you make the measures.
Finally when you go to "Print, Score" on the File Menu you will open up a preview screen that will offer you other options for changing how things will appear when printed out.
Another important thing to know. If you have more than one staff, all staffs will be printed out. So if you are only interested in printing music for one instrument just delete all unwanted staffs leaving only the staff you want printed.
It's no doubt going to take some learning curve time. But it's pretty cool once you get used to things.
Perhaps I'm missing something?.... Also, if I click on a note or something on stave it shows an error message saying "there are too many symbols in this score for an unregistered version" - so seems like I may have to pay if I want to use it.... Not sure I want to pay for it without having some success using it first....
The music you are looking at may be too large for an unregistered version. I've gotten around that in the past by simply deleting say the last half of the music. Then just working with the first half. (less symbols and it works). Then just reload and delete the first half to do the second half.
I found Finale Notepad onload which has a free version, but having downloaded it, the mac doesn't seem to want me to install it, even by doing the manual override thing...
Hmmmm......
Yeah Finale would work too. In fact, it might actually be easier to use for this. If you can get it to run of course.
Melody Assistant might be more difficult to learn how to use. But in the long haul it might also be more versatile.
But yeah, try deleting half the music if you're getting too many symbols error. You might be able to do it in two haves instead.
Also delete any unwanted staffs, unless you want multiple instruments in the print out.
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I just saw the post by Viscount. I've used Musescore before too. I don't like it as a sheet music program but it might be good for midi printouts.