Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

forScore VS LilyPond

Compare forScore VS LilyPond and see what are their differences

forScore logo forScore

With forScore, your sheet music has never been better—it’s everything you can do with paper, and so much more.

LilyPond logo LilyPond

GNU LilyPond is a computer program for music engraving.
  • forScore Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-07-07
  • LilyPond Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-29

forScore videos

FORSCORE 2020 Overview & Tips

More videos:

  • Tutorial - ForScore Review and Tutorial for Piano Teachers
  • Review - How I Use My iPad for Sheet Music with forScore

LilyPond videos

LilyPond Tutorial 1 - Introduction to LilyPond (Your First Score)

More videos:

  • Review - Lilypond Carry-On Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to forScore and LilyPond)
Music Tools
28 28%
72% 72
Audio & Music
37 37%
63% 63
Music
30 30%
70% 70
Email Marketing
31 31%
69% 69

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare forScore and LilyPond

forScore Reviews

Best music notation software 2022
Orpheus Sheet Music Pro (opens in new tab) If you prefer to use Android hardware, Orpheus is the best sheet music app on that OS. It doesn’t have as many organization and file import features as forScore, but the interface is easy to use and includes an annotation tool. There’s a free version that displays ads and limits chart uploads to 30 total. Orpheus has support for...

LilyPond Reviews

We have no reviews of LilyPond yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, LilyPond should be more popular than forScore. It has been mentiond 43 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

forScore mentions (15)

  • Ask HN: What sub $200 product improved your 2023
    Https://forscore.co/ iPad pdf reader & annotator designed for sheet music. As a “tech” husband helping out a non technical musician wife it’s a game changer. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Best way to view a pdf of sheet music on a phone/tablet?
    ForScore is pretty well regarded. I use a free app called PiaScore that will show me two pages at once - my eyes suck though, so the tab is a bit small - might be okay for you though. I actually ended up buying a cheap Donner page turner that works pretty well with PiaScore and PDF Expert (which is my main pdf reader - but I don't think it lets me see two pages at once). Source: about 1 year ago
  • Thoughts for Year One self-taught Pianists - ideas and resources (long!)
    ForScore also has a keyboard in it so you can quickly play some notes anywhere, and so does GarageBand on iPad. Source: about 1 year ago
  • What are your must-have iPad apps?
    ForScore. That is why I, like many of my colleagues, bought the iPad. Source: over 1 year ago
  • This is how I would reconstruct the iPad lineup to make it simpler and easier to understand. Thoughts?
    Yes. I once considered the Surface Book among other options (at the time it had a bigger screen than the Surface Pro). And by the way, Apple also cares about musicians. As evidenced by the official advertising banners and videos, in which you can always see the application forScore, which has become almost a de facto standard for many musicians. Source: over 1 year ago
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LilyPond mentions (43)

  • MIDI Editor
    Why use this when you could just use Lilypond, which is free, open source, and has a legacy in TeX: https://lilypond.org. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Show HN: TuneType – a font that has (guitar) chords embedded as ligatures
    > since its width was set to 0 Is this totally necessary? It might be. I don't know much about font programming. If the values have to be hard-coded. If you can get me a contact info, I could send you the master list of chords.. Maybe you could use that. > I think a more “advanced” use case like the one you described can be addressed by something like https://lilypond.org Lilypond is a music engraving system. That... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Show HN: TuneType – a font that has (guitar) chords embedded as ligatures
    So I need to pack the font itself with both the A and the Am6 ligatures… I think a more “advanced” use case like the one you described can be addressed by something like https://lilypond.org. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Make measure width smaller?
    At lilypond.org I found some tips, but they all were for the complete score. I don't want my score to be compressed or have smaller notes as I'm rewriting the music because the original notes are to small for me. Source: 8 months ago
  • Caught by MuseScore's Dark Patterns
    As far as open-source software is concerned, you can use Lilypond [1]. Fully text-based transcription. You can edit, insert, splice, overwrite, etc. To your heart's content in your favorite text editor and get a high-quality engraving as output. [1] https://lilypond.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing forScore and LilyPond, you can also consider the following products

Chordsheet Maker - Create chord sheets or lead sheets quick and easily from your iPad. Add rhythms, endings, segno, codas and all what's necessary for your musicians to know what's your music about. Transcription made easy!

Sibelius - Sibelius is a virtual score creation tool which allows composers to easily create new piano scores, developed by Avid.

Stave'n'Tabs - iOS and macOS notation and tablature editor with MIDI and MusicXML files support and chromatic...

Guitar Pro 7 - Create, play and share your tabs

MuseScore - Our goal is to let musicians from all over the world create and share their works, as well as to make learning music exciting, easy and available for all.

MuseScore.org - Create, play back and print beautiful sheet music with free and easy to use music notation software MuseScore. For Windows, Mac and Linux.