I do all my notation in Noteworthy Composer (and even though I've got most of the big boy products as well, I seem to gravitate back towards it, especially for lead sheets). It exports out to MIDI and imports nicely into BIAB. You get both notes and lyrics (not chords - I explain that more below).

It's very keyboard+mouse oriented - you use both. Using the up and down arrow keys (or the mouse, but keyboard is usually easier) to position the cursor, select a duration using (1=whole, 2=half, 3-quarter, 4-eighth, 5=sixteenth), then just press ENTER to insert a note. Press CTRL-ENTER to make it a chord with an existing note. Space bar enters a rest and tab enters a bar line; however, you don't have to necessarily worry about bar lines, as you can fix all that later and you don't have to fit everything in to a predefined bar space (until you are done and have to ensure it is done correctly).

But it's not free; it's $49. But you can get a free demo to see "how" it works functionally; you just can't save or print your work. I find I can create lead-sheets extremely quickly using it.

They also have a very friendly forum, and the company president, Eric, participates in the forum as Peter does here. It's also extensible in that people write and share tools to do things that it doesn't do natively. It's real shortfall is that it doesn't do chord symbols (per se); however, you can put chord letters above the staff as text and there is a user tool that does a pretty good job of transposing them when you need to.

I wish PGMusic and Noteworthy teamed up, as that would make an awesome product.

If you have any questions, just let me know.

Just a thought.

John

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