Difference between a sequencer and notation software?

Hey!

Forgive me for all of the questions lately, but this is the only place I know of where I can ask these questions. Now, what's the difference bettween a sequencer like Frieve Music Studio Producer or Sonar, and a notation program like Finale Notepad 2006? Can you still notate in sequencers or are they for something else?

The essential difference is in specialization between these two. Sequencers are intended for use in making detailed MIDIs and then outputting them through a sampler with some nice sounds loaded to produce the final output audio file. Notation software is intended for use in making sheet music; beautiful, accurate musical scores.

You can use a sequencer to make scores and you can use notation software to sequence MIDIs but each one has specific tools and specializations that make it better for its originally intended use.

More recently, the line between the two has begun to blur as notation software is adding more advanced MIDI controls and coming with samplers built-in and sequencers are gaining more advanced notation tools. Eventually they'll just be more or less the same thing.

Hope this helped

Thankyou! That did help. One more question. How do you take scores from Finale Notepad 2006 and put them in a sequencer like Frieve? You can't output to .mid with Notepad.

You need to upgrade to at least Notepad Plus! for like 20 bucks or something manageable like that and then you can save as MIDIs and thus export the score. There's no other way I'm aware of other than manually retranscribing.

Thanks for the info. I'm sorry for all the questions, but how would I manually transcribe with the sequencer?

You misunderstood. By manually transcribe I mean literally entering the notes into the program by hand.