music21 vs Musition

music21 is a free Python toolkit for computer-aided musicology, used to study music datasets, teach music theory, edit notation, analyze music, generate examples, and compose. It includes a corpus of thousands of encoded works, plus tools for searching that corpus, plotting pitch, and performing advanced analysis such as nPVI. The toolkit works with MIDI and MusicXML and can be extended to handle other formats. Its documentation recommends MuseScore for viewing and editing notation, and describes MusicXML readers including Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico. Optional integrations include LilyPond, Matplotlib, SciPy, PyAudio, and Pygame; music21 can also be used in web-based Jupyter Notebook. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with web use through Jupyter. The toolkit is BSD-licensed and costs nothing. Some corpus works have separate license restrictions. Users need some familiarity with Python, and music21 works primarily with symbolic music data rather than sound waves; it cannot read notation directly from images or PDFs.

Musition is online music theory software for students from beginner through advanced levels. Its 61 topics include pitch, intervals, scales, chords, rhythm, beaming, transposition, error detection, and analysis. Students can work with interactive exercises, rhythm practice, harmony tools, advanced notation, and MIDI support. Teachers can create quizzes, worksheets, assessments, and exams, then use student assessment and tracking tools. Four-part writing is automatically assessed with annotated feedback. Five courses cover orchestral instrument families, with questions on recognition, sound production, clefs, pitch, techniques, terms, and symbols. Musition is listed for web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. Cloud students can use a browser without a download, but need a School Code and PIN. The maker offers a free trial to teachers, schools, colleges, and universities; no duration is stated. Cloud Student access costs $25, paid once for six months or $39 a year for 12 months. Desktop perpetual licenses are $99, paid once for Student and $169, paid once for Professional & Teachers. The Student license is for one computer and up to three enrolled users and cannot be networked or used for cloud or school use.