music21 vs ToneSavvy
music21
music21.orgToneSavvy
tonesavvy.comSide by side
| Figure | music21 | ToneSavvy |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $19/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 5 |
| Spec score · Music Theory Software | 8.3 (#5) | 7.3 (#23) |
| Purpose | music21 is a Python-based toolkit for computer-aided musicology. | ToneSavvy provides online music theory and ear training exercises for learners and tools for teachers to assign practice and track student scores. |
| Support | The community mailing list offers help, while paid consulting is available at rates that vary by project. | Users can contact ToneSavvy through its contact form or email Dave Crane, and the site says it will respond as soon as it can. |
Plans
ToneSavvy
- Up to 25 students$19 a month
- Up to 75 students$39 a month
- Up to 150 students$59 a month
- Up to 300 students$99 a month
- Over 300 studentsPriced on request
In their own words
music21
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.