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Software · Audio & music

Denemo

Denemo is a music notation program, available on Windows and Linux: MIDI support.

  • Completely free
  • Windows and Linux
  • Open source
  • No account

Overview

Denemo is a music notation program, available on Windows and Linux.

Features described in its Flathub listing and on its official website: MIDI support.

Overview written by LicitPro from the documentation published by the authors and the cited sources; we have not tried the resource ourselves.

Excerpts that establish this information
  • “Denemo is a free (GPL) music notation editor, creating notation straight from your input that outshines the commercial competition (comparison with other score writers).” — Winget, 10 November 2026
  • “Music can be typed in at the PC-Keyboard (watch demo) , or played in via MIDI controller (watch demo) , or input acoustically into a microphone plugged into your computer’s soundcard.” — official website, 10 November 2026

At a glance

All of Denemo is free: no feature is locked behind a paid plan, and its code is open.

Its licence (GPL-3.0+) is a copyleft open source licence: you may use, study, modify and redistribute it, including commercially; modified versions must keep the same licence.

Plans and conditions

  • Free content: the free library can be used without paying, under the publisher’s licence.

Strengths

  • Open source code
  • No account needed
  • Commercial use allowed

About

Denemo is a music notation program that lets you rapidly enter notation. Music can be typed in at the PC-Keyboard, or played in via MIDI controller. The typesetting is done in the background by LilyPond while you work, and is generally flawless publication quality. Any final tweaks to can be done on the final typeset score with the mouse if needed. This represents an enormous practical improvement over the most programs which require you to re-position colliding notation constantly as you enter the music. Unique to Denemo are methods to enter music in a musical, rather than mechanical, manner. You play in a phrase or two of the music using the number keys to indicate the note durations. Audible feedback lets you hear what you have entered; playing the phrase a second time on a real instrument adds the pitches to the rhythm. Again, Denemo gives you audible feedback so that you don’t enter E-flat when you meant D-sharp etc. Another great feature is the ability to put links in the score to the original source document that you transcribed from. Clicking on such a link opens the document for you and highlights the bar you are looking at. You can use this to continue work from where you left off, or for looking back at the source to check a doubtful bar.

Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

Sources and checks

  • Facts collected from Flathub (credit card, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Facts collected from Official plan pages (pricing, licence, terms) (limits, commercial use) —
  • Facts collected from Winget (Windows Package Manager) (credit card, account, publisher, licence, free status, platforms, commercial use, version) —
  • Last technical check: 7 November 2026
  • Description from Flathub — AppStream (Flathub)

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