Unless you planning on doing an obscene number of lead sheets, you don't want to pop for $600 for Finale. Besides, the current version is buggier than a flop house bed. PrintMusic, a stripped down version of Finale, is more resonably priced at $100 but, again, the current version is buggy (although not near as bad as the full blown version). Neither program is simple to use first time out.

It's not quite as simple as Mike makes it out. The midi output has to have been played perfectly or the variations will show up in the notation. Anything more than a melody only may result in confusing notation that would have to be cleaned up. Chords symbols or tabs have to be entered by hand.

Finale puts out a free notation program called NotePad. It won't take midi input and any chord symblols you put in (it won't do tabs) won't playback (they have to be entered as text). Still, the price is attractive.

Lead sheets are fairly simple to manually notate by anyone with a fair knowledge of music theory. Shop around before you drop $85 for one. You might get lucky enough to find someone with a notation program to do it cheap or even free.

Jeannie