I use Noteworthy Composer which provides an uncluttered GUI interface for music composition and plays back throught the soundcard. It is available as shareware from http://www.ntworthy.com/.
Unfortunately, it does not export/import abc so I have written a shareware programme called abc2nwc to convert between the formats. This is available from http://members.aol.com/abacusmusic/. Bryan Creer To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html