johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) (05/05/86)
A friend of mine does music transcription for a living and wonders if there
are musical typesetting systems that would be worth her using. She will settle
for less-than-typeset quality so long as it's decent; she imagines that typical
customers would be music composition students. She does it by hand now, but it
takes so long to do that she has to charge a lot.
It is important that it be able to handle fairly complicated musical notation
such as is found in most modern music these days. It would be really nice if
it could automatically take a conductor's score and split it up into parts.
I gather that there is a fair amount of stuff like this for the mac.
Suggestions about good or bad software would be appreciated, along with how
big a mac you need to run it, the price, and so forth. My friend is an
impoverished rural housewife so if she could get a usable system for $2500 or
so that would be great.
Please send me mail, I'll summarize if there's interest.
--
John R. Levine, {ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl
Levine@YALE.EDU
The opinions expressed above are those of a 12-year-old hacker who has
broken into my account and not those of any person or organization.abulloch@violet.berkeley.edu.berkeley.edu (/violet_b/abulloch) (05/07/86)
I have seen and used (somewhat) Professional Composer (from Mark of the Unicorn). It is terrific, both in the facilities that it offers and in convenience of use. I believe that it is the only music program that currently offers full orchestral score handling capability. It is certainly written for writers; reviewers who have expressed preferences for Concertware+ etc. have always done so on the grounds that these other programs offer more in the way of playback. P.C. version 2.0 has pretty good Laserwriter support (earlier versions do not), so you can get an impeccable looking score. You need at least a 512 (i.e.go for a MacPlus); price on the street is around $250. This is a lot, but it looks to me as if for a writer this is well worth it. Anthony Bulloch Dept. of Classics Dwinelle Hall Berkeley Ca. 94720 Tel.: 415-642-4218/4001
cak@purdue.UUCP (Christopher A. Kent) (05/07/86)
I believe that Professional Composer, from Mark of the Unicorn, is still the best system on the market for the music copyist. It really was designed that way, rather than a music playing/composing program like MusicWorks, so the emphasis is on music copying rather than music playing. It handles just about everything you might want, I believe (I've read many reviews but never actually touched one.) I don't know about terribly modern pieces; they've been developing some very odd notation lately. There was a fairly in-depth review in the Computer Music Journal a few issues ago; done by a musician/computer user, rather than a computer tech writer. His opinion was that if you were doing serious score work, this was the only product that came close to being adequate. Unfortunately, ProfComp is quite pricey -- $495. Cheers, chris
steves@kepler.UUCP (Steve Schlich) (05/13/86)
For my money--and I tend to be careful where I spend it--Deluxe Music
Construction Set is the best thing going. It is only slightly less powerful
than Professional Composer and at $50 suggested retail DMCS is the deal of
the century. Check it out!
--
You've got to start young if you're going to stick it out.
--Firesign Theater
Steve Schlich, MicroPro Product Development
{lll-crg,ihnp4!ptsfa,dual,well,pyramid}!micropro!kepler!steveskrs@amdahl.UUCP (Kris Stephens) (05/13/86)
In article <108@ima.UUCP>, johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) writes: > A friend of mine does music transcription for a living and wonders if there > are musical typesetting systems that would be worth her using. Absolutely. I've been arranging music for years now and the only thing keeping me from publishing was notational intricacies - I can handle the manuscript work acceptably but not at what I'd call "publishable quality". So I bought a Mac (512 required) and Professional Composer from Mark of the Unicorn. ImageWriter (dot-matrix) output isn't up to publishable, but it's certainly presentable. LaserWriter output is where *my* output requirements are satisfied. So far so good, right? Almost. Data-entry with the mouse is/was so damn slow that I shelved the project mid-stream until I added some more gear (Sequential Circuits MultiTrak synthesizer, OpCode MIDI interface) and Mark of the Unicorn's Performer, their MIDI driver/sequencer. Any MIDI synthesizer does the job in this layout. Using Performer in step- mode recording, the left hand on the Mac keyboard sets note durations and enters rests and the right hand on the synth keyboard enters notes. Entry is done a voice at a time for who-knows-how-many voices maximum (16? More? I'm at work so I don't know for sure). When entry is complete, "Save as Composer file" and quit, call up Composer on the file and put the finishing touches on. From Composer, print score and parts, transpose parts as needed, print alternate instrument parts (trombone for horn, for instance). Composer will handle up to 40 staves, has almost every clef including percussion, and will handle multi-verse lyrics. If you need exotic notation, you can save print output as MacPaint files and do what you want to it. I've already (two nights work so far) gotten to the point where I can enter, edit, and print a 100-measure quintet in a single evening. Alternative: Prefessional Composer Version 2.0 includes some new keyboard mapping (for the Mac keyboard), such that you can almost duplicate the "left-hand duration/right-hand pitch" work of Performer. This might be a fine middle-ground, as Performer ($225 or so), a MIDI interface ($100), and a synthesizer ($500+) aren't required. In any case, an external disk drive is more than convenient, as Composer takes up over 300K. A major strong-point with Mark of the Unicorn is their penchant for listening to their users. They've got a Marketing phone number (617, 576-2760) for general questions and a technical hotline (617, 576-3066), both covered on first-shift Eastern-time. They are constantly enhancing the capabilities of their programs, install requested changes from users (they won't actually *commit* to it, but in fact they do it), and are very friendly. I already feel like it's a long-term professional relationship with them. On pricing, make sure you check out MacConnection and NorthEastern (both are listed in MacWorld). I got quite a good price from ComputerWare in Palo Alto, CA, as well as all the time I wanted to demo Performer. Enjoy! -- Kris Stephens (408-746-6047) {whatever}!amdahl!krs [The opinions expressed above are mine, solely, and do not ] [necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Amdahl Corp. ]