keith@ssc-vax.UUCP (Keith Nemitz) (10/21/85)
This is a capsule software review. I just bought DMCS.
Now a lot of people would question my musical talent/proficiency, but after
using/playing with Electronic Arts new music program for the mac I'm ready
to hire myself an agent.
Now most of you have already seen their glossy add showing sheet music
that was printed using the laserprinter. Their add says DMSC can do everything,
it can. But I want to talk about a couple things I didn't expect.
First of all they rewrote the mac's sound routines (love to get my hands on
that source)! While mac will never sound as good as amiga a piano sounds like
a piano. It sounds best piped to my stereo.
Second of all it's copy protected, and Copy II mac 4.2 didn't budge it.
You can make supposed back-ups that check the master when launched, but I don't
call it a back-up until it runs when the master has been roasted over a slow
fire. Because of their frigging copy protection I had to do some real injunyous
machinations to get some use of the program with a single disk-drive. First
I make a 'back-up' and killed everything but the program and the piano envelope.Next I added one part RamStart (awesome) to skinny System file and Finder. WhenI feeling like playing Mozart, I have to do the following:
Boot ramdisk with DMCS, system, finder, piano for about 300K worth.
Plug-in Master disk (yes before running DMCS, program will crash if it
doesn't find the master upon launch).
Launch DMCS.
Eject master.
Plug in a disk for my work files and finally have some fun.
In summary, the program is great. The copy protection sucks. I paid $37 for
it and I'd like to get my money back. I refuse to listen to anit-pirate
sob stories.
keith
"...
They showed you a statue
And told you to pray.
They built you a temple
And locked you away.
..."riddle@emory.UUCP (Larry Riddle) (01/13/86)
I recently saw an ad in the Jan 86 issue of Macworld for the Deluxe
Music Construction Set from Electronic Arts. They claim that their
program is much better than Hayden's MusicWorks, allowing for many
more features such as multiple time and key signatures in one song
(as just one example).
I would be very interested in hearing comments from anyone who has
used this software. In particular, I am interested in being able
to write just one staff at a time so that I can print out individual
parts from a score. In this possible with the Deluxe software?
--
Larry Riddle
Emory University
Dept of Math and CS
Atlanta, Ga 30322
{akgua,sb1,gatech,decvax}!emory!riddle USENET
riddle@emory CSNET
riddle.emory@csnet-relay ARPANEThen@bu-cs.UUCP (Bill Henneman) (01/15/86)
I've played around with DMCS for 3 months. It is *much* better than Hayden Music Works. It gives the user a great deal of control over the appearance of the printed score (you can specify how much white space to leave above and below each individual staff). Its scoring capabilities are sufficient for my needs (making study versions of pieces, producing organ tablature from voice parts). It supports tenor and alto clef along with treble and bass, beaming, and some ornamentation figures. The only thing I can say against it is that it has strange error states. At the risk of sounding paranoid, my experience has been that it is biased against all German composers predating J. S. Bach: it especially hates M. Praetorius. I spent one entire weekend trying to get one of his choral fantasias entered: on the sixth try, I saved after entering every measure, and still had to reboot 4 times. Hope this helps. Bill Henneman Boston U
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (01/16/86)
>I recently saw an ad in the Jan 86 issue of Macworld for the Deluxe >Music Construction Set from Electronic Arts. They claim that their >program is much better than Hayden's MusicWorks, allowing for many >more features such as multiple time and key signatures in one song >(as just one example). > >I would be very interested in hearing comments from anyone who has >used this software. In particular, I am interested in being able >to write just one staff at a time so that I can print out individual >parts from a score. In this possible with the Deluxe software? Last part first: Yes. I have transcribed about 20 minutes of orchestra score into violin and piano form, and then cut the Vn part into a new score for the violinist. You don't have to write one staff at a time, though, so long as the parts you want separately are on separate staves. Overall, the Deluxe Music Construction Set is a fine concept, but has annoying bugs and design flaws (sometimes it is hard to tell one from t'other). The most annoying thing is their protection scheme. I like to lock my master disks, which is usually OK, when the program on the copy disk asks you to insert the master. But DMCS requires you to have the master IN A DRIVE. I have only one drive!!! Any orthodox copy simply bombs! Also, they advertise that it runs on a 128k Mac, which I have at home, but after I entered 2 bars and played them twice, the machine simply locked up (just after I "verified" that I had 12k free memory). I shouldn't sound too negative. The program would be worth three times the price, and I did get my transcriptions done quite quickly after I discovered various work-arounds and tricks. The printouts are quite useable, unlike Concertware+ (perhaps later versions of Concertware have improved). But it doesn't have an instrument-maker, and the selection of available instruments is not very varied (except for a few wierdos). You can, however, change the playing style of an instrument in (usually) 10 ways, note by note, which compensates somewhat for the lack of variety in the instruments themselves. Good things: The mouse-driven piano keyboard for entry of either single notes or chords of up to (I think) 8 notes in each voice (but be careful to ensure you know which mode you are in); the ability to move notes on the score both vertically and laterally, and to add notes to a chord just by dropping them where you want them; lots of other things that add up to a reasonably good interface, but ... Bad things: Too many modes (not musical modes). If you are in dotted mode, all notes come with dots, and it is a nuisance to get rid of the dots. Also, sometimes it takes one click on an icon to get rid of a mode, sometimes two clicks. If you get it wrong (there is a visual check to show which is the right way), you are back in the mode that you thought you turned off, and putting in all sorts of garbage music. The use of the editor and the insertion point is unlike that of other Mac programs, and unnecessarily so. After you paste in a section of music, for example, That music is NOT selected for possible modification, and the insertion point may be nowhere in the vicinity. After you enter a note or a chord, it is selected and can be deleted by the normal backspace, but you can't backspace from the insertion point to delete other notes, as you can in most Mac programs. That is a most annoying feature. To set the insertion point, apparently some things move it and some don't, but even after 30-40 hours of work I haven't got straight what will and what won't, and I have got into the habit of always going to the arrow cursor (which gets turned off by changing the time duration of your note input) and pointing to the place you want. I would hate to count how many times I have thought the insertion point was some place my Mac intuition led me to expect, only to discover my notes were not going in -- now where are they? How can I find them and restore the damaged part of the music? Sometimes they don't go anywhere, as if the insertion point doesn't exist (after fixing an error in a chord, for example), sometimes they go wherever you were last working. DMCS is basically so good, it is terribly frustrating to be kept from using it as it should be used by bugs of this kind. And real bugs can be very distressing, too. DMCS allows two rhythmic tracks per staff, which is nice, but I have found NO WAY to discover which track a given note belongs to, other than trying to add another note to make it a chord, which is a real pain. Also, I had a piece written in the mode that has only one track per staff. After saving it and coming back to work on it later, IT WAS ALL IN THE OTHER TRACK and I couldn't select or edit individual parts. It seemed (some of it) to flip tracks when I played it, so I could select parts. When I cut and pasted the music, it came back in the useable track! GRRRR. OK. A long, mixed review. Summary comment: Buy it, if you can tolerate a long learning period with multiple frustrations. It will repay you. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt
moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) (01/18/86)
In article <1768@dciem.UUCP> mmt@dciem.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) writes: >Good things: The mouse-driven piano keyboard for entry of either single >notes or chords of up to (I think) 8 notes in each voice (but be careful >to ensure you know which mode you are in); Eight sounds right; however, if you're playing the music through the Mac (and not a synthisizer via the MIDI interface), you can only have four of the notes played -- DMCS can play only four notes at any vertical position on the staff. I believe mmt@dciem pretty much said it for me. Some annoying bugs, but the best thing out there for the Mac and for the money ($49! Amazing value). Also, as someone who has MusicWorks, I can confirm that Deluxe Music Construction Set is head and shoulders over MusicWorks. I was able to get almost any piece of music I tried into DMCS (sometimes with a little finicking) on a 512K Mac; There is a great deal that just will not go into MusicWorks. "Today, my jurisdiction ends here." Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer ARPA: fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, allegra, sb6, lbl-csam}!fluke!moriarty <*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>
keith@ssc-vax.UUCP (Keith Nemitz) (01/20/86)
> I've played around with DMCS for 3 months. It is *much* better than
Does ANYONE have the conversion utility that Electronic Arts advertised
to convert MusicWorks files to DMCS format?
I have a ton of MusicWorks songs but I never bought the Application. I
heard that DMCS does the conversion automatically, but everything I tried
failed. I would really love to see this utilty posted. Any offerers?
thanks,
keith
A9F4dtw@k.cs.cmu.edu (Duane Williams) (02/03/86)
. Electronic Arts' Deluxe Music Construction Set has received good reviews in Mac magazines, in part because it is relatively inexpensive--$50 retail. Potential buyers who only have a 128K Mac should be warned about this program. The reviewers and the program's documentation claim that DMCS will run on a 128K Mac. In a sense this is true: it boots on a small Mac and a couple of the small demos that come with the program can be played. Unfortunately, the program is nearly useless on a small Mac. Entering notes is an extremely slow process, with delays up to 30 seconds per note! Attempting to play a score without first saving it to disk is almost certain to cause it to be lost. Some very short scores can cause the program to run out of memory and crash the Mac. I entered the first five measures of the "Vision Fugitive XVI" by Prokofiev that appeared in the Feb. issue of Keyboard, saved the score, and then played it. The program ran out of memory, although the "Memory Usage" window showed over 26K free prior to playing the measures. I cannot load those five measures and play them without a bomb. -- uucp: ..!seismo!cmu-cs-k!dtw arpa: dtw@k.cs.cmu.edu