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!steves