unbent@ecsvax.UUCP (03/14/84)
==> Judging from the number of letters I received, my request for pointers to a music transcription system or "word processor for musical scores" (ecsvax.2086) hit a responsive chord. It turned out, however, that there were more requests for reports on my findings than there were findings to report. I did received the following: ************************************************************** >From ecsvax!john Full-Name: John Hogan Location: N. C. Educational Computing Service Alpha Syntauri has a system for the Apple that allows you to compose music, save your compositions on diskette, and then edit them interactively. They make use of a sound generation card for the Apple that is made by Mountain Computer. One year ago they began work on the graphics routines required to print musical symbols on the screen and on paper, but I don't know how far they got. ************************************************************* >From ...!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!eneevax!spam I have an Atari 800 with the Music Composer cartridge, which allows me to enter music in four voices via the keyboard, and play it at varying speeds. It also "transposes", by moving all the notes up or down by a fixed number of half-steps. As for printing, I am currently writing a UNIX* program that accepts ASCII numbers in Music Composer format, and draws music scores with the UNIX* graphics commands. I intend to feed this to a Versatec, and get beautiful music listings of original compositions, but it should also work on any terminal that accepts the commands.... If you're interested in this software, I'll be glad to give you more details, and a copy of it when I'm finished. --John ("Spam") Rehwinkel ..!seismo!umcp-cs!eneevax!spam (301) 262-7893 (Bowie, MD) ************************************************************** >From ...!mhuxl!mhuxj!mhuxi!charm!slag Electronic Arts has released a software product called the music construction set. This program runs on the commodore 64. It allows interactive graphical input of music, Autoplay by the built in synthesizer on the 64, and graphical output to one of the commodore dot matrix printer. It was reviewed in a recent creative computing. I don't think there is a tool in the package to do transcription.... I...haven't been able to find a store carrying the program. I have seen it for the apple II also. ************************************************************ >From ....allegra!alice!mike I don't know what your standards are, but there is probably nothing that approaches what you want. The best effort to date is probably the Mockingbird system ("a composer's amanuensis", john maxwell, severo ornstein, Xerox corporation). The paper on it was printed in a recent issue of Byte. Look for the Japanese to come up with something good soon, but in the meantime, there is nothing that we can call "available" that is more than a toy. ************************************************************** COINCIDENTALLY, the Japanese appear to have come up with something good. In the April 3 edition of PC MAGAZINE, I found the following, in a report on a National Association of Music Merchants show: The software star of the week was...Yamaha's *Personal Composer*, created by Jim Miller (see...PC, Vol. 2, No. 7). To operate it requires an IBM PC with at least 256K RAM, one [DSDD] disk drive, a Hercules graphics board, and an Epson FX-80 printer. *Personal Composer* uses a very high level language...standard music notation. Scores of orchestral complexity can be entered from either the PC's keyboard or a single MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface] equipped synth.... After the tasks of composing and arranging are done, the complete score can be printed out in extremely clean graphics.... Yamaha would not specify an exact release date and price...but industry observers believe it will run "significantly under $1000", perhaps as low as $700. It is expected to be available in late spring. That seems to be what I was looking for. Hope that all who wrote find this (longish) summary useful. Thanks to everyone for their help. Yours for clearer concepts, --Jay Rosenberg Dept. of Philosophy ...mcnc!ecsvax!unbent Univ. of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27514