fwp@unccvax.UUCP (Rick Pasotto) (12/31/86)
I recently acquired Deluxe Music Construction Set and have been both pleased and disappointed with it. Positive comments: 1) It is extremely powerful for converting sheet music to the Amiga. For example there are 16 different styles in which to play each note (staccato, legato, fast attack, short sustain, etc.) -- specifiable note by note. 2) The measures are 'intelligent'. That is once you have set the time signature the program knows how many 'notes' to a measure and visibly dims and refuses to play more than the correct number and also automatically assumes rests if there are too few. 3) Time signature and key can be changed measure by measure. If you have some music entered on the treble clef and then change the staff to be alto, the notes are moved so as to retain their original pitch. 4) If you have two notes of equal value in one measure and then add a sharp or flat to the first, the second is automatically given a natural. (Of course all other permutations of this work also.) 5) Working display is flexible. If you don't need the keyboard, kill its window and expand the main window. 6) Beats per minute and the display are alterable during playback. Of course resizing a window disrupts the music, but then how much can one little computer do? :-) 7) Cut and paste uses the clipboard and is very powerful. Negative points: 1) Somehow when entering my first song I managed to crash the machine. I called up 'load instrument' and after selecting one the requester went away leaving a blank spot on the screen and then nothing else would happen. Hasn't happened since. 2) My biggest problem seems to be finding the 'hot spot' on the various pointers (or maybe it's finding exactly where to point). Notes get inserted where I don't want them and wrong ones get erased. This kind of thing can be VERY frustrating at first, and practice does help. 3) Sometimes when entering notes I get a static-y buzz. Perhaps I'm clicking the mouse too quickly, but the noise doesn't inspire confidence. (Could be an Amiga problem.) 4) The program is a memory hog (or at least instruments are). On a 512k machine with two instruments loaded there is only around 50k free. On the good side here though, if you start running low on memory the program tells you via requester. 5) There are no instrument designing facilities. In fact it's not clear how to get additional instruments. 6) I may be wrong here, but I have the impression that Music Studio will 'sum' several notes on the same instrument and play the resultant chord on a single voice. At any rate, this is definitely NOT the case with DMCS. It will play only four notes at a time and how it decides which to play if there are more than four I haven't figured out. 7) 'Key disk' copy protection is used. For $20 more and a signed statement that you wont let anyone else copy it you can get an unprotected backup. Wish list: 1) A public domain (freely redistributable or whatever) player program so that all the wonderful music that will be entered can be enjoyed without having to buy DMCS. Its editing capabilities alone justify the price. 2) INSTRUMENTS. When Instant Music came out someone figured out how to use the dealer demo instruments. I didn't retain that information and would like to know if and how they can be used with DMCS. Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Summary: I don't have Instant Music so I can't compare DMCS to it. DMCS is much, much more knowledgeable about music and more powerful than Music Studio. I'm not a musician but I'm sure that I'll learn a lot about music from using DMCS. If I had to do it over, yes I would buy DMCS. Rick Pasotto