selick@bucsf.bu.edu (Steven Selick) (02/12/91)
I just ordered the Notator update from C-Lab, and I wanted to know if anyone has already gotten it? What new features does it have? Is it still dongle protected (ick!)? Does it support Postscript to disk yet? Also, it would be nice to hear from anybody else using notator, just to get ideas and such on using the program etc.. later, steve <selick@bucsf.bu.edu>
mjs@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella) (02/14/91)
> I just ordered the Notator update from C-Lab, and I wanted to know if > anyone has already gotten it? What new features does it have? Is it > still dongle protected (ick!)? Does it support Postscript to disk yet? > Also, it would be nice to hear from anybody else using notator, just to > get ideas and such on using the program etc.. Kevin answered your specific questions; as someone who does have 3.0, I can try to answer about "new features" (note - I never saw a previous version, so I only know what's "new" by reading ads and talking to other users). Page Preview mode: not as useful as it could be, because the full page is displayed in about a 3" x 5" area of screen, making it completely unreadable. However, this appears to be the best way to control the number of bars per line on a line-by-line basis - you set the default bars/line, and from within page preview you can adjust that on a line by line basis by simply clicking on a line. There are also P_USER events you can insert in the event list; perhaps this feature was available in previous versions as well. Page preview also lets you print an individual page without having to reset the start/end bars. Adaptive groove: really cool, especially for jazz. This is a form of quantization in which you specify up to 8 possible qunatizations for a track, and give parameters to help Notator decide which quantization to apply to a given segment. For instance, my basic AG says to use swing eighths normally, but straight eighths or even dotted sixteenths for any given beat if I happen to play that beat that way. Use triplets only if I play 3 or more of them within the span of a beat, etc. Notator automiatically partitions the track into segments (according to parameters you give it - I use segment lenghts of half a beat, one beat, and two beats) and quantizes each segment separately. User grooves (available in previous versions) are available for use in AG's, too. A user groove is basically "quantize this track according to the contents of another track" - ie, don't round to the nearest sixteenth, but round to the nearest note in the other track. Hyper Edit I haven't used much. Looks like what I think Dr. T's Tiger is - a modification of the matrix editor in which, rather than one column for each pitch, there is one row per "instrument" where you define what "instrument" is. One use is in drum tracks, where the correspondence will indeed be one instrument per pitch. Each instrument has its own name, and can be qunatized separately, so this is more flexible and powerful than the matrix editor. Or, you can assign MIDI volume, or tempo, to one instrument, and draw crescendi or tempo changes with the mouse. Fonts: I don't know what Notator did before, but it can now read GDOS fonts for text, lyrics, chord symbols, bar numbers, and a few other things. 10, 12, and 18 point "Sans Serif" and Roman fonts are supplied. The fonts used for notes and other actual musical symbols (including, inexplicably, the dynamic markings and "Fine"/"D.S." and other musical symbols with their own P_USER numbers) are not adjustable, so you can still basically print music in only two sizes. -------------- Marc Sabatella (marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com) Disclaimers: 2 + 2 = 3, for suitably small values of 2 Bill and Dave may not always agree with me