knudsen (11/17/82)
I'm glad to see Cornell U (my favorite un-attended school) looking for the same stuff that I and many others want/eed/have. I can assure you that plenty of music editing systems exist, and at prices you will find more than feasible. The first system I know of was invented ~10 years ago by Alan Conway Ashton, and captured keyboard organ performances and automatically transcribed them to standard notation. It used TEK green-screen + hardcopy vector graphics (not raster scan) so is matched to your gear. Plenty more serious work has occured since, funded by music publishers (or hopes of selling to same). The latest Creative Computing mentions some Apple systems, but these are more for performance of the input than pretty printing. You won't ever get exactly the features YOU want (this means everyone, not just Cornell Music Dept), so I'd advise you buy a package that includes the SOURCE CODE (preferably hi-level language) and is modularly structured so as to encourage hacking in the odd items you want. Also be sure to get an editor that doesn't just draw the pictures of notes, slurs, etc., but which includes an underlying DATA STRUCTURE that permits "smart" editing, translation into performance instructions, musicological analysis (eg, a prgram to check for parallel motion, find all plagal cadences, etc). Sorry I can't recommend anything specific. I do have a NEAT 4-part madrigal-style arrangement of the Cornell Almo Mater I worte for ssome friends. Just think, if we all had a standard music editor, I could net-mail you a "copy". I also intend to build a (limited) score editor/compiler for my TRS-80 CoCo. --mike k