oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (09/05/87)
In article <3787@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> jww@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Joel West) writes: >A revised version of DMCS will support Sonata, which, a year ago, was >listed as "Real Soon Now." I have not heard anything since then. DMCS version 2.0, supporting the Sonata (postScript) font, MIDI, and cutting and pasting music to the clipboard (like into MacDraw) has been out for at least 4 months. Electronic Arts wazs very good about mailing people an upgrade offer. Many problems were fixed. Printing is drastically improved. The manual describes a user interface for creating your own DMCS sounds. To use DMCS with MIDI, you tell DMCS which serial port the optional MIDI adapter is on. You then decorate the sheet music with things like DMCS's change voice commands, that tell it which MIDI channel to send that staff on, and which sound to tell the synthesizer to use. I believe it can generate 8 staves of MIDI data with 256 different numbered sounds (MIDI patch change commands). (By comparison, Studio Session does 6 staves, and as many different sounds as will fit in memory (figure 30k per sound.) Both will let you use the same sound many times in a piece (of course.) You can play on the keyboard and DMCS will auto-correct your tempo, to turn your playing into sheet music. (You'll need an optional MIDI adapter (DMCS 2.0 comes with a discount offer for one, inside the package.) However, you need to play in such a stilted style, that it isn't clear how useful this is. You can also read files from OpCode's MIDI sequencer, which should have much better auto-correction. (I haven't used it, I'd like a recommendation. Anybody out there use it and like it?) You can mix MIDI voices and Mac voices. To use Sonata on a LaserWriter, you'll need to buy the postScript version of Sonata from Adobe. (DMCS 2.0 comes with a discount offer for one, inside the package.) Studio Session is much easier to use and sounds tons better than DMCS (unless DMCS is driving a 6 channel sampler over MIDI :-) DMCS beats Studio Session on printing though. The file format of Studio Session has been published, and DMCS 2.0 can read and write MIDI data to disk in a standard format. Has anyone written a DMCS <-> Studio Session converter? (If yes, please tell me about it. If no, let me know, and I'll do it.) DMCS was written by a programmer who doesn't seem to like the Mac much. Although it looks like a Mac program, it subtly does not feel like one. For example, if I were writing it, clicking on # (sharp sign modifier) would turn off b (flat sign modifier), and clicking on # again would turn # off. Instead, you have to click on <clear modfiers>. You pick a short note value, and drag right, at the time you create the note, to lengthen its tempo. I usually find that even if I drag the mouse to the margin of the screen, I can't get the tempo I want. You probably can type "q" to change the currently selected note to a quarter note, "h" for half, etc. but I am not sure. (It is a big, complicated program, and I always discover new things about it whenever I sit down with it.) There is still a bogus measure after the last note in the piece drawn on the screen, but at least now it doesn't print. I found Electronic Arts very sensitive to complaints like these. I wrote them a letter, and the DMCS (Mac) programmer called me to talk things over. I really like being able to cut a few measures of music and paste them into a page layout program. If I had written it, I'd have had a tighter association between the notes and the lyrics. As it stands now, there is none, and you have to type spaces to get the lyrics to lin up under the notes. If you move a note, you must adjust the lyrics by hand. The guitar tablature font is neat. Conclusion: Studio Session is the better buy for those who never print. (particularly if you also buy the the MacNifty (now Impulse) audio digitizer: great sampled sound, like 30 different instruments in a single piece, (although only 6 running at once.) lousy printing though (at least in the version I've got.) Because the Mac version was done before that for any other machine, it feels "right" to a mac user. My wife has just completed a cassette, done in large part, in Studio Session. DMCS is the better buy for printing sheet music, and controlling a few MIDI instruments. To control many MIDI instruments, you'll need a program that is just a sequencer. I also like patch librarians that use the big (by music standards) screen of the mac to give your synthesizer a decent user interface. Because DMCS is part of a family of Electronic Arts DMCS products, the user interface feels subtly off to a mac user. My wife has just completed collaborating on a song book done in DMCS. It is a shame that you can't cut and paste between DMCS and Studio Session. If Studio Session could read/write MIDI sequencer data, then the two would work together. On the other hand, the file format of Studio Session has been published, while that of DMCS has not (correct me if I am wrong.) A simple tool, that may already exist, would let them read/write files that the other could use. --- David Phillip Oster --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist." Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour." Uucp: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu
chow@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Christopher Chow) (09/05/87)
In article <20472@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes: >In article <3787@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> jww@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Joel West) writes: >>A revised version of DMCS will support Sonata, which, a year ago, was >>listed as "Real Soon Now." I have not heard anything since then. > >DMCS version 2.0, supporting the Sonata (postScript) font, MIDI, and >cutting and pasting music to the clipboard (like into MacDraw) has >been out for at least 4 months. Electronic Arts wazs very good about >mailing people an upgrade offer. Many problems were fixed. Printing is Well, if you only think that DMCS 2.0 has been out for at least 4 months then Electronics Arts isn't very good a mailing out upgrad notices. I've been using DMCS 2.0 for almost a year now! While DMCS 2.0 is a vast improvement over DMCS 1.0, it does have a few problems: 1. The midi implementation seems to be a afterthought. For example, in midi input mode, try typing in a chord. On my copy the chord just gets longer and longer until it takes a duration value equal to the length of the measure. I.e., play a C maj chord and hold it for one quarter note -- in a 4/4 measure you'll see the chord cycle from quarters, to whole notes. 2. It uses the PACE copy protection system. This system uses encrypted code segments, while drastically slows down program loading time, especially if you're running of a hard disk. Even worse, if you have a debugger running (Macsbugs/TMOM), it'll reboot the computer w/o unmounting all volumes, meaning that your hard disk has to go through a lengthly volume verification process before you can reboot. Luckily, there is a public domain DA, "FixJT" which can remove this protection -- however Opcode systems has now implemented something which prevents FixJT from working correctly, so FixJT might not work w/ DMCS anymore. BTW, on my system, the unprotected version of DMCS 2.0 loads in ~10 sec, the protected ~25 sec. 3. Printing dosen't seem to work under SuperLaserSpool. Since I don't have a LW or LW+, I didn't buy Adobe's Sonata laser font. But, shouldn't the Sonata screen font be substituted? Well, this summer, when I has acess to a LW+, I tried to print from DMCS 2.0 thru SuperLaserSpool and I got no output! All things considered, I wouldn't recommend DMCS 2.0 for anything except for a notation package for Opcode's Sequencer 2.5 and possibly teaching childern a bit about music. If I had to do it all again, I probably would also go with MasterTracks Pro instead of Opcode, thereby not using DMCS at all. A word regarding DMCS support - I did try to call Electronic Arts several months ago about DMCS, but noone every even answered the phone! Christopher Chow /---------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Internet: chow@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (128.84.248.35 or 128.84.253.35) | | Usenet: ...{uw-beaver|ihnp4|decvax|vax135}!cornell!batcomputer!chow | | Bitnet: chow@crnlthry.bitnet | | Phone: 1-607-253-6699, USPS: 7122 N. Campus 7, Ithaca, NY 14853 | | Delphi: chow2 PAN: chow | \---------------------------------------------------------------------------/
elwell@tut.UUCP (09/05/87)
In article <20472@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster) writes: >... The file format of Studio Session has >been published, ... >--- David Phillip Oster --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist." >Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour." >Uucp: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu Where? My wife & I bought the first copy of Studio Session to hit Columbus Ohio, but I've never seen a description of the file format, either on the net or in Impulse's newsletter. I've been trying to figure it out by examining hex dumps, but that isn't very rewarding. What I want to do with it is to make a Studio Session -> Mac II sound resource converter. I can already convert Studio Session Instruments into 'snd ' resources, but that's pretty boring. Entering a 6-part piece by typing hex numbers at ResEdit just isn't a fun time...