[comp.music] Hyperscribe on Finale

graemem@cs.hw.ac.uk (Graeme McLean) (02/19/91)

I've been playing around with the demo version of Finale. Unfortunately, I
don't have access to a synthesiser to try out the Hyperscribe facilities.
Has anybody used it?
I'd be interested in your views on not just Hyperscribe but any real-time
musical transcription routine.
Basically, its beacuse I simply don't believe it can work well.
Afterall, highly skilled professional (human) musicians are not capable of
transcribing music accurately (given any amount of time to do it).
I thus don't believe Hyperscribe can do what its makers claim. Whether it
works in real-time or not is irrelevant. Just whether it works would be
enough.

Thanks in advance.

Graeme.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Graeme McLean 	     		        JANET: graemem@uk.ac.hw.cs  |
|  Comp Sci, Heriot-Watt Uni, EDINBURGH                                     |
------------------"You kind of like chuck, don't you sir?"-------------------

kkothman@weber.ucsd.edu (Keith Kothman) (02/21/91)

In <2321@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> graemem@cs.hw.ac.uk (Graeme McLean) writes:

>I've been playing around with the demo version of Finale. Unfortunately, I
>don't have access to a synthesiser to try out the Hyperscribe facilities.
>Has anybody used it?
>I'd be interested in your views on not just Hyperscribe but any real-time
>musical transcription routine.
>Basically, its beacuse I simply don't believe it can work well.
>Afterall, highly skilled professional (human) musicians are not capable of
>transcribing music accurately (given any amount of time to do it).
>I thus don't believe Hyperscribe can do what its makers claim. Whether it
>works in real-time or not is irrelevant. Just whether it works would be
>enough.

>Thanks in advance.

>Graeme.


I've used Hyperscribe, and it will save you a lot of time with music
input.  Of course you will have to experiment with quantization
values and break points (esp. for keyboard music), and you will have
to go back and check enharmonic spellings (fairly trivial with
Finale).  I used it to enter instrumental parts one line at a time,
and found that the whole process was about ten times faster than any
other form of note entry I've used.  Rhythmically, it was able to
distinguish between triplets, sixteenths, quintuplets, and
sextuplets, and you are able to vary your tempo while you play.

What you have to do is separate product hype from whether or not the
product is really useful.  Sure, it probably won't perfectly
transcribe Chopin in one pass, but it will save you significant 
amounts of time while doing note entry.

Keith Kothman