andy@oda.icl.stc.co.uk (Andy Spiceley) (01/10/91)
Much has been asked and written about score editing and typesetting
programs over recent months. I have collected magazine reviews and many
postings but since I still have questions perhaps you'll all forgive a further
enquiry. The recent mention of Personal Composer 3.3 on the net and the review
of it in CMJ prompt me to add my tuppennyworth.
Most reviews and comments I have seen relate to the ability of the various
programs to typeset music, that is, to act as a DTP system for music. Few
have addressed the problem of using these programs as music processors in the
sense of (analagous to) _word_ processors: that is, programs which help the
composer sketch out, edit, amend, expand etc, and _then_ format for printing.
I have in mind the ability to edit comprehensively: implying the ability
to "lassoo" arbitrary size chunks of music for transposition, cut/paste within
and _between_ files, merge lines, change the rhythmic notation (e.g. turn bars
of 9/8 to bars of 3/4 triplets [not 1.5 bars of 3.4!] and back, or rebar in
different numbers of beats, half or double - or by some other factor multiply -
the time values), vary the number of parts at arbitrary points, for later
assignment to different instruments, and so on. When composing I often change
my mind about the munber of beats in a particular bar, or which line may include
certain notes; how to notate the rhythm, the relative density of different
lines, and other factors which drastically affect the layout.
Sketching this on paper usually results in unreadable manuscript which takes
ages to prepare as neat copy.
Of course there are many other things a sketching
composer would find useful but would remain very much a minority feature:
for example the ability to invert an arbitrary amount of music around a
given vertical pitch point, to handle rhythmic patterns independently from
pitch sets and apply one to t'other, to separate out a pitch set or rhythmic
series from a portion of (linear) music, to produce the retrograde of a pitch
or rhythmic series and so on. I haven't heard of any commercially available
software which helps in any of these semi-mechanical procedures that any sort of
composition based on serial or isorhythmic techniques. I know that as a group,
composers of this sort of music don't form a big market, but such features would
surely be easy to include in a "serious" music processor.
From the articles I have read I get the impression that some programs which
have powerful and comprehensive typesetting capability have serious limitations
with editing (is it true that SCORE really requires you to have the music i
complete before you start to enter it?), whilst others, whose printer output is
less good, are better suited to sketching and writing music.
I'd be very grateful to hear from anyone who has had any experience with
trying to use the major contenders (eg SCORE, FINALE, Personal Composer etc)
as composers music editing tools, rather than for typesetting completed music.
My only experience so far has been with Notator (v 2.0), which is (IMHO) utterly
useless as a notation program for anything except very simple pop songs in 4/4.
I did obtain a demo copy of Finale from the UK magazine SoundOnSound but
without the manual it's difficult to assess!
Of course, there remains the possibility that a usable composers music processor
has yet to be written. Any volunteers? I'd be very happy to supply a list of
"must haves"!
It occurs to me - as it must have to many others - that we badly need
a standard for the internal representation of music events that would enable the
interchange of scores between different programs for editing, layout/printing,
etc. MIDI is (obviously?) not that standard. I am aware of the various ASCII
based encodings such as DARMS, and the work in ANSI on the SGML/HyTime based
system; presumably other research is going on at IRCAM, Tempo Reale (Berio's
institute in Florence if I got the name right!) and elsewhere. Can anyone reporton progress and any attempts to build conversion software(!!!!!) between the
different encodings? (Can't be much different from the problem of document
converters between WordPerfect/Ventura/MSWord, can it? :-) Actually my guess
is that it's about an order of magnitude or more worse! :-(
Apologies for the length of this enquiry: I'll shut up now!
===============================================================================
Andy Spiceley | No pic or joke- just a Gratuitous Advertisement:
ODA Project | QUORUM presents new British and Italian music
ICL Bracknell | Purcell Room (South Bank Centre, London)
andy@oda.icl.stc.co.uk | February 19th 1991 8pm
+44 344 424842 x2616 | Includes first performances of commissioned
| works by Franco Donatoni, Ian Gardiner
(and Andy Spiceley, if I can get it finished and _copied_(!) in time.)
===============================================================================allyn@milton.u.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) (01/14/91)
andy@oda.icl.stc.co.uk (Andy Spiceley) writes: >Most reviews and comments I have seen relate to the ability of the various >programs to typeset music, that is, to act as a DTP system for music. Few >have addressed the problem of using these programs as music processors in the >sense of (analagous to) _word_ processors: that is, programs which help the >composer sketch out, edit, amend, expand etc, and _then_ format for printing. Caveat: My experience is all on the Mac, so I can't speak for the messy-dos or any other world. Also, I'm not a composer, but I've been helping one computerize, so I've heard a fair amount lately of wishes and 'what do you mean it can't...!'. On the Mac, all of the 'professional' level notation programs are aimed at the publication market. But the toy programs sell on 'easy to get something that looks kind of like real music' and have adequate user interfaces to think into. The problem, of course, is lack of features - no double dots, 32nd is the smallest note, triplets are the only tuplet, maybe a limited number of voices, either altogether, or on one staff. Then there's Encore, which gives you all the editing pain of the typesetters, with the feature list of the toys... Music Prose (a subset of Finale) is one I haven't seen yet - I hear that the interface is much better, but I suspect it has many of the same underlying problems, since it's based on the same engine. The two toy programs I'm thinking of are Deluxe Music Construction Set (DMCS) and Concertware + MIDI 5.0 (CW). They're about the same price (roughly $90 at the discounters last time I looked). Each is better at different things. A brief list of the features that are likely to matter for 'composing into': Both: ) cut, copy, paste contiguous regions, within a file or between files, either a single voice, or several voices ) change duration for a selected region to half, double, 2/3, 3/2 ) transpose a selection up n half steps ) play back through the Mac speaker (4 voices at a time) or through MIDI ) bugs and quirks (but mostly not fatal) ) lyrics of a sort DMCS: ) measure based. Doesn't rebar automatically, though you can merge and split measures to get things to come out right. ) You can only change play-back tempo (and lots of other things) at the beginning of a bar, so you can't put in accelerandos or ritards. ) Good mouse note entry (click on a duration, click where you want the note to go) but bad MIDI keyboard note entry (no real-time, and the step-time is really slow and clunky.) ) Can't write MIDI files to transfer data to another program. (There's a companion sequencer that will read and write DMCS files, and the sequencer will read and write MIDI files.) ) You can transpose a selection either by number of half steps, or diatonically. ) Only two voices per staff. makes it almost impossible to do a lot of keyboard music. ) up to 40 staves. ) decent print control - you could probably get an adequate performance score from it, if what you write isn't complicated, and if you touch it up (add ornaments, etc.) by hand. Concertware: ) Not measure based - rebars automagically as you enter stuff, or when you change time signatures, or durations. ) Poor mouse note entry (click on duration, click on a note pallete that's almost impossible to read) Good Mac keyboard entry, excellent MIDI keyboard entry - both real time (one voice at a time, limited but probably adequate quantization options) and efficient step-time. ) Only eight voices total. Any number can be on one staff. ) reads and writes MIDI files (at least 5.1.4 does...) ) limited automatic beaming ) rotten print control - there's no way to cram more measures on a line than it wants to, which means you end up with lots of white space and many page turns. (About 3 times as many pages as is reasonable.) >Of course, there remains the possibility that a usable composers music >processor has yet to be written. Any volunteers? I'd be very happy to supply >a list of "must haves"! From time to time I work on a specification for a decent program for composing into and printing out, and it's fun because it does have such nice thorny problems. But I'll probably never write it, since it's the design I enjoy, not the programming (and I couldn't afford to support myself for the 3-5 years it would take). It might help if more people would speak up and prominently refuse to buy things - i.e., spend lots of time talking with a company like Finale or whoever, and explain just why it is you aren't going to buy their program, rather than quietly deciding not to. If they _know_ that they've lost 50 sales because the editing is rotten, they might be more inclined to fix it. >It occurs to me - as it must have to many others - that we badly need >a standard for the internal representation of music events that would >enable the interchange of scores between different programs for editing, >layout/printing, etc. There is a standard in the works. Every now and then someone posts information and the address of the committee. With luck it will be approved in a year or so, and start being used shortly thereafter. Most of the music publishing software houses are keeping an eye on it and plan to incorporate it when it's stable. Allyn Weaks allyn@milton.u.washington.edu