david@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Ben Geer) (12/29/89)
I'm a composer, and I'm looking for a Mac music editing/printing program that Stravinsky could have used to print _The Rite of Spring_ on a Laserwriter. MIDI I/O would be valuable but not absolutely necessary. The only program I've heard of that sounds as if it might be adequate is Finale. Has anyone here had experience with it? If so, what are its limitations? I've heard it's buggy; are there serious problems with it? I'd rather not spend $1000 unless there's no other program that could do the job; is there anything else that's as good or better? Please reply directly to me, as I'll be going out of town soon and won't be able to read the net; my mail will be forwarded to me and I'll have a summary of replies posted here. Ben Geer david%beach@bikini.cis.ufl.edu
allyn@milton.acs.washington.edu (Allyn Weaks) (12/29/89)
david@beach.cis.ufl.edu (Ben Geer) writes: >I'm a composer, and I'm looking for a Mac music editing/printing >program that Stravinsky could have used to print _The Rite of Spring_ >on a Laserwriter. MIDI I/O would be valuable but not absolutely >necessary. The only program I've heard of that sounds as if it might >be adequate is Finale. Has anyone here had experience with it? If >so, what are its limitations? I've heard it's buggy; are there >serious problems with it? I'd rather not spend $1000 unless there's >no other program that could do the job; is there anything else that's >as good or better? I'll post this as well as mailing it directly to Ben, since I'd like to see some discussion, both other views about existing programs, and philosophy of how these beasties _should_ work. I've managed to play a bit with virtually every music scoring program on the Mac that I've been able to find out about: DMCS, Concertware, Professional Composer, Finale, HB Music Engraver (demo), NoteWriter, and the new Encore. Of the 'professional' level prgrams, I've mostly used Pro Composer, and I've finally bitten the bullet and decided to learn Finale for the meantime, and start writing my own for the future. None of the programs are very good considering the current state of software development in other areas. I've starting working on a fairly detailed review of all of them, and will post it when I get it finished (with luck in about a month). Finale is the only one that comes close to being powerful enough to handle music that doesn't fit into the pop/rock/simple-common-practice categories. I.e., being able to handle different key and time signatures on different staves, complicated tuplets, secondary beaming, beaming across rests and barlines, odd clefs, etc. I've included some brief summaries of my view of the other programs at the end. First off, you can buy the latest version of Finale (2.0) for about $400 from MacZone. Check the big ads in MacUser and MacWorld. They carry more music software than any other software discounter that I've found. You might also try some of the synth places that advertise in Keyboard and such, but since they never advertise their prices, I suspect they don't give much of a discount. Also check MacConnection, I think they may carry Finale now, too. Finale's very worst feature is (you think I'm going to say the abyssymal interface, but you're wrong!) its strict insistence that measures are sacred. Once you enter a note into a measure, it's there forever until you manually delete it then reinsert it somewhere else. You CANNOT rebar a chunk of music. This makes it really awkward to put in music that changes meter frequently - the most efficient way I've found is to enter into Concertware, which is more forgiving, then import it to Finale. If you use only Finale, the best way seems to be to set up all of your measures in advance with the proper meters, then enter the music, and hope like hell that you don't make any mistakes. (If anyone has a better way, tell me, please!!!) Makes it hard to compose into the beast, too, unless you never change your mind. There are other bad implications, as well, but I'll save them for some other day. I tend to harp on this because most of the music I care about is early and modern, and changes meter all over the place. If they would put in a 'rebar this selection' command, it would make the program, for all of its other problems, almost usable. On the other hand, assuming that you rarely make mistakes, Finale can do a lot of things. You can define any clef you please, any wierd key signature, it will do cross stave beaming, secondary beaming, accelerando beaming. It will figure out chord symbols for what you play in. There's a jazz font available (I don't remember if they still charge extra for their fonts.) You can even, with rather a lot of pain and suffering, get it to do polymeters. The catch is, that if you want the measures to show up properly in the printout, you have to turn off ALL barlines (on all staves; you can't turn off barlines on just one staff), then insert little fake barlines on your own. Finale Help Stack considers this to be a feature... they even say that _sometimes_ it will play back properly! The interface for Finale 2.0 is much improved; many of the deeply buried dialog box items have been moved to menus. The documentation has also been completely rewritten, and is now reasonably intelligible. More details when I've used it more, but even with the improved interface, allow plenty of time before expecting to produce much useful output. There are some bugs, such as fermatta or whatever getting detached from the base note, and becoming impossible to get rid of. But each new release does seem to get more stable. I couldn't even run the first version on a 1 meg Mac+ without crashing every five minutes. 1.2.6 improved the memory management tremendously. 2.0 improves the interface. I have more trouble with some of the features, actually. Such as wiping out an entire stave by accidently hitting backspce while it's selected. Undoable only as long as you don't hit another key or the mouse button, and no little dialog box asking if you really want to wipe out 5 hours of work? (Imagine complaining about not enough dialog boxes!) I don't know whether the scores can be made true publication quality. In its favor, you can fiddle with the positioning of everything, but since their basic unit of measurement is 1/4 point (1/288 inch), the jaggies should show noticeably on Linotronic (2500 line/inch) output. I haven't tried it; $3.50/page is too expensive for idle experimentation. I can't for the life of me figure out why they decided to use 1/4 point, when even cheap laser printers do better than that... but I can't for the life of me figure out why they did a lot of other things, either. A quickie run-down on the other programs: Professional Composer: Badly copy protected (I can't get a valid copy of my key disk with Copy II Mac 7.2) No MIDI in/output (does read/write Performer files, if you can afford an expensive sequencer just for I/O.) 48 staves, one voice per stave, can merge staves, but it doesn't adjust the beaming properly when you do. Can do multiple key signatures and time signatures, though has troubles rebarring sometimes. Can't beam across rests or barlines. Knows about instrument transpostions. Inadequate part extraction (no tacit measures). Poor print control - you can change the overall note spacing factor, force page/line/measure breaks, set margins and page size, and nothing else. Doesn't use any laser font, though output doesn't look too bad. Pretty easy to use overall. HB Music Engraver: Not copy protected. I've only used the demo (available for $10) No multiple key or time signatures. Highly modal, not even vaguely WISIWYG, except in the mode where you add things like slurs (very slow). If you want to change the defaults for spacing of staves, notes, etc., etc., you have to run a separate program (not included with the demo) a la Worstar in the old, old days. If you want MIDI step time input, you need at separate program at (I believe) extra cost. Data entry is fairly quick, but the screen it shows doesn't look like music, and is highly disorienting. Print control is good compared to Pro Composer, but you have to keeping switching between four different modes to get it done. NoteWriter: Copy protected. The new version (II) is much improved over the old one, but I've only been able to get a quick look. One of the new features is that you can have more than one page in a file!! Purely graphical, more like MacDraw than a music program; copyists may like it, but you have to have a fair copy to work from. You have to decide in advance how many measures per line, lines per system, systems per page. Part extraction is by the 'select a line, copy it, move elsewhere, paste it, go get the next line, oh, you wanted tacit measures?, well go fiddle...' method. Encore: Just out last month, so expect some teething problems. Not copy protected! A Passport first. List price is $600, so MacZone should have it for about $400 when they finally get it in stock. I got to read the (short) manual last week, and get to test fly the actual program next week (dealer vagaries...) Can handle 64 voices, up to 4 on a staff. I like some of the features a lot, especially the disjoint selections. Some of the other good things: MIDI file input/output, MIDI input/output, adjustable slanted beams, beam to a beat, works with Sonata laser font (not included), different key signatures on different staves (couldn't tell from the docs about time sigs). But, though it's a reasonably Mac-like interface on the surface, it's not the Mac philosophy - there are a lot of places where you can chose one of four (or three, or..) values for sizes, or fonts. They don't just let you set a parameter, or choose from anything you have available on your system. And for lyrics, you can only have four lines of 'em, and you can have any font/size as long as it's Geneva 10. If you don't like it, you have to use free text mode which won't line up the notes to the lyrics for you. I really hope I'm wrong about that, but that's what the manual says... Oh yes, won't run 'properly' if you don't have a printer driver installed?! Another problem: it's measure based. (have I mentioned that I don't like measure based systems? :-) Not quite so obnoxiously as Finale - you can at least merge/split measures, and force things to shift. Also, paste is always overwrite - if you want to insert 6 measures, you'd better remember to create blank measures to fit, or it will wipe out what's there. Don't know if that's undoable. Oh well, lots of details when I've had my hands on it for awhile. A $10 demo should be available in 2-3 weeks (the preceeding has been a true statement for the last 3 months :-)) Disclaimer: I'm merely a not tremendously satisfied user of most of the above, and a possible future competitor... Allyn allyn@milton.acs.washington.edu sweaks@phast.phys.washington.edu The number of people who agree or disagree with you has absolutely no bearing on whether you're *right*. The universe has a way of deciding that for itself. -- Kelvin Throop III