briang@bari.Sun.COM (Brian Gordon) (11/10/89)
I presently use Deluxe Music Construction Set (DMCS) on my Mac II to create manuscripts on an ImageWriter II. The music I handle is a little specialized, but not exotic. Specifically it is "Barbershop Quartet" music, involving four separate lines on two staves, with the words generally between the two. In DMCS terms, this is two voices per staff, two-way ties, split bar lines, and play the upper staff down an octave (for men) or the lower staff up an octave (for women). I use the keyboard/mouse for data entry, and play back just to the internal speaker (I'm "proofreading" it, not performing it). DMCS has lots of nice features, beginning with its price. The more I use it (I've got about a solid year of experience with it now) the more its limitations bother me. None of them are fatal, but they are definite irritants. Examples: No way to enter "cut time". There is a Sonata Font cut time symbol, but the only way to use it is to suppress showing the time AND key signature and then overlay the Sonata symbols. Want to try that for six pages in the key of E? No double sharps or double flats. Again, you can drop in Sonata text, but it won't play correctly. This means developing one that plays correctly, and then post-processing it to get one that prints correctly. Accidentals tied across bar lines. Say you end a bar with an accidental b-flat, tied across the bar line to another b-flat. Standard notation does NOT show the flat at the start of the second bar. DMCS insists on it, and adding the tie does not remove it. There is no real workaround for that, since if you cheat and use a b-natural there, you are no longer able to enter the tie (and/or the pre-existing one goes away). Triplets. Funky notation to get it to play right, painful Sonata Font constructs to get it to print right. Slurs. It insists that slurs go from stem end to stem end, often taking up much real estate above or below the staff. There are no provisions to reposition them. Ties go from note body to note body, but you can't use that where you wanted a slur, since it will only make legal ties (between two consecutive occurrences of the same note). Etc. Like I said, irritants, not fatal flaws. Is there something "much better" out there? I can't justify spending $750 for a program and $1,000+ for a Laser Printer, but would hate to find out that some other reasonably prices program would drive my ImageWriter II much better! Magazine reviews I have seen stress the versatility of most of the software as a sequencer and/or MIDI engine and/or ... These are features I don't use but seem to be the bulk of the reviews and comparisons. Alternately, if there are other DMCS users out there who want to trade hints and/or war stories, I'd be glad to hear from you. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Brian G. Gordon briang@Corp.Sun.COM (if you trust exotic mailers) | | ...!sun!bari!briang (if you route it yourself) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+