John.Sanfilippo@f460.n101.z1.fidonet.org (John Sanfilippo) (04/12/91)
Index Number: 14804
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
Hi there,
I have partial vision. I'm using Softvert with a Soundingboard
Speech synthesizer.
For midi, I use primarily Magnetic Music's Texture 3.5. I've
recently purchased Voyetra's Sequencer Plus Gold.
Because I've used Texture longer and have much more time to
learn the program and what I need to know on the screen to make
it useful, I am inclined to say that Texture is a much easier
program to use. But, and this is a very big BUT, SPG does many
things that Texture did only half way.
Gosh, the easiest thing to do with Texture is to record and
bounce (they call it blend) tracks. I use on of textures tracks
to do my recording work on, when I have the music exactly the
way I want it, I then blend it to the track where I really want
it. Using this method, I have found the use of punch in
absolutely unnecessary and really quite a bad way to do things.
Because I have come to like this method of working on sections
of music and blending them to other tracks when perfected, and
because Texture makes this very easy to do, and because SPG can
do the same thing, but is incredibly cumbersome and laborious in
comparison despite its being the more recent software, I use
Texture for the basic ground work and then port over to SPG for
refinements which are not easily available in Texture.
SoftVert has been able to get around almost all of Texture's
prompt areas, either because the prompt is at or near the
cursor, or because the information needed may be accessed via a
monitor (i.e. tracking a light bar during file selection
requires a monitor window). Texture's editing cursor is a
phantom cursor, not the pc cursor, but as it passes over notes
in the midi stream the note sounds briefly so you have some idea
of where you are. But such information as program changes and
note off do not sound and you have do do some fancy reviewing to
find exactly where the screen pointer is so that you know which
parameter you are about to change. But I have found that
changing wrong notes and deleting unwanted notes is really
rather easy to get used to, and even insertion of data can be
easy if you know just where you want to put it and where that
cursor is before you start writing things in.
I don't feel quite comfortable talking about SPG yet so I'll let
that wait for another time.
Hope this was helpful. And don't be afraid to ask for
clarification on any of these points or anything else about midi
you may want to know. I'll tell ya whatever I know for certain.
jjcs
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