jbr0@cbnews.att.com (joseph.a.brownlee) (09/16/90)
OK, all you musicians, I need your advice. I have had it with the lack of
features and the many bugs in Deluxe Music Construction Set. I have outgrown
its limited (but respectable for ~$85 mail order) feature set, and it has
become obvious to me that Electonic Arts is not interested in fixing the many
bugs. If they used it at all, they'd run into them, too, like printing dots
ont top of notes and not selecting the default font size right, but I digress...
I'd like to find a program that has the following capabilities:
. Nice printed output, even with an Imagewriter. I can live with
non-DTP level output from an Imagewriter, but I'd like the output
to be decent. With DMCS, I had to resort to making my own Sonata
48 font with Fontastic+ since the one provided stinks. It was not
laser quailty, but it was respectable.
. Decent scoring and part extraction capability. I do a lot of arranging
for groups of anywhere from 2 to 12 parts in particular. Multiple bar
rests and transposing instruments would be among my main concerns.
. Good MIDI out for playback and at least usable MIDI input. The MIDI
input "feature" of DMCS is atrocious. Real-time transcription would
be the best, even if the quantizing is poor. I can always manually
edit the result. That has to be faster than the mouse!
. Ability to save music as MIDI data for use with other Mac or MIDI
systems would be nice.
. Ease of entry for articulation markings, dynamics, holds, performance
directions and such. In DMCS, all of these must be done with text
except dynamics, but those have almost no placement options. And,
of course, text does not affect playback.
. Page layout features would be a plus. All I am looking for is the
ability to put headings on each page after the first and perhaps to
control the size and placement of the staves, etc.
. I'd like WYSIWYG. I know that NoteWriter II is not, for example.
I am considering Finale 2.x, of course, but I would be insterested in hearing
how some of the others, like Professional Composer and Encore, stack up. I
know that Finale hasn't got the best user-interface in the world, but I can
live with something complicated if it meets the needs outlined above.
Any input or suggestions appreciated. Feel free to send e-mail if you think
the readers of the group at large would prefer to be spared the bandwith.
--
- _ Joe Brownlee, Analysts International Corp. @ AT&T Network Systems
/_\ @ / ` 471 E Broad St, Suite 1610, Columbus, Ohio 43215 (614) 860-7461
/ \ | \_, E-mail: jbr@cblph.att.com Who pays attention to what _I_ say?
"Scotty, we need warp drive in 3 minutes or we're all dead!" --- James T. Kirk