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Tuesday, 11 May 2004
Seeing the notes ::
Great customer service, software shenanigans, and the usefulness of music notation when composing with a sequencer...
A couple weeks ago, I’d come across a reference to the release of Finale Notepad, MakeMusic’s free, ultra-stripped down version of their flagship notation application. Cool, I thought, they’ve finally finished updating to Mac OS X. And I’ve got these improvs I want to transcribe from MIDI files, fix up, and learn to play. But wait, there’s NotePad Plus for $25, Finale Guitar for around $79, and Allegro for $199. I downloaded and stared at the huge feature comparison chart, and decided I wanted the features of Allegro—expensive but not bad compared to Sibelius and the full-blown version of Finale. Impulsively ordered it online from Sweetwater. The next morning, a Sweetwater sales rep called and told me that the bad news was that Allegro was discontinued, but the good news was that Finale Guitar had all of Allegro’s features and cost much less. It arrived last week, but I didn’t open it. Friday, my rep at Sweetwater called again, and he asked what OS I was running, because Finale Guitar had not yet been updated to work with OS X. Silly me for thinking that a company could release new versions of their whole line simultaneously. I called MakeMusic and got no assurances that a native OS X version of Finale Guitar is coming any time soon.
I won’t feel bad about sending it back; in the meantime, I did some more finagling with Logic’s notation view, and found myself using it a lot while working on my latest piece (which somehow drifts from ambient to a fugue to ... is it a pop song? it’s only got 4 chords but tonight I made a start at filling in the blanks there). I re-recorded the basic part while watching the notated original fly by on the screen, and then stared at the full score when fine-tuning, to help zero in on the occasional part-that’s-not-right, and to cop themes from existing parts when adding new lines. I still have a big piece that can use all the help it can get in getting transcribed, but I’ll look around at the notation software again later.
| << Planting seeds | 2004 > May | Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring Again >> |
4 comments
I’ve been fighting with Digital Performer’s notation “features.” Can’t draw lines (just plain old lines), can’t draw slurs, can’t draw falloffs, handles text really poorly (can’t copy/paste text boxes, can’t option-drag to duplicate), and if you’ve got an SATB chord that spans both clefs of a grand staff, it’s even money whether the two clefs will notate the same. These ones will have dots; those ones will have ties. Same durations, same note-on tick, same velocity, same before-and-after context (previous chord, subsequent chord).
Workaround: Split the track into two (SA and TB), and monkey with them manually until they look the same.
Ah, technology.
– Keith, Wednesday, 12 May 2004, 15:09 PDT
Keith - As many notation features as you can find in a sequencer, it’s usually dynamically generating the notation from the MIDI performance, one track at a time. I got to work on Vision’s MIDI-to-notation code for a bit after the guy who started it went on disability leave, and quickly learned that it is extremely difficult to do well. There’s little room for error when the user can only tweak the original MIDI events, not manipulate the notation directly.
In Logic I reconciled myself to making copies of my MIDI tracks and quantizing them when necessary to get the notation to come out right. I got tired of this, like you did, and wanted to see if it was true that Finale’s MIDI-to-notation conversion is pretty good (plus I suspect the quality of the printed output would be much better). I may give NotePad Plus a spin when I get the notation itch again.
– Doug, Thursday, 20 May 2004, 03:17 PDT
Actually, Digital Performer’s “Quickscribe” window, where the notation happens, is just another view of the MIDI information. You can drag notes, change durations, velocities, and all that, in a standard notation view.
But I expect problems with the notation itself. What’s really idiotic is that while I can add things like dynamic markings and crescendi very easily, I can’t, say, draw a line or copy and paste a text box. And as for lyrics... awkward at best.
– Keith, Thursday, 20 May 2004, 19:11 PDT
Oh, wait... I misunderstood.
You can manipulate the notation directly to some extent--switch a note from one staff to another, and so on--and they also have a feature I haven’t tried yet where you can create display-only or playback-only notes.
– Keith, Friday, 21 May 2004, 04:39 PDT
This discussion has been closed. Thanks to those who participated.