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From: bchivers@smiley.uucp (Brent Chivers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Music notation software?
Message-ID: <78938@linus.UUCP>
Date: 9 Nov 89 03:00:16 GMT
References: <8910301728.AA27683@gilroy.pa.dec.com> <1766@thumper.bellcore.com>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: bchivers%smiley@mwunix.mitre.org (Brent Chivers)
Organization: MITRE-McLean Software Engineering Laboratory
Lines: 30

In article <1766@thumper.bellcore.com> lamb@thumper.bellcore.com (John W. Lamb) writes:
>If you are willing to buy both DMCS and The Copyist, you can enter
>the score in DMCS, import it into The Copyist, tweak as needed and
>then print with good results.
>
>I don't have a MIDI compatible instrument, so I can't comment 
>on entering notes that way.

Using a MIDI keyboard with DMCS is an adequate, but not good, way
to enter music.  I haven't found anything better yet.  It is far
faster than using the mouse.  The main headache is that DMCS's
concept of keypress duration is non linear.  And adding ties to
notes is a nuisance.  There should be some command (with keyboard
equiv) to add ties backwards from the active (last-entered) note.
This would be less of a problem if DMCS could count time past the
end of a measure -- to continue and automatically tie the notes,
instead of making you enter 2 (or more) separate notes.  And I
find that DMCS tends to crash more than one desires from a working
tool, especially if you're going fast and the score is large.

On the other hand, I've tried using several MIDI sequencers that
can save SMUS files, but their quantize functions have all done an
abysmal job of turning what I played into what I want to see.  You
may say that the problem is my style of playing, but I have reason
to believe that I am a competent musician, so if the software can't
understand me I've got no use for it.

	-----------------------+-----------------------------------
	Brent Chivers          |  bchivers%mwunix@gateway.mitre.org
	W154-Z646              |