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From: goodisma@catlat.uucp (Aaron Goodisman)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Questions about Finale & MIDI on the Mac
Keywords: MIDI, Macintosh, Finale
Message-ID: <515@roo.UUCP>
Date: 16 Aug 90 20:56:34 GMT
Sender: news@parc.xerox.com
Reply-To: Goodisman@PARC.Xerox.COM (Aaron Goodisman)
Organization: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Lines: 46

I have some questions about using MIDI with Coda Software's Finale on
the Macintosh, and I hope someone in this newsgroup can either help
answer them or refer me to a better group.

I've hooked a DX-7 to a Mac II with an Opcode Professional Plus (the
cheapest I could find) MIDI-Mac converter.  This seems to work well; I
can play stuff from the Mac through the keyboard and I can use one of
the three modes of music entry.  I can't seem to get the other two to
work, though, and I'm fairly confident that this is a failure to
understand the software.

The music entry technique that does work is the "Speedy Note Entry"
tool.  I hold down a note on the DX-7, and press a keypad key on the Mac
keyboard.  The keypad key signifies the note duration.  This works
great.

There are supposed to be two other techniques, though.  One is the
"Transcription" tool, which pops up a window and some timing
information.  When I play the keyboard, the clocks start ticking, and
when I'm done, there's a little pattern of the notes I played.  It looks
right.  And then there's a button marked "Transcribe," which, according
to the help stack, transcribes this music into the score.  It doesn't
though.  It pops up a dialog box that says "transcribing measure 2" or
something for about 1/10th of a second, and then it goes away.  I've
tried all variations of selecting some or all of the pattern of notes,
and turning on and off various option boxes, but nothing seems to work.
Has anyone used this successfully?  Please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

The other technique that's supposed to work is the "HyperScribe" tool
(who makes up these names?).  That pops up a little box which fills up
as I play the keyboard.  When I click the mouse (again, as described in
the help stack), it's supposed to transcribe these notes into the score,
but it does nothing.  Any ideas?

If anyone can help me with these problems, please reply via e-mail; no
need to bother the entire group.  Also, if anyone has and uses Finale, I
have some other, minor questions that I'd like to ask you, so please let
me know, even if you don't have any insight about these questions.
Thanks a lot,


      -- Aaron 

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