Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews From: barrett@cs.umass.edu Subject: SURVEY: Music notation programs for the Amiga Message-ID: <1992Sep3.002057.12451@menudo.uh.edu> Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.audio Keywords: music, notation, scoring, printed music Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Nntp-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Reply-To: barrett@cs.umass.edu Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 00:20:57 GMT [NOTE: This survey was originally posted in comp.sys.amiga.audio March 1992. The topic has come up several times again since I did this, so I am reposting it in comp.sys.amiga.reviews and archiving it at the c.s.a.reviews ftp site.] In March 1992, I asked for information about music notation packages for the Commodore Amiga. Here is a summary of the results. Followups are directed to the newsgroup comp.sys.amiga.audio. It seems there are only 4 alternatives if you want to do music notation on the Amiga. (1) DELUXE MUSIC CONSTRUCTION SET (DMCS), by Electronic Arts. (2) THE COPYIST DTP, by Dr. T's Software (3) Buy the AMAX II Macintosh emulator and run Mac software like FINALE, by Coda. Notation works, but MIDI input and output do not. [NOTE: AMAX II+ is supposed to handle MIDI properly.] (4) Use MusicTeX, a set of TeX macros for typesetting music. Of these options, DMCS is the most limited. It is easy to use, but insufficient for "real" music scoring. COPYIST produces excellent-quality output, but the program suffers from annoying limitations. FINALE does run on the Amiga (verified on an A3000 running 2.x) under AMAX II, but only the non-MIDI operations. (AMAX II+ supposedly runs FINALE with its MIDI operations working.) In my opinion, the notation possibilities for the Amiga are sadly limited. I have written letters to every major company that has a notation program for IBM, Mac, and Atari computers, asking for an Amiga port. If you are interested, please write a letter to these companies yourself. Ads and addresses can be found in any issue of KEYBOARD or ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN. Thanks to everyone who responded: Ray Brooks, Frank Cunningham, Glade Diviney, Dale Gold, Esa Haapaniemi, Dean Hansen, John Ladasky, Chee Leong Lee, Ranier Mager, Dave McCrea, and Michael Whitten! Here are edited versions of the responses I received. =========================== BEGINNING OF RESPONSES ======================== From: Michael Whitten Date: Wed, 11 Mar 92 14:52:53 CST I use Dr.T's Copyist DTP for my needs. Compared to what is out there for Amiga, it is certainly the best - it is the only software I know of specifically targeted for Amiga music notation. Like all quality packages, power=learning curve and DTP has that, all right. Its output, however, is superb. I work at home on my Amiga, use CMD to redirect DTP's output to a diskfile, then redirect that to my HP laser at work with results that are astonishing. You must realize, though, that there are many flaming hoops to jump thru with it in order to arrive at a professional score. DTP's input can be a midi file, or it can be a KCS file. I use the latter because I'm a fanatic KCS user. The KCS file must be an .ALL file with the music in TRACK mode; Copyist will print the staves in descending order of music tracks, ie, TRACK 1 is staff 1, etc. Copyist handles just about everything except lyrics. It has all the traditional western music symbols from legato curves to barred stems, from odd signatures to appogiatura. It can quantize on user-input increments. It does divisi, ensemble bracketing, well...just name it. It can even take a score and convert it back to a midi file....lots of hoops in that so its not as useful as you'd think. Although I don't have it, yet, there is commercial software out there (can't remember the name) that is able to read a Deluxe Music Construction Set file and translate it perfectly into Copyist. I think it would be extremely useful. Copyist is a memory hog and the user could benefit a great deal by having extra ram (I have just 3M), some flicker fixing, and acceleration, since it tends to plod; I have found no serious bugs, though....its pretty solid. Laser output makes it shine. Feel free to ask me questions; I don't use it that much since I no longer study composition formally. But if you want to bring out the visual as well as the aural beauty of your latest symphonic work, then Copyist can do it. (Does parts automagically, too.) I don't have a very clinical approach to software evaluations, as you can tell. But, I'll try to give you my input. > Did you read the reviews of Copyist DTP in KEYBOARD or ELECTRONIC >MUSICIAN? They listed some major flaws in the program; have they been >fixed in your version? (What version do you use?) I try to avoid those magazines. I'm using version 1.61 of DTP. (items deleted) Yes. Alas and alack, most of those are true. Its a dog of a program. Once I understood those awful quirks, though, I got over it. I would've had to have changed platforms to get improvement. If you are a skilled dodgeball player, it helps. None of those things, though, prevented me from making it do exactly what I wanted to do. A couple of things, though, about those items you listed: there is a status line with page number in the title bar and there is a vertical scroll bar on the right of the screen. Mouse is definitely used for note input, but implemented poorly. Chords with half- steps print just fine. And yeah, that auto-wraparound and undo are sorely needed, all right.......Ouch! Damn! > Finally, how well "Amiga-ised" is it (menus, gadgets, windows, >etc.)? Does it have an ARexx port? Atari or IBM port job by David Silver, so hardly a soulful 'Amiga-isation'. Standard drop-down menus, string gads, windows, though. No ARexx port; does do macros and a few usefule ones are supplied. I'm don't think DrT has plans to upgrade Copyist; they're a strange outfit but one of the 2-3 companies doing SERIOUS midi on the Amiga. They could stand some true competition....it would help their software's quality. They could also stand some true Amiga programmers...........UH, OH....... Help!...I'm another Amiga user caught in the mental drain of the wish-trap. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ray Brooks Date: Wed, 11 Mar 92 16:07:18 -0500 I use Copyist DTP on the Amiga, and am well satisfied with it. I also own and use KCS Level II 3.0, with it's QuickScore program. I am NOT familiar with other programs, so I can't do A/B comparisons. Let me know specifically what you want to know, and I will try to answer your questions. Some of your problems I can help with; others, not. I have version 1.63 of Copyist. >No automatic wraparound... Alas, this IS true, as far as I know. Since I generally import KCS .ALL files into Copyist, it is not a big problem for me. I proof the unedited Copyist file, and if it doesn't look approximately right, I just fix the KCS file, and re-import. For those who write directly into Copyist, it would be more of a problem. >Poor printing of half note chords with half step... Chords are sometimes bunched up in an unreadable manner; For me, a bigger problem is that accidentals are overlaid with each other, so they have to be edited. >If time signature changes, bar lines get positioned incorrectly... If I'm doing a piece with time changes, I convert the MIDI score with no bar lines (a option, along with key signature, etc.), and place bar lines myself. Copyist recognizes only one time signature. >No status line.... not true, at least as stated. Pages number appears at the top of the screen, and measure numbers appear at the beginning of each line. >Onscreen ties do not match printed version..(..too short). Haven't had this problem; But, I don't have a laser printer. Is that where the problem is? (Copyist has PostScript capabilities) >Mouse is not used for entering notes... Yes and no. There is a clipboard page where one can grab symbols with the mouse, and paste them into the score. User-defined symbols are also possible. The mouse is used for editing (cut&paste, deleting items selectively (only stems, only text, etc.)), but keystrokes are also supported. The main problem with the program is Amiga-related. One can see only half a page at once, and there is a flicker in the hi-res mode. Copyist has appeared for IBM, so you might look at that... ARexx is not supported, BUT Dr. T sequencers and Copyist can run multitasked. A MIDI file can be imported directly from KCS. >No "undo" command... True, and a MAJOR hassle! BTW, you might take a look at KCS sometime; the QuickScore feature automaticallyconverts KCS tracks, and, though uneditable, can configure scores so that parts are in different keys, clefs, etc. It does a decent job of printing, also... QuickScore multitasks in the "MPE" mode, similar to arexx. KCS without Level IIis not very expensive. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: fc@lexicon.com (Frank Cunningham) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 92 11:50:24 EST Well, my wife is the musician and she hasn't used Copyist in years. Her needs were to create scores from existing parts for a classical flute quartet. We set up DMCS and used MIDI data entry from a CZ-101 to get the raw data. DMCS printing and score editing was marginal so we got an early version of Copyist which claimed to take DMCS files. Unfortunately it did not take MIDI-generated DMCS files in a reasonable way-- can you count the dozens of leger (sp) lines. The Dr. T sequencer (KCS) of that vintage was so user-hostile to a non-electronic musician that we just gave up on it, although DrT recommended it as the preferred MIDI input system to Copyist. Copyist is also no great shakes on user-friendliness, although I'm not sure any engraving quality score-editor can be unless written by someone who is both a musician and typographer. My wife has moved on to other things, and we bought a 386 PC with windows and a laser-printer. When she returns to score editing, it will probably be in that environment, which although piggy, is considerably more straightforward to use. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: (Dave McCrea) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 92 16:31:30 CST I have been using Dr. T's Copyist DTP on an Amiga 2500 and 500 for about a year. The package works fine and gives great output to HP Laserjet and Postscript printers. I usually print scores using my own 9 pin Epson which gives acceptable results for my or band members use. I also have access to a Next computer which is a Postscript device including a 400 DPI printer. Simply download the font (Sonata font included in DTP) and presto! - publication quality. Other good points are good quantization (see below for caveat), good drum clef features, instant part transposition for those silly metallic instruments (i.e. sax and trumpet), and does not crash. I like the compatibility between The Copyist and KCS 3.5. One can work on tracks in KCS and import them directly into The Copyist. Even on an Amiga 500 with a single floppy, the speed is acceptable. For serious work on orchestral scores, an accelerated system is recommended. As far as I am concerned, a 500 with 3 Megs and a hard disk is just fine. The Copyist is not hard to use but - you must start with the tutorial in the manual. Trying to figure out the program in any other way is a waste of time. There are some annoyances, however. Sometimes funky lines (dotted eighth's sixteenth rests) are not transcribed correctly from a KCS file. In such cases, one has to resort to manual entry for part of the score. The Copyist is quite smart about manual entry and allows proper cutting and pasting so that many lines can be moved, repeated and motifs transposed simply. Another weak area is in the user interface when importing KCS tracks. There is a screen (choose clef, choose which tracks to score) that must be edited every time that tracks are imported. While this only takes a few seconds, it is irritating. Finally, there is no UNDO so that a save to disk is recommended before attempting a large (potentially catastrophic) manoeuvre. All in all, the combination of KCS 3.5 ($225) and The Copyist DTP (about $175) is very good value. KCS 3.5 uses a subset of the Copyist to give very fast "quick scores" of simple parts. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: s902134@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Dean Hansen [CP]) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 92 17:05:22 EDT I have an interest in music notation packages, particularly ones which also include the guitar TAB style. I don't know of any except Deluxe Music Construction Set. It has a graphic WYSIWUG interface, and can print out scores. It has most standard music symbols, and handles lyrics and other items like repeats etc. If you get any worthwhile information on a package, or even a small PD program, could you forward it on to me. It would be a great help. Thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Rainer V Mager" Date: Thu, 12 Mar 92 02:54:50 -0500 I too have used DMCS and it is limited in some ways, but it is nice that you CAN listen to you composition. I have seen a program for the MAC that seems to be nice, but I never used it or had any chance to really look at it and I do not know the name of it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dgold@basso.actrix.gen.nz (Dale Gold) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 92 19:22:38 PST I think we chatted a bit when I was working with a programmer to try to write a decent PD Amiga notation program. I learned a lot about music typesetting, but maybe it was too much because the programmer `got busy with other things' - or maybe he just got cold feet when he found out how complicated it really is! He says the idea is still simmering on the back burner, but I've stopped holding my breath. >Is anybody using Dr. T's "Copyist" or "Copyist DTP", on >*any* computer (not necessarily an Amiga)? I've only used the demo version. It won't print, so I don't know how good it really is, but I imagine that the output of the DTP version is pretty respectable. I'm sure it's the best we've got on the Amiga, but I found the interface to be clumsy. It's been awhile... it just seemed to have the menus and so on arranged in ways that seemed odd and non-inuitive to me, and some things seemed not to be possible at all. Bear in mind that there was little or no documentation with the demo and I might have missed a lot. It does have the advantage of a pretty useful macro facility, which is very handy. It seemed to be limited in a lot of ways compared to what is taken for granted on other platforms. > Is anybody using a Mac or PC music notation program on an > Amiga, using a Bridgeboard or Amax or other emulator? I've asked that on the net a couple of times in the past, and got just the same response that you did. I've tried an old version of IBM's Personal Composer using IBem, and had no luck getting it to do anything useful, although it did start up. >Are there any decent Amiga notation packages? Copyist seems to be all there is. Well, I've gone with MusicTeX for the time being. You have to know a fair bit about TeX to use it, and it can be painfully slow to use, but the output is generally very good, and with a few clever CED [Cygnus Ed, an Amiga text editor] macros it's getting easier all the time. It seems to be very flexible, although it's basically designed for traditional things. If you know enough TeX, you can invent your own macros to do lots of things that aren't included in the package. Dunno if you know anything about TeX - you have to write lots of ommands in a text editor and then compile it. It's not an ideal situation for music. My son was working on a clickety-click interface for me, which seems to be a pretty trivial project, but his hard drive died, and I don't know how long it'll be before he gets anything accomplished. I've got an SMUS-to-TeX program which somebody started and never finished. As it is, it's pretty worthless - doesn't handle chords, and makes far too many errors. There's a bit of potential in that though, since you could use DMCS for a front end and then use MusicTeX for the fine-tuning. Or quickly convert old SMUS files to something worth printing. I *loathe* DMCS, but it is pretty easy to get basic stuff entered pretty quickly. Well, here we sit and wait... I hope you'll post an article here or email me if you come up with any answers. I haven't seen anything on any other computer that I'd like to use as much as my Amiga with Wshell, Arexx, etc but this is the one area that keeps making me think I should just give up and buy something else. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: divineg@prism.cs.orst.edu (Glade Diviney) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 09:50:48 -0800 I'm a CS/Music student here at Oregon State University, and I too have been appalled at the lack of music notation software (heaven knows, it would have been handy during my music theory classes...)( The best notation program for the Amiga, as far as I know, is the Deluxe Music Contruction Set (DMCS.) It is an old piece of software, and I haven't heard anything about it being updated. Besides, its output looks pretty crummy...(another case of printouts in the same resolution as the screen...bleah.) I've been seriously considering writing a good music notation program on my own. I wonder if there's any money to be made. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ladasky@netcom.com (John J. Ladasky II) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 11:55:26 PST I use Copyist DTP on the Atari ST. It is basically a music typewriter. This means that you get all kinds of control over the positioning of symbols. That's the good part... the bad part is that the program has very little "cognitive understanding" of the symbols. The PostScript output is great, but there are a few glitches - nost notably, slurs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Esa Haapaniemi Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1992 13:27:46 +0200 I have two friends, that use Copyist DTP (?), one is a "pro" as he is a church musician, and the other makes it for fun. I did try to run DMCS from our university Macintoshes on Amiga w. A-MaxII (2.06), but I couldn't run it long. The A-Max side bombed. If you need only notation, then I suggest to get MusicTeX. If you need to play and here the music, I suggest B&P Pro. As I told earlier, I haven't used any other music programs on Amiga, as MED. BTW I remember from the readme file on latest MED (3.22) that T.Kinnunen is selling his Octamed 2.0 that has notation. Cannot verify this. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Chee Leong Lee Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1992 11:31:29 -0500 (EST) [He runs Finale 2.6.1 on his Amiga 3000 using AMAX II version 2.0.6!] AMAX does not use any Preferences printer. But you can find printer drivers for your HP LaserJet IIP on the Mac side. I have a HP DeskJet 500, and I use a software package called JetLink Express, which provides printer drivers for Hp DeskJets, LaserJets, Canon BubbleJets and many other dot matrix printers. The printout is excellent for all my software (Finale, WordPerfect 2.0, Canvas 3.0). However, you need Amax V2.0.6 to get the drivers to work. I'm sure the quality from a LaserJet will be much better. > (3) What happens when you try to use the MIDI functions? Does the program > crash, or just not do anything? Well, it really depends on what MIDI functions you try to invoke. If you do a force send MIDI or the like, you'll most likely hang the system. Since the MIDI functions in Finale is pretty much isolated, you can use the program for the other functions but not even touch the MIDI functions. However, without the MIDI capabilities, Finale works like a lion with all its teeth extracted. The beauty of Finale is the way you can create print music with the entry of notes/chords from your synthesizer. It is a pity Amax 2 does not work with MIDI stuff. But Amax II+ claims to be able to handle that and I'm eagerly waiting for its arrival. >(4) What model Amiga do you have? Does AMAX use your hard drive? I have an A3000/25Mhz/6MB. Yes, Amax uses my harddrive. In fact I have a separate internal harddrive for my Amax stuff. But there should be no problem if you want to partition a single harddrive into an amiga partition and an Amax Partition. The amax partition will be totally invisible in AmigaDOS. (You'll have to assigned the amax partition as 'reserved' in AmigaDOS.) When Amax is invoked, the amax partition/Harddrive will automatically boot up. ============================ END OF RESPONSES ============================= I hope this survey was useful to some people! Dan //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ | Dan Barrett -- Dept of Computer Science, Lederle Graduate Research Center | | University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003 -- barrett@cs.umass.edu | \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\///////////////////////////////////// --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu General discussion: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu