Conference hydra::amiga_v1

48.0. "Activision MUSIC STUDIO" by ERLANG::FEHSKENS () Fri Jun 13 1986 10:39

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                              -< atari ST notes >-
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Note 56.1                Summary of ABUG's May meeting                    1 of 1
ERLANG::FEHSKENS                                     32 lines   9-JUN-1986 12:02
                 -< A Musician's Thumbs Down on Music Studio >-
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    I've used MUSIC STUDIO on the Amiga, and I consider it an abomination.
    It has numerous problems that make it useless to me for compositional
    purposes.  The most glaring are its subtle misuse of conventional
    music notation that make its "scores" almost unreadable.  It will
    only display two staves at a time, and it places sharps and flats
    3 semitones above the note they belong on.  It duplicates the flags
    on the notes of a chord, so a chord of three eighth notes ends up
    looking like a chord of 3 32nd notes.  This is impossible to
    disambiguate, because unlike a real score, it spaces notes uniformly
    rather than based on time value.  It uses the bar line to delineate
    phrases rather than bars, so you can't use bar numbers (it uses
    note number, again without regard for time values) to locate anything.
    It notates triplets by putting a subscript 3 alongside the note,
    increasing the unreadability, instead of using a super 3 over a
    tie a la conventional notation.  It cannot handle quintuplets. 
    Its tempo range is inadequate for performance purposes.  Its
    interactive style is an impediment; e.g. if you want to sharp or
    flat a note, you have to select the sharp or flat "mode"; you can't
    just stick a sharp or flat in front of a note.  You have to access
    a menu for damn near every note you write.  It doesn't do any beaming,
    and the multicolored notes (one color for each instrument) are
    meaningless and some of the colors are very difficult to see.
    
    It does work, and the Amiga implementation had no bugs that I ran
    into.  The user interface may be appropriate for the musically naive,
    but anybody with any sightreading skills will be driven to distraction
    by it.
    
    Sorry to be such a downer, but MUSIC STUDIO was a disaster for me.
    
    len.
    

    Have to agree with you. I bought Music Studio two weeks ago and
    it really is pretty useless. To add to your list of complaints,
    the predefined instruments are poor, having to load sound libraries
    instead of individual instruments is very inflexible, and its
    restriction that ties can only be placed between notes of the same
    pitch is ridiculous! Also, you can't change key in the middle of
    a piece, the time signature is worthless since bars are not fixed
    length and therefore never know where the beat will fall, and it
    has no dynamics (you select a volume for the song. It plays the
    entire song at that volume). I regret having spent all that money.
    
    On the other hand, MusiCraft looks more reasonable, albeit more
    expensive. General Computer (Rte 9, Framingham) has a demo copy
    and it looks like they got their act together a bit better than
    Activision. Unfortunately MusiCraft is in the >$100 range, out
    of reach for a lowlife student such as me. If somebody buys this,
    though, please post your reaction to it, I'd like to know.
    
    Incidentally, I am not a musician, and have no musical talent
    whatsoever.
    

    To be fair, the problem with ties across notes of different pitch
    (I think this is properly called a slur, no pejorative intended)
    to denote legato playing is achieved with the Music Studio by using
    the bar lines to delimit a phrase that should be played legato.
    So you can get the effect, you just have to do it using unconventional
    notation.
    
    Not that thsi makes the thing any more attractive.
    
    len.