Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    
    I downloaded the bars and pipes demo off the net when it was first
    uploaded , some time ago .I had no problems running it off my hard
    disk .Athough I didn't try all the features .What's the problem ?
    
    I'll try and remember to try it again tonight just to be sure .
    The reason I don't use it is I'm a Music-X disciple...
    
    Steve.

    Same here.  It worked, but I wasn't able to figure out all the 
    piping stuff, or some of the other features.  I'm not a musician,
    so I didn't take it any further.  Perhaps if I had been then 
    my curiosity would have been piqued enough to beat on it some more.
    
    Personally, I'm not sure that a full featured product with no docs
    makes a good demo.  It convinced me that this was not an intuitive
    product.  Or that I'm not an intuitive person.  (here's one vote for
    built in help).
    
    Yours
    Erg
    

re .1  & .2	Thanks guys, I'll keep trying  -  maybe I just have 
another wretched misunderstanding re the vagaries of down-loading,
de-lharcing and such.

re .2
>    Same here.  It worked, but I wasn't able to figure out all the 
>    piping stuff, or some of the other features.  I'm not a musician,
>    so I didn't take it any further.  Perhaps if I had been then 
>    my curiosity would have been piqued enough to beat on it some more.

>    Personally, I'm not sure that a full featured product with no docs
>    makes a good demo.  It convinced me that this was not an intuitive
>    product.  Or that I'm not an intuitive person.  (here's one vote for
>    built in help).

	I understand it to be  "intuitive"  to those who know/love the 
paradigm in Unix (tm) after which it is named (my assumption) and who 
know what they want to pipe to where after what process.


	Reg	{relatively illiterate in Unix, Music and lharc}

RE: .2 >It convinced me that this was not an intuitive
    product. 
       > I'm not a musician,

I disagree a bit. This is a VERY feature laden program that does a
good job of being intuitive considering all that it can do. It is misleading
in that it looks cheerful, even childlike, which implies that it should
be very easy to use. This is far from a childrens music making program 
though. I agree with the idea that a full featured product with no docs does
not make a good demo. 

 > I'm not a musician,

A lot of the options are musician oriented. This program has a lot of
computer-aided composition features that require knowing something
about scales, chord structure, harmony etc. You can do a lot
without going into those areas but you will see the options available
at evey turn. 

This is a program that is as complicated as a desktop
publishing product. It includes a sequencer and the composition 
control. This could easily be 2 separate can't-run-them-at-the-same-time
$300 programs on the Mac ;-) ;-) ;-)

FWIW, I missed out on a lot from the demo and the supplied docs.
Now I have the real docs and the demo makes sense  %-} ...
I have to read the docs to see how to do something or to see if I can
do more that what is obvious, but after I read it and do it once, I remember
it. That qualifies as pretty intuitive for me.

Dave

    FWIW, I had no trouble running this demo on a 1 meg A500. If I remember
    correctly, included with the demo is some sort of file that can be
    viewed with any of the standard view utilities that points out what
    each of the gadgets is on the screen. It was fairly complete, but I
    can't remember if the readme file even talked about it. The file name
    was somewhat obvious as to its purpose. Also, there's additional info
    in this notesfile re: this demo that you can find with a dir/title,
    specifically some hints about using the Amigophone. I think I entered
    something about it way back when.

    -Dom

I had problems with the demo initially as when I de-lharc'ed it
I didn't get some of the subdirctories created and thus the sotware
wasn't fully operational. When I did it a second time I got all of the subdirectories
and the demo was ok.

Mike

Just a word to those interested in Bars and Pipes: I have had an Amiga for quite
some time, having purchased one of the original development systems. I didn't
purchase a sequencer for some time, but when I did, it was Soundscape; despite
the fact that it didn't seem to be advertised any more, or get serious reviews
in your average "rundown of application software" article, I had been impressed
by its Unix-like approach to sequencing. As someone in this note series said,
it's quite "pipelike."

I had a few problems, and wrote to Soundscape for support; I received no answer.
I solved most of my own difficulties, and lived with the rest for a while.
Eventually I called tech support (finding a number wasn't easy) and reached
someone from Brown-Wagh, the distributor. Seems the developer resisted all
efforts to produce a new version of the product, claiming there was nothing
wrong with it. The developer, in case you didn't know, is Todor Fay, the author
of Bars and Pipes, which is in essence the upgrade to SoundScape. Only trouble
is, the upgrade price is the purchase price.

Frankly, I still like the approach and the results, but SoundScape is obviously
(now, at least) obsolescent, and I know that eventually I'll migrate to a new
sequencer. However, I'd be more than a little leery of depending on another
Todor Fay production. Could the problem really have been the publisher? Yup,
but Brown-Wagh seems to be in it for the long haul.

One could say that I'm just bitter about a bad experience- sure I am! However,
this is a real consideration for my next purchase. I'd have to favor Dr. T's
or Passport over Blue Ribbon Bakery on the basis of longevity of their products.

Re .7:

N.B.: Relatively large update to earlier opinion!!!

Despite misgivings expressed in .7, I've followed up on exploring Bars and Pipes
as my next sequencer- I still like its style! In so doing, I got their
literature for B&P Pro, and still had some questions, so I called Blue Ribbon,
and happened to squeak by their (obnoxious) automated voicemail answering
system.

Well, the actual human being who answered kept on having to have me hang on
while she got my answer from a third party, and eventually she gave up and put
someone else on the line- Todor Fay, as it happened. To make a long story short,
he did answer all my questions, and we had a short chat about the fate of
Soundscape from his point of view. Seems like the publisher (Mimetics) didn't
want to *pay* Todor for any improvements to the product, but considered any
such work part of the original contract. I can see why they would express their
side of the story the way they did, in retrospect. The real irony is that Todor
proposed the project which became Bars and Pipes to them as an upgrade to
Soundscape, and that's what they wanted for free. Ahem. Yeah, right. Thus did
Blue Ribbon Soundworks (nee Blue Ribbon Bakery) come into being.

I am, all in all, quite pleased to be able to correct myself.

Cheers,
	Bob