| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 2324.1 | Finale, if you can afford it... | MANFUL::ROBERT | Tom rOss Robert - The DeLorean Kid! | Mon Apr 23 1990 18:53 | 29 |
|
I am using an old version of Professional Composer by Mark of the Unicorn.
It is s..l..o..w. And it has a hard time interpreting certain phrases,
triplet formations and such, the right way. (i.e. I sometimes get strings
of tied 64th notes!) However, I had no problem reading in a MIDI file from
Performer and getting a decent looking output. (granted, Perfromer is from
the same company, you would hope such)
Supposedly, the latest version is much better at interpreting, is faster and
has other bug fixes. I believe you can get it for about $400. But to tell
you the truth, I've never read any reviews on it that taunts it over any of
the others. Although I think Performer is one of the best Mac based
sequencing packages, I wouldn't whole-heartedly recomment Composer.
Another DEC employee I know has recently obtained Finale and taunts that as
being the grand daddy of all scoring packages. It is powerful, "smart" and
has a lot of functionality/features. For instance, it has a mode where you
can play notes on the keyboard and they appear in real-time on the score as
you play. We're using it for a project we're doing called the Performing
Desktop. It's a demo that shows off our PC integration messages and makes
use of MIDI, sequencers on both PC and Mac, and the scoring package.
I should actually post on a note on the demo itself. Anyways, the drawback
to this package would be $$, I believe it goes for more like $700-$800, but
from what I hear, it's worth it.
MHO.
-Tom
|
| 2324.2 | Finale/Music Prose | HPSRAD::SAWIN | Jim Sawin, DTN 297-4933 | Tue Apr 24 1990 09:12 | 13 |
| I've heard a lot about Finale, but the price deterred me. (I'm not THAT
serious about notation software - I just figured it would nice to transcribe
sequences so that I can come back to them after a while and perform them
again) I also read that if you have a Mac Plus (like I do), don't bother
trying to run it because it will be painfully slow.
Music Prose is supposed to be a toned-down version of Finale (fewer features,
more attractive price). Since I already have MTP for sequencing, I figured
it would be OK as long as Music Prose had the notation features I was
interested in, and was able to import standard MIDI files. It's still pretty
slow on a Mac Plus, though.
Jim
|
| 2324.3 | they had a price reduction | NORGE::CHAD | Ich glaube Ich t�te Ich h�tte | Tue Apr 24 1990 10:26 | 4 |
| Finale originally listed for $1000 but I do believe that it is now $500-$600
list.
Chad
|
| 2324.4 | Finale latest price (& commentary) | NWD002::EVANS_BR | | Tue Apr 24 1990 15:34 | 25 |
| FWIW I have Finale, and won't use anything else. I keep finding
neat and new ways to notate songs -- in fact, one of my friends
has MTPv4 and exported a standard MIDI file and I jammed it into
Finale. It works, but the tricky part is determining the float
quantization. I finally just tried all three choices, and used the
one that looked best to me. (actually, the default was the best
so far "Non-Timed Tuplet")
One interesting thing, is that Finale lets me now keep the MIDI
performance info-- so even if the notation is not prefectly correct
(and it usually is not), the sounds you hear *are*.
Computerware (in Palo Alto, CA) lists Finale for $649 (800) 326-0092
[m-f, 7-6 pst]. Another source is Computers and Music (in San
Francisco) (415) 994-2909.
I'm thinking of using Finale to notate songs, and would not mind
experimenting with taking sequenced tunes and using Finale to notate
them, but the user should be advised that the output of notation is
*hardcopy* (I know, I know.... ugly word in netland....:-), and so I do
not know how to get the notated stuff back to the creator
(FAX/scanners????). Oh well, it's an idea!! Send me mail if you
want to play around.....
ciao Bruce Evans
|
| 2324.5 | Better price and how to get softcopy output. | TALLIS::HERDEG | Mark Herdeg, LTN1-2/H09 226-6520 | Tue May 01 1990 14:02 | 11 |
| MacConnection (1-800-334-4444) lists Finale 2.0 for $559 and MusicProse 1.0 for
$169.
You can capture the printed output from Finale (as with any Mac program) as
Postscript in a file by holding down Command-F right after clicking OK in the
LaserWriter print dialog box. The resulting file can then be printed on any
Postscript printer when prefixed with the appropriate Apple LaserPrep file.
More details on how to do this are available in the RAINBO::MACINTOSH and/or
RT95::MACONLINE conferences.
-Mark
|