| From: John Alexander Blyth Subject: Re: MIDI To: VOCALIST <vocalist> Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>
First, MIDI. The cables can be quite expensive, if they are "name-brand", and you have to pay a store's marked-up price. Still worth it, but you might be able to get them cheaper over the net or secondhand, if you think it's worth the effort. Then Music Notation software. There is as awful lot out there and some of it is as good as it is expensive. You can get evaluations of many of them on the web, and there was an faq in a (sorry to be so vague) newsgroup which tabulated comparisons. I think it's author was Alan Belkin. The one I found which was most like a word processor for music (and also with relatively simple midi connection procedures) was Encore, by Passport Designs, which went bankrupt, but their product line was taken over by GVOX! The one glitch I have found in this pgm is that I can't seem to copy and paste in the left hand part of their "piano staff", if that mean sanything to you. I used to use Finale but it was very clunky, slow and complex, although the results were unlimited in scope. I understand that Finale has moved closer to the Encore model and this may have motivated their bid for Passport Designs' inventory, so it may well be an easier pgm than the earlier versions that I grappled with. At the same time a relatively intuitive and quite beautiful pgm, Sibelius, has started to blow the competition away in terms of speed of screen redraw, ease of use etc. However its copy and paste is also a bit odd: in this case very peculiar and unwidowslike, in the the commands used and in the selection process, but if I had the money this would be my pgm of choice, and its midi basically hooks itself up. I think you can download demos (free, but time-consuming), or have them send you discs (typically about $5 for postage etc,). I look for pgms which will allow me to work on orchestral, vocal and choral scores, and which will have clever shortcuts that save hours of editing. You can get scaled down vesrions of these pgms. for less if you are willing to be limited to 16 staves or other limitations. But there is a lot out there (>100 notation pgms) and some sequencers have OK, editable notation. I hope this was helpful. john
At 17:31 18/01/00 -0800, you wrote: >Is anyone one this list familiar with midi equipment? I have a digital >piano with the appropriate hookups and all, and I was just wondering if >there was any particular place I should look for cables, etc. Also if >anyone knows of any good music-notation programs, I would really appreciate >it. Thank you. > >David M. > > >______________________________________________________ > > John Blyth Bass/Baritone (as opposed to Bass-Baritone) etc. Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
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