| Author |
Comment |
Per
Stromgren
Registered
User
Posts: 6
(8/2/01 9:48:01
am)
Reply
|
Good and fast
score writing program?
Hi!
I sometimes want to write some score, in order to play
it back through my PC so I can hear the (to me) complex passages and
faster learn how to play it. For this I have tried some free
programs. They all work, but they are so tedious to use! All of them
use the mouse as only input, which can not be speeded up: you must
always hit the exact right location for the note. It take ages just
to enter a few bars. I would like a program that can use the
keyboard as input device, or perhaps scan a page and interpret it.
But perhaps this latter technique would be too much for the
copyright police, even if I do not have any criminal intentions.
Have you seen any program (free or not) that solve my
problems, or do you have any other comments?
|
Bobbie
Registered User
Posts: 567
(8/2/01 9:54:27 am)
Reply
|
Re: Good and
fast score writing program?
Programs like Finale and Sibelius have keyboard (or MIDI) entry and
at least Finale can scan music in, although the copy you scan in has
to be very clean if you want it to read correctly (it has the same
problems as optical character recognition (OCR)). There are a couple
of shorter versions of Finale that are cheaper. Try http://www.codamusic.com/
and see if those have the features you want.
|
Per
Stromgren
Registered
User
Posts: 7
(8/2/01 10:05:27
am)
Reply
|
Re: Good and
fast score writing program?
Thanks, Bobbie. The term "keyboard" is of course bound to confuse a
dialogue where music and computers are discussed. What I meant to
say is that I'm after a program that can take input from the
computer keyboard. (I read from your answer that you thought I was
talking about a piano-type keyboard.)
Do you use any of these
programs yourself?
Per.
|
Bobbie
Registered User
Posts: 568
(8/2/01 10:28:43 am)
Reply
|
Re: Good and
fast score writing program?
Finale can do both a MIDI keyboard and a computer keyboard. I think
the Music Printer program can also do tht, but you would have to
check the specs. I use Finale, but I usually use mouse entry as I'm
not set up for MIDI and I'm not very good with (computer) keyboard
entry. Finale has a speedier mouse entry method where you hold a
number key down to indicate the duration of the note while clicking
on the pitch, so it isn't that slow. Try the demo for the program
first- you can get demos on the website. Are you using a PC or a
Mac?
|
Per
Stromgren
Registered
User
Posts: 8
(8/2/01 3:18:20
pm)
Reply
|
Re: Good and
fast score writing program?
I have tried the Finale Notepad, which seem to be a simpler
verssion of the Finale, and it has the same problem: I cannot type
an "a" to get an A, or any other sort of computer keyboard entry.
Entry using the mouse is very elegant and fast to
understand, but is tedious for more than a few bars.
I am
using Windows 98, by the way.
Per.
|
Bobbie
Registered User
Posts: 573
(8/2/01 3:30:09 pm)
Reply
|
Re: Good and
fast score writing program?
Per,
http://www.codamusic.com/coda/product_feature_compare_not.asp
This
page compares features of the Coda programs. Notepad is the only one
that does not allow entry from the keyboard. I don't think any of
them work like A=A, b=B, and so on. I think they set the keypad up
like a piano keyboard in some way. There are free demos so you can
download a program and see if it does what you want before you buy
it.
|
DWThomas
Registered User
Posts: 381
(8/2/01 4:10:02 pm)
Reply
|
This probably
isn't it --- but ...
Have you ever looked into ABC notation? It uses text streams to
encode note pitch, duration, bar lines, slurs and ties, all sorts of
goodies.
It could be pretty close to what I think you want,
but last I looked, it was somewhat cello-impaired.
That was
several years back and I found that it was mostly slanted toward
treble clef for folks to send folk tunes back and forth in text
files. But the format specification claims to support bass clef,
alto clef (not sure about tenor), etc. The specification appeared to
cover more features than the software that was available to
interpret it at the time.
There's a web page at: www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/
which discusses it a little bit and has links to related
stuff.
I obtained an early version of abc2win which converts
the abc notation to graphical score for print-out. At that time, it
did _not_ do bass clef, however. It did do a pretty impressive
print-out.
At the time, there was also an abc2midi program
that was supposed to produce a midi output file. I never got
seriously into that.
The whole thing appears to be a sort of
shareware/when-I-get-around-to-it group effort. Perhaps more has
happened since I last looked. There was a sample file that had an
incredible array of stuff, fancy ties and beaming and all sorts of
things for the score output. ABC could have great potential if the
utilities filled in some previously missing features.
There
is also MusiTex which is a music-enabled version of Tex, Donald
Knuth's legendary typesetting code. I've never had time to dig into
this one. I don't believe it can do midi out, but I've seen some
awesome music for harpsichord rendered with it. There's some info
and links related to MusiTex in the Werner Icking Music Archive at: icking-music-archive.sunsite.dk/
As
a computer geek with musical interests, I should be deep into this
stuff, but my home systems are antiquated boxes that don't have the
resources to run much. (The shoemaker's children have no shoes. 
)
All of the notation programs I've tried seemed more tedious
than I expected they would be. I suspect the real problem is that we
don't appreciate how much information is conveyed in a piece of
sheet music until we have to put it all down one bit at a
time!
I know even less about the midi software referred to as
"sequencers." Anybody know if they have any easy way to input data
from a computer keyboard?
Dave
|
Mongkol
![]()
Registered User
Posts: 64
(8/2/01 10:49:39 pm)
Reply
|
Music OCR
Dear Per
I got an advice from cello chat board to get the
SharpEye music OCR program. It can be found at www.visiv.co.uk/
I have scanned my etude page and read by SharpEye then saved it
as midi file so I can edit it with other midi file reader program
and listen to it or play along with it. It also works with duet
music. I think playing with computer is definitely better than just
play with an old metronome!
MK
|
Internet Cello
Society Forums
Email
This To a Friend
Topic Commands (Moderator
only)