Klarinet Archive - Posting 000193.txt from 2002/01

From: George Kidder <gkidder@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Music notation software and transposition
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 14:23:18 -0500

Jim,

At 01:48 PM 1/8/02 -0500, you wrote:
<I'm looking for something I can afford, to help me transpose music, if I'm
not oversimplifying what I think music software can do for me. A cursory
search of Sneezy's files doesn't lead me where I think I want to go. And,
I'm willing to conceed I might not have searched properly.>

I will answer to the list, since others might be interested as well.

I have been using Noteworthy for a couple of years now. The major problem
with this (or I suspect any software) is in entering the music in the first
place. When it is in, transposition is a snap, and usually proceeds
seamlessly. I have occasional troubles with failure to correctly deal with
a repeated note within a measure when the first note was altered by an
accidental, but forcing the accidentals (another automatic process) before
transposition seems to deal with most of the problems.

I found note entry to be somewhat difficult to learn, since some of the
keystrokes are non-intuitive, but when learned is not too much of a
chore. It is harder when chords are involved, but I gather that you will
normally be transposing the sax parts and leaving the piano alone. But
even chords can be entered with relative ease when you get the hang of
it. It will also import MIDI files, which gives you access to all of
Oliver Seely's work, although the import process does have some
limitations. It will work with OCR programs which produce MIDI files as
output (e.g., SharpEye), but the limitation here is in the OCR programs,
which are less than perfect, to say the least.

If you have a sound card, as I presume you have, you can do a MIDI-type
playback, which is the easiest way to spot clinkers. I am using an older
Ensonique, quite a good one at the time of its manufacture, and it sounds,
well, reasonable. Cheap sound cards sound terrible!

The nice thing about Noteworthy is the price - it is hard to go wrong at
that price! If you want other symbols that Noteworthy doesn't have, you
can download a file called Boxmarks which has a selection of symbols which
are installed as an alternate font, and will produce most of the
conventional signs. It does not handle long symbolic crescendo and
disendow (< and >, but long) although shorter ones are in the Boxmarks
set. None of the Boxmarks symbols have any effect on MIDI playback, unlike
the Noteworthy "cresc" and "dim" entries, which can actually control the
volume.

I am sure there is a lot that can be done with the high priced programs
which is beyond Noteworthy, but for my uses it is just fine. I hope it may
be so for you. Good luck.

George

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