I appreciate all the comments about this ... I know that I fought against Midi implementation 10 years ago, but I've changed my mind entirely. More than entirely.
At 10:18 AM 7/16/02 -0700, Linda Worsley wrote: >Don't ANY >of you remember what it was like to make scores with ink and Ozalid? Linda, this isn't really an issue. I remember. I did my first 300 scores that way. But that time is over (something I just said about General Midi). Finale must do Midi, and do it well, or it will disappear. I think Finale is very good, and I don't want it to disappear. I also want to be able to produce good results *without* having to do 95% of it in some other program, as I do now. Musical scores are only one part of music creation, development, and presentation. I compose to score because that's what I know how to do. A performance is often interesting, but is not always necessary. Not including my electronic/electroacoustic pieces, I've created at least a dozen scores in the past few years that were intended only for sampled instruments. Television and film music may well start with scores that are rendered with samples, and never see a real pair of hands on a piece of plumbing or a scratchbox. >Finale >isn't and doesn't need to be orchestra-in-a-box. Unfortunately for some who are satisfied with the current implementation, Finale must be more of an orchestra-in-a-box ... or if not that, at least work as a *cooperative plug-in* to other programs. Programs with significantly easier entry and better-looking output (like Graphire Music Press) go nowhere in part because their Midi is hopelessly primitive (and also they're copy-protected with a dongle, but that's a whole 'nother issue). At 01:43 PM 7/16/02 -0400, David H. Bailey wrote: >Being deprived of being able to hear full, >accurate playback of all notation is like a page layout program putting >the word GRAPHIC inside a big box instead of lettin7g you see the entire >page with ALL its contents. This is a good analogy as far as it goes, I think. For example, Pagemaker is a full-fledged program that handles everything right to the production of the final code for color-separated negatives matched to the machine that will produce them, derived from any number of commercial color systems (like PMS). But it still requires other programs for scanning, image manipulation, and editing (its editor is rudimentary). It is not a program that supports creativity. Finale does support creativity. One can compose within it, easier and eaiser every version. I do that, and have since "Emerald Canticles, Below" in 1993. As the audio output gets more respectful of the score's contents, it not only makes proofreading easier, but provides the required contents of a good demo with little massaging. To make a painful point, nobody reads anymore. Of course that's an exaggeration, but the time it takes to read a score (or play through it) puts submissions without demos on the bottom of the slush pile. To deal with the crude mess that Finale outputs is an increasing frustration as every *other* program improves this crucial aspect by leaps and bounds with every release. On the other hand, Finale's Midi presentation looks almost exactly like it did 10 versions ago. We are no longer in an era where the beautiful curve of the treble clef is in the same league as properly rendered legato strings with a swell. I'm sorry, engravers, but the 19th century was really your time for this. Now is the time for a fully integrated package with the notational and expressive power both present. For final tailoring I'll still expect to turn to an audio editor like Sonar. But more of the responsibility lies with the notation program to be the servant of the ultimate result -- which today often (if not mostly) goes through the electronic rendering. Let me repeat David's words here, which I believe are crucial: >Music is NOT just images on a page the way a magazine is. Music is >about SOUND as well, and I for one don't see why people have such a hard >time wanting to be able to HEAR the music from inside a music program as >well as SEE it. > >Finale is NOT just a page-layout program for engravers, it is also a >tool used by arrangers and composers who want to hear how what they are >working on sounds, and for many others, the ability to proof-listen to >the notation (ALL the notation, including dynamic marks such as >crescendi) helps to be sure it is all located where it should be and >marked as it should be. So accurate midi playback is not just some >fancy add-on, it is a useful tool. Now to dispense with some mythology... :) At 02:21 PM 7/16/02 -0500, Harold Steinhardt wrote: >If an arranger or a composer does not know what it will sound like >BEFORE notating it, then they do not know their art/craft very well. If >they don't already know what it will sound like, how do they >determine what to write in the first place? Many composers compose in their heads. Yes, I do that. And it's interesting that most of my work pre-Finale suffered from a certain limited character. I wondered why that was, and then I realized: psychological investment. Like the writer who moves from typewriter to word processor, the composer who moves from pencil to notation software no longer has the psychological investment in all those hard-won drafts. There's more time to play around and experiment. More opportunity to sketch without the pain of having it tested and fail in 'real life'. Some of you are going "huh??" right now. Particularly if you're not a composer and only see the near-final result of a composer's work, you may not feel the struggle of finding just the right transition on a microscopic level, or the empty feeling of crossing out 50 measures in the middle of a work. But with a *flexible* (flexible is key!) music program (input, notation, sound, print), the mental cost is reduced. (The actual cash cost is also reduced when the flow of work from invention to completion is made faster **and more certain**.) For this latter, every tool is crucial, not just the curve of the treble clef or the visual gospel of Henle. When pushing the compositional envelope -- and convincing someone else (or even oneself) of the value of said pushing -- the score is not enough. The validation of small experiments is sometimes essential. And if it means carrying the crude Finale output to another piece of software (without it being symbiotic!), then it's increasing that psychological cost once again. Put succinctly: At 03:45 PM 7/16/02 -0400, gj.berg wrote: >Personally, I make it a policy to never write what I hear -- I mean if I >can hear it why bother? >Now writing beyond what I hear -- that's engaging! On the other hand: At 01:52 PM 7/16/02 -0700, Bob Florence wrote: >I remember my teacher telling me: "You have to see with your ears and hear >with your eyes". I don't use a piano or Finale's playback. Forgive me if I >sound arrogant. I think you're of a different age. There are two problems with this statement. One is the era; unlike previous times, there is no stylistic glue that helps along score-reading today. This is especially true because the vocabulary of styles has expanded along with the vocabulary of notation. For example, the generation-old Berio Sequenza for Solo Voice is clearly the same piece in every performance; it is unmistakable. *But* it was nearly unreadable when it was issued. Similarly, I would challenge anyone making that statement to read the score to my "RatGeyser" and "Zonule Glaes II", which include notated sequences integrated with the traditional notation. It ain't your grandpa's notation anymore. At 03:54 PM 7/16/02 -0500, Harold Steinhardt wrote: >However, the best of midi playback still does not give >you an honest representation of what real human >beings, playing a real acoustic instruments will sound like. No, it doesn't. Unfortunately, "real human beings, playing a real acoustic instruments" don't do that either. There are few performers able to cope with new scores in the way the composer imagined (just as your fingers didn't cooperate in rendering your thought, by inserting the "a"). But that is minor compared to another effect of Midi learning (and this relates to a previous thread I stayed out of): Composers who learn via Midi will no longer be satisfied with "real human beings, playing real acoustic instruments" anymore. Midi (used only in its generic sense as 'accurate non-human playback') is a dramatic *challenge* to performers to do a better job. It's also a challenge to conductors, because they have to do *at least* as well as the machine. :) Damn straight! The age of the lazy musician will certainly be declared over. Who'll want them? My composing colleague David Gunn has hissy fits over performers who can't count and can't play the notes. The machine counts very well, and he's substituted Midi renditions in place of actual performances because the humans were unable or unwilling to give the needed time. The machine doesn't complain, and where it falls down -- accurate representation of human foibles too often disguised as "interpretation" -- it makes up for in increasing versatility and energy. That will further change, and I'd expect that Finale would reflect that. >I often find with real acoustic instruments the >richness of overtones and perhaps some sympathetic >vibrations, I may faintly hear another note which is not >written. For example, in a simple minor triad with >acoustic instruments, I can often hear a faint 9th that >is not being played by anyone. I've never heard that >from a midi instrument. I can draw two conclusions from that: Either it really isn't there, or you've got crappy Midi implementation. I think we're talking about the need for improving that!? >So midi playback while writing may be a helpful tool, >but it is not always a truthful tool. It's far more "truthful" than the bulk of today's performers, who bend the truth at every incompetence they exhibit. What's your choice, as a composer? Fidelity to your vision, or destruction at someone else's hands? (Of course I exaggerate, but I've had far worse results with real musicians than with Midi, even under Finale's clumsy hands.) Now, to two practical issues, the first of which David makes very well: At 05:37 PM 7/16/02 -0400, David H. Bailey wrote: >That's fine -- I suppose you never have to revise your scores after you >hear them? Never change the dynamics? Never decide to add a ritard >because it would sound nice, after you heard the piece without the ritard? [snip] >Why be so arrogant and proud about not wanting to hear it in your studio >BEFORE you put it in front of musicians? Excellent. Some of us get lucky, and make almost no revisions. But the more I use Midi, the more confident I am that what is placed in front of the musicians is what can actually be accomplished in the pitifully few rehearsals the music will get. The demo is as important as the page turns. But more importantly at a critically practical level: >Why should I have to go to a different >program and then manually place the same dynamics I have already placed >in Finale? Why should I even have to go to a different window and muck >about with the midi tool, just to get crescendi to play back properly, >when I have entered them as I want them in the score already? Indeed. The engraver mindset believes the work is done when the hairpin is placed. But today, the work is not done until the demo is finished. So a program is increasingly flawed that leaves the work off before the first stage is complete. Something that often gets missed is that the creation of a piece of music is more than its notation. At one point, when most music was received by the music-making and -learning public as notation and the occasional concert, the score was both High Art and High Communication. But the music-making and -learning public now gets its music from recordings almost exclusively. In such a society, a program like Finale does not do its job unless (1) it provides adequate performance options or (2) it plugs symbiotically into another program that does. By symbiotically, I mean -- referring to the wish list of parts linked to scores -- that changes to the score will affect (correctly) the playback document, and changes to the playback document will affect (correctly) the score. You can tell me it isn't easy, but then I'll just refer you back to Linda's comments at the top of the page. There was a time Not Long Ago when *none* of this was feasible. And as I said to David Fenton, it's not time to be mired in even the standards of the recent past -- it's time to move on and make this program a true notation program for our own time. And, onward to the ultimate practical matters: At 12:23 PM 7/16/02 -0700, Lee Actor wrote: >But I think what is most telling >are the perceived (correctly or not) competitive disadvantages of Finale >compared to its main rival, Sibelius. Those happen to be ease of use and >MIDI playback. Coda has gone a long way toward improving ease of use. The >MIDI implementation, though strong feature-wise, has major UI problems, and >is arcane and awkward to use. Like it or not, this is a strong comparative >selling point for Sibelius, and my guess is that Coda understands that they >have some work to do in that area to gain market share. In my interpretation, this means that if you use Finale, like Finale, have a long-term investment in scores produced using Finale, you better get behind a strong Midi implementation or in a not long there won't *be* a Finale! Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
