At 09:24 AM 10/15/06 -0400, Christopher Smith wrote: >This point has bigger repercussions, IMHO. One of the things that >bothers me about Finale (and if this bothers me, it must INFURIATE >engravers like jef!) is that everything in Finale does NOT stay where >you put it!
Speaking as one who does both traditional and graphical music, I find it crazy-making. This goes to the heart of these programs' purposes. The gap between notation programs and engraving programs will not be bridged for some time. I'm not saying anything new, just distinguishing the purposes, which really and truly matter, depending on which side of the musical notation world you live -- engraving (presentation) or notation (indication). Rather than talk about program specifics, I'm thinking about how to resolve two different approaches to software's purposes, at least conceptually. I've talked about some these things most recently on my blogs of September 25, October 3, 4 and 7 (with examples; blog link in my sig), and wonder if I might roll some of list members' thoughts into a future entry (especially since my own approach is very composition-biased). Engraving, like typography and design, involves judgment that is very difficult to codify (without even taking into account subsequent programming). Certain elements reveal these differences in judgment most obviously, such as ties and slurs and the interplay of complex items. This is the artistic model of presentation, beyond legibility, and is visual rather than musical (except for those composers who bind the visual to the musical). Score, Lilypond and Graphire Music Press and other engraving-oriented programs are built to function within the graphic model, and the rest is secondary or absent. Engraving is a fixed world. Musical notation is the act of committing music to visible form. It involves translation of musical events (compositional or performing) into notation, and includes as many tools and techniques as possible to achieve that goal. Accuracy of intent and legibility of result are critical, and so audio proofing is important and 'intelligent' music input and output should be expected. Finale and Sibelius and other notation-oriented programs may function within both musical and graphical models, but evidence of compromise is everywhere, and bets are always on notation over engraving. Notation is a malleable world. In this adolescent period of music software, no set of programs can act upon the concepts predicated by the others. Attempts to do it will fail until a common approach to data is adopted all around, and that data is detailed and open-ended and respected by the software that uses it. The competitive model (for now) is acting against a commonality of data, and so one cannot yet choose a variety of interfaces, sets of manipulation tools, and output modules. The common formats that exist (such as Midi, XML, Unicode, etc.) are for now all highly circumscribed and insufficient to the task. Two comparisons. The text-editing field also includes book design, and although one can design a book in MSWord (and I have had to on two occasions), it is difficult to achieve a superior level of design quality. It is just a book, legible and (one hopes) correct. Book design programs (limited by budget, I still use Pagemaker) achieve much finer results with the typography and presentation, but do not work interchangeably with an author or editing team. Revised material loses its detailed design features ... but on the other hand, one rarely expects the book designer to be the author, editor, or copy editor. The highly 'finished' book is the one that achieves a high quality of design. The graphics field is also comparatively advanced. Although still limited at the input end, images can be accepted, manipulated, and output by a whole range of software. Though proprietary formats exist (such as PSD), the ability of other programs to work within these formats makes life far easier than in the music notation realm. When a program's feature set increases, the resulting manipulations may not be lost, but become fixed when worked on by other software (or fixed in translation into common formats). But again, the high finished photo or animation is often brought to completion in proprietary formats. At the moment, we are still far from either of these circumstances in music notation and engraving. Again, I'd love to have some of the list members' thoughts that I can quote in a future blog commentary. Dennis -- Please participate in my latest project: http://maltedmedia.com/waam/ My blog: http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/waam-blog.html Composer "buy local" bumpersticker: http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/bumpersticker.jpg http://www.cafepress.com/buy/80570307/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
