[Finale] music-notation apps and chord symbol fonts in teaching
Fellow Listers: Since I first released ChordSymbol in 1996, I've been trying to encourage music instructors (initially music theory teachers, now also jazz arranging teachers) to use Finale and Sibelius integrally in their teaching. Specifically, the Rubicon is crossed when daily homework assignments are completed *digitally* by students on their own computers using the cheap student versions of these applications. This means students must learn a music-notation app along with the course content--not a small thing. But knowing such technology tools should be con sidered part of being a professional musician nowadays. And one of those tools is, or ought to be (I respectfully suggest), ChordSymbol for traditional music chord symbols and JazzSymbol for commercial music chord symbols. They're both light-years beyond the limited capacity built into the music-notation apps right now when it comes to chord symbol entry, where everyone who uses these programs has to build their own custom library of, say, jazz suffixes and tensions, or--still worse--figured bass stacks. With Unicode, such libraries can be built right into a font--ChordSymbol 2 has more than 13 times the special symbols that were in ChordSymbol 1. And to the extent our fonts become industry standard, students will have to obtain such a tool just once for use in any application, including word-processing programs such as Word. In this context I'm pleased to mention that as of last week, the next editions of both the number 1 and 2 college music theory textbooks will be formatted using ChordSymbol 2. I'm working on the commercial sheet music publishers and the jazz/pop arranging/harmony/history textbook authors and their publishers on the commercial side. In fact, we're offering to help produce such as complete sets of part-writing exercises in both Sibelius and Finale for these textbooks at low contract rates. We're even trying to set up a share space at our web site where instructors may exchange, at no cost, their own sets of custom-produced exercises--that representing in itself a revolutionary step forward in music teaching, and a major motivator of this posting (do please get in touch with me if you have materials you'd like to contribute). Things change fundamentally when an 18-year-old music student regularly sits down at his or her laptop, completes a homework assignment using one of these programs and a cheaply obtained copy of one of our fonts (listening to their work prior to submission), and then submits it by email. I've been out of teaching for nearly ten years. Is this sort of thing happening more regularly now? I hope so, and not just for commercial reasons. The resulting improvement in musical literacy should be dramatic, largely due to the wonderful things that these great music-notation apps make possible. Sort of a brave new world of music instruction, which I'd like our group to be part of in at least a small way. Cheers, jrc Dr. John R. Clevenger, Manager The Virtual Conservatory 50 S. Patterson Ave., #203 Santa Barbara, CA 93111 Phone and fax: (805) 964-7988 (for fax, ignore answering machine) Email: _jclev...@aol.com_ (mailto:jclev...@aol.com) Web site: _www.virtualconservatory.com_ (http://www.virtualconservatory.com/) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] FinWin2010 sound lag?
Hi all, First time actually working Finale 2010 (Windows XP Pro SP3) I'm having a problem with increasing sound lag. The more I use the program, the more the sound lags behind the note entry or playback. After about 15 minutes, the sound lags 5+ seconds. I'm just using the basic play Finale through Midi setting. If I exit and restart Finale, the problem goes away, but slowly recurs. Any clues? Thanks, Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] FinWin2010 sound lag?
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: Hi all, First time actually working Finale 2010 (Windows XP Pro SP3) I'm having a problem with increasing sound lag. The more I use the program, the more the sound lags behind the note entry or playback. After about 15 minutes, the sound lags 5+ seconds. I'm just using the basic play Finale through Midi setting. If I exit and restart Finale, the problem goes away, but slowly recurs. Any clues? Without details of your system, I can't be of too much help. Based upon what you describe, though, first question, is how much installed memory, and what else is going on in the background when you try to play back? ns ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] FinWin2010 sound lag?
On Tue, July 13, 2010 4:28 pm, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: Without details of your system, I can't be of too much help. Based upon what you describe, though, first question, is how much installed memory, and what else is going on in the background when you try to play back? That's the thing. Nothing but the usual background tasks. This is WinXP Pro SP3, Intel Core Duo 3GHz, 2GB Ram, Nvidia GeForce 9400 driving two 22-inch displays (one landscape, one portrait), Saffire Pro-40 8-channel outboard audio. The system was custom-built for me less than a year ago for audio. Finale 2007 works fine, no lags even with Garritan stuff running. No other audio or video application shows the slightest problem. But Finale consistently begins to lag, sometimes playing a whole crunch of notes 10-15 seconds later as it catches up. I just tested it on Garritan stuff and same problem. The display shows the cursor moving for playback normally. I've had to restart Finale about every 20 minutes. Thanks for any insights! Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] FinWin2010 sound lag?
On Tue, July 13, 2010 4:28 pm, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: Without details of your system, I can't be of too much help. Based upon what you describe, though, first question, is how much installed memory, and what else is going on in the background when you try to play back? Two more bits of info. If the document is closed and re-opened, it will play again. Finale itself doesn't have to be restarted. If I have Finale play a few measures and then just leave it alone for 10 minutes, the next time I come back, there is a long lag. If I close and re-open the file, let it play once, and come back quite a while (about 20+ minutes), it no longer plays at all, and I have to re-open the document. So whatever is happening starts with the first play and just keeps going. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] FinWin2010 sound lag?
Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: I'm just using the basic play Finale through Midi setting. More details, please, about your play Finale through MIDI settings. What are you using as a playback device, softsynth (whose), or some other method? For example, I've got Finale 2010 on WIN XP SP3 set up to playback through MIDI, but the MIDI playback is through a USB audio device. If through a USB audio device, is the device plugged directly into the machine, or is it through a hub? If the document is closed and re-opened, it will play again. Does the same behavior occur with all documents, or only specific one(s)? If you have any earlier version of Finale installed, what happens if you save one of the offending files as a MIDI file, load it into the earlier version, and try to play it back? What happens if you load a document into an earlier version, save it as a MIDI file, load the MIDI file into 2010, and try to play it back? At some point recently, MakeMusic changed the MIDI engine, and I have problems with MIDI files which play correctly in earlier versions, and do not play correctly in 2010. In my case, the issue is not a playback lag; if multiple voices are assigned to the same MIDI channel, not all MIDI off signals get processed correctly, so I wind up with tone clusters which do not terminate when the piece ends. The only option is to turn off the (external, USB connected) device, and turn it back on. ns ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
