| Each music program under $200 has different missing features.
It is important to know whether your friend wants to spend $400,
whether he has MIDI instruments, and what in heck an Amiga 1024
is.
Anyway, although DMCS is also MIDI compatible, a combination I
have found useful without MIDI instruments
is Deluxe Music Construction Set and Synthia.
DMCS has no SMUS player and can't make new instruments.
Synthia can play SMUS files and make new instruments using
different techniques. I paid $70 each at the Software Shop
in downtown Worcester, also can mail order from them.
I reviews DMCS in Commusic notes somewhere in an Amiga note.
For $70 it has very good flexibility, 1-8 staffs,
16 channels (however, teh Amiga sound device can play only 4 at
at any one instant, and DMCS chooses differently instant by instant).
I have put complex woodwind chamber music I wrote in college on
it, with very subtle rhythms, and it works fine. It can play its
own scores, but not SMUS.
Synthia is a voice maker, using mostly additive synthesis, but
with additional techniques for making percussion, and can interpolate
sounds as well.
Does your friend want to print out engraving-standard scores on
a laser printer? DMCS can printout moderately passable scores,
even on a 24-pin dot matrix, but they will never be engraving-standard.
I think another program for $400 is more general, and possibly more
bug-ridden.
Tom
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.1> it, with very subtle rhythms, and it works fine. It can play its
.1> own scores, but not SMUS.
sorry, (must have been a slip of the tounge ;-)...but dmcs does
load and play smus files.
I'll agree that DMCS is best for getting standard music notation,
etc. Sonix also has some good points. (use of sampled sounds can
be AWESOME!)
p.s. tom, good article on synthia, etc. on usenet
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