Conference hydra::amiga_v1

This is not the fully informed answer you want but...

I just read a review of MUSIC-X, a friendly-but-powerful sequencer-and-then-some
package that uses a bar graphics display of notes. The review said that Music-X
intends to add a notation module in the future. The review also said that you 
can now use Dr. T's Copyist on sequences produced with Music-X. The combination
might be easier than using Dr. T's sequencer and copyist.

Dave

Does anyone know the differences between Copyist, Copyist Professional,
and Copyist DTP.  The documentation for COpyist Professional says that 
it has limitations no present in DTP but it doesn't give the extent of
those limitations.

John

    re: .0---What's the problem with DMCS?  I have created scores with
    DMCS and then imported them into Dr. T's Copyist.  Some effort is
    required to get them to come out "right", but it isn't overwhelming.
    
    So far, I have been unable to move music from Music-X to Copyist, but
    I haven't tried everything yet, so this may be possible, too.
    
    re: .2
    
    The three levels of Copyist differ in number of sheets and number of
    symbols per sheet.  I don't remember the capacity limits, but for my
    purposes, Professional is good enough.  DTP, though, uses PostScript
    fonts in addition to having higher limits.
    
    As far as I know, only Copyist Professional is available for the Amiga.
        John Sauter

>    The three levels of Copyist differ in number of sheets and number of
>    symbols per sheet.  I don't remember the capacity limits, but for my
>    purposes, Professional is good enough.  DTP, though, uses PostScript
>    fonts in addition to having higher limits.

Do you have Copyist Professional?  If so can you comment on the quality 
of the output (could you send me a sample that shows off it's quality?).  

John

I just meant that DMCS, by itself, does not make reasonable printed
scores.  (Actually, I don't even know if it has a print option at all.)
 Its algorithm to decide where to horizontally place each note is
unacceptable.  I'll gladly go into more details if you really want; I
suspect that everyone actually already knows what I mean.

I have no doubt that DMCS makes a reasonable front end for Copyist. 
I'm just not sure that Copyist itself is reasonable...

- Terry

    I have printed many scores from DMCS perfectly adequately except some
    very fast notes get printed on top of each other.  However, it would be
    easy if I cared to, to move the notes around invididually anywhere I
    wnat them, to re-size the measures, and that sort of thing.  I just
    don't.  While in college I taught myself from many books 
    to copy scores to virtually publishable standards and know the rules of
    proportions; I just don't care enough about music any more to go to the
    trouble.  Incidentlly, I used DMCS to record almost all the music I
    wrote in 17 years and am happy with it.
    People alway proselytize their own choices in order to justify them.
    Tom

    re: .4---Yes, I have Copyist Professional.  I print on an NEC
    SilentWriter 890, essentially a LaserWriter II clone with HP LaserJet
    emulation.  The print quality is quite good; it uses the full 300 dpi.
    Send me MAIL with your interoffice mailing address and I'll drop a
    couple of sheets in the mail.
    
    re: .6--DMCS has trouble with 300 dpi printers; it tends to put one
    system to a page.
    
    How can you have used DMCS to record 17 years worth of music?  DMCS
    hasn't been around that long!
        John Sauter

    I never had trouble with DMCS printing only one system per page; I don'tknow
    what resolution my dot matrix is.  I was able to put all my old music
    into DMCS a year ago in 2-3 months; it was about 7 hours of complex
    modern concert music.  It was easy because of the editing functions and
    because data entry is in musical notation, so it was easy to compare
    the hardcopy manuscript to the screen.  A couple of the scores were
    200-300K bytes.
    I got what I wanted out of it: six albums of my work (well only the
    first 5.5 90-minute albums are all music; the rest are performance
    art).
    Tom

I've tried to use DMCS to create orchestral parts for Gilbert & Sullivan
scores.  It was very difficult to get a compromise on the initial 'measures
per line' parameter.  Too many measures per line and *some* of the measures
became unreadable; too few measures per line and some *other* measures became
unacceptably sparse.  I personally think that any scoring package that asks
you to decide how many measures you would like per line is equivalent to a
word processing package asking you how many words you would like per line.
That's why I bought the package - to have the software figure out how many
measures should fit on a line based on how many notes are in the various
'acceptable' measure layouts.  If I understand correctly, even Copyist
Professional needs to know how many measures per line, at least you want
when you read in a sequence file.  I have only looked at these two
packages, but neither of these works like I want a scoring package to work.

regards,
-jim

    I can see where trying to make readable parts for an ensemble can be
    tricky in DMCS; I didn't have that application.  
    I believe it may be possible to have varying measures per line if you
    manually move the measure lines back and forth,  which I used to do by
    accident, but I'm not sure.
    My current application is writing C programs that improvise so that I
    don't have to write or play music anymore.  I'm not kidding.
    They work well for starters.
    Tom

    There's another problem with DMCS - it's really not suited for
    capturing MIDI input.  It doesn't read MIDI clocks, and requires
    that you set the tempo for MIDI input by specifying the duration
    (in seconds) of a quarter note!
    
    len.
    

I read in a computer magazine that these music programs use a 
standard format called SMUS.  Does anyone know where this format
is documented?

John

    I think it's on the IFF developer's disk and in the official manuals.
    Tom

yup.  SMUS is included in the IFF specification. The spec is not on the disk 
anymore (as of the nov 88 issue) since it got too big. It comes as a spiral
bound manual.

John

Does anyone know what difference between Copyist and Copyist II is?
Dr. T's literature only mentions Copyist Apprentice, Copyist Professional,
and Copyist DPT with Professional being the only one available for
the Amiga.

John

    As far as I know it's only a marketing difference.  They renamed
    Copyist I, II and III to be Apprentice, Professional and DTP,
    respectively.
        John Sauter

    So what else is available for MIDI input and scoring?  I too have tried
    DMCS for MIDI input and found it totally unacceptable.  It refuses to
    allow simulaneous notes in a single voice at the end of a measure.  It
    sees the first MIDI note down event and moves immediately to the next
    measure.  The next down event, no matter how close in time, always
    lands in the next measure.  blech!  I also haven't found any reasonable
    to shift notes in one voice across measures and leave the other voices
    intact.
    
    -tl

I called Dr. T's today and they said that they were actively working
on Copyist Apprentic and Copyist DTD for the Amiga.  From their
description it sounded like they had a fair amount of work to do
but they expect them to be ready in about 4 months.

John