Notation and Sequencing Software

[Philidor]

Thanks for your help everyone. This thread should be useful to anyone else taking the plunge...

[Goldie]

While pencil and paper is reliable it is also time consuming. The largest benefit of using Sibelius (from personal experience is that EVERYTHING imaginable is there for your use. When i compose for organ I can change the acoustics on my playback to a Cathedral setting. Which most of us know is ideal for the organ. I vote Sibelius.



*Just a hint you might wany to check before you purchase a student version because I've heard they aren't as advanced.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Goldie

Just a hint you might want to check before you purchase a student version because I've heard they aren't as advanced.

Good point. No use saving 50 quid and then hitting a brick wall with it.

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by maureen

musicians need musical tools don't they?

Not computer software. Musicians throughout history have managed just fine without it.

Besides which, with several hundred quid or however much this stuff costs, one could buy some very useful books.

Indeed, one could purchase a good second-hand piano, a very good keyboard, or lots of very useful and very necessary theoretical/practical books on music, not to mention scores.

[Florestan]

Here is a picture of Herzeleide hard at work on his latest piece.

[Florestan]

"Dad! Dad! Can I have a copy of Sibelius?"

"Nay child, you'll make do with Cakewalk like your brothers"

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Goldie

While pencil and paper is reliable it is also time consuming. The largest benefit of using Sibelius (from personal experience is that EVERYTHING imaginable is there for your use. When i compose for organ I can change the acoustics on my playback to a Cathedral setting. Which most of us know is ideal for the organ. I vote Sibelius.

Pencil and manuscript is time-consuming but it's time well-spent.

From my experience with Sibelius, its ideas of the particular sounds instruments make is frequently not only wrong, but repellent. It also encourages poor orchestration and instrumentation, because it permits the user to write at unrealistic ranges for instruments, or at least if not unrealistic, then it doesn't take into account the subtley different timbres produced at different registers.

Are microtones possible on any software? Can one change the stops of the organ? Are any extended instrumental techniques possible on any software? Does Finale understand how an idiomatic violin figure would be played in real life? Does it reproduce the sound of spiccato, col legno, sul ponticello or sul tasto? Does it reproduce the sound of the player simply blowing through the horn without sounding a note, as used by Messiaen?

A better idea is to study orchestration from books, study scores, follow the score whilst listening to it, and gradually acquire an aural library in ones memory of orchestral sounds and the timbres and sonorities of particular instruments and instrumental combinations. I think in many respects these software programs are regressive, insofar as they encourage a lack of sensitivity to timbre; whilst orchestration was not so much a large facet of, for instance, the classical period, throughout the romantic period and definitely by the time of the modern era, orchestration had become an art in itself. Sibelius seems to fit in with the whole pomo, minimalistic lack of concern for timbre. I know, for example, from first hand experience and study and listening, of the absolutely huge breadth of sounds possible from the humble solo violin, and it would depress me to hear a software program give me some distorted picture of it.

I don't want to hear Stephen Hawking recite Shakespeare's sonnets.

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Florestan

Here is a picture of Herzeleide hard at work on his latest piece.

Damn straight.

At least now we have pre-ruled paper, composers used to have to use specially bought equipment to draw the staffs on to a blank piece of paper.

[Florestan]

A good argument, passionately and well made.

But nerds like philidor are never happier than when tinkering on a computer.



"Wanna hear my harpsichord concerto? I programmed it all in machine code"

[marquis66]

WOW! Is that an Amiga?

Software as a composer is absolutely invaluable. It means that I have to be able to play piano to be a composer any more. I still have to know that Bassoons can't play beyond yadda yadda and that Violins should be in such and such register for certain sounds. That is why I keep my well worn copy of Burton's Orchestration handy.