To be honest, I don't have
 

To be honest, I don't have much time to just sit down enjoy using MidiNotate for my own pleassure. I'm too busy working on new features in it, and developing the upcoming MidiNotate Composer.

But I'll have to admit, when I'm testing the program, or looking a MIDI file that one of you has sent me, I sometimes drift off into just listening to the music and studying the notes on the screen. Sometimes it still seems like magic to me.

Dear Mark With great admira
 

Dear Mark

With great admiration, I see the amazing and worthy simplicity of your design. Part of my professional live is dedicated as composer-arranger, so my experience with every music software is formidable, not always favorable –from the very standard high-degree up to the more simple and cheap ones- since the last five years.

Only three tips –of course from a very personal view- to stimulate as possible future innovations for the next versions:

1.- First, I do not like the usual solutions given for the dynamics/tempo/articulations outlining. I mean, there is a very common tend to simplify the note entry and the graphic handling of articulations, but usually it is weakened, or very cumbersome, any forward midi data annotation.
I think that basically, computer music is a two basic layers issue: graphical representation and midi background. Usually it is enforced the first, with posterior add-ons to accomplish the last one. I remember two extreme examples: Finale commands the articulation and expression tools to generate a subsequence midi annotations; but the opposite, a direct input of midi-controls not always is possible or presents a great limitation; on the other hand, a very cheap product, Tabledit, allows exactly the opposite: a direct-graphical input of midi-annotations, but without any musical representation on the score (review this former artefact, some things are good because are simply). ¿Would be possible a practical combination of the two directions? I think it should be worth, breaking the common tendency to “every through notation”.

2.- Please, pay attention to the playback-midi options. Not always is possible a selection of alternative banks over the same device, or the set up of especific features, and in a more granular level than a simply stave-channel. With the great improvements in the soundbanks and hardware gear, the musical production via midi takes off as a reality. The next users generation will value a good midi configuration management.

3.- About the export/import options: please, pay attention to the XML translation! Really it is the “big next thing” in the musical software. Recordare XML is advancing, but it is too much coalescent with Codamusic. If you reach a decent XML I/O interface, probably you would gain a lot of bucks.

So, these are my impressions, with my English somewhat limited. I see with illusion your next release, trusting you will produce a great software.

Congratulations again from Spain