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  #1  
Old 10-07-2007, 11:20 PM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default I've been a user of the co

I've been a user of the competitor's "Noteworthy Composer" for more than ten years, but I really needed graphical editing of performance dynamics, so someone on another forum suggested I look at Notation Composer.

I downloaded the trial version and started playing with it about an hour ago. So far I'm in love with this program! Only a few minor nit-picks so far:

1. Using Garritan Personal Orchestra I can have up to eight instances of the player with eight instruments each, so I have several instruments using the same channel number, but on different instances. But when I assign, for example, flutes to "GPO Studio 1: channel 1" and violas to "GPO Studio 2: channel 1" there's a message in the flutes dialog, next to "channel", that says "shared with violas". But it's NOT shared, because it's on a different device.

2. When editing a score the whole concepts of "pages" applies to music printed on sheets of paper, not to music as performed. I'd rather have the option of seeing the score as one long horizontally scrolling document view. If I'm editing dynamics in a passage that lasts four measures I'd like to see all four of those measures on the screen, not two measures on this page and two measures on the next page. As a retired software engineer I understand if this is not compatible with the internal document structure, but it's something that would be nice to be able to treat the score as one long continuous flow.

3. It would be nice to be able to drag and drop the little green arrow at the top of the score to select a place to begin playing. Is the3re a way to position this?

4. When composing a new piece from scratch I have no idea how many measures it will have. Is this really necessary when creating a new score?

So far, this looks like a great piece of software and I very excited about learning more about how to use it effectively.

--gary shannon
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  #2  
Old 10-08-2007, 06:28 AM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default An Addendum to a newbie's

An Addendum to a newbie's first impressions.

The functionality is great overall, but it really is bothersome to have the score paged when I'm editing performance dynamics. I'm trying to edit the CC1 controller (used by GPO to control timbre and sustain volume) of the string section in a phrase that is eight measures long. The first of those eight measures is at the end of one page and the following seven are on the next page. I need to play that section of eight measures, adjust the controllers, and then play it again until I get it right. Problem is there are ten measures before the one I'm working on on the first page, so I have to listen to those ten measures over and over before I get to the measures I'm interesting in hearing. I really need to be able to scroll the score left and right by a single measure, not by a whole page.

The other problem I'm having is more mysterious. This may be a known problem for you, but unfortunately I can't give you any details about the crash. In the space of 20 minutes I had my whole system go to a black screen and reboot XP five times. I just haven't seen that happen in XP before. No messages, no diagnostic data, just crash and reboot. I'm running a P4 3.2 GHz, 1 GB RAM, win XP. I can't rule out a hardware problem, of course, but it doesn't happen with my other notation software. Wish I could provide you more debugging info.

--gary shannon
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  #3  
Old 10-08-2007, 06:44 AM
M G Jacobs (mgj32)
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Default Hi Gary, If you want to scr

Hi Gary,

If you want to scroll the screen, make sure you are in Window View (the View menu). In the lower right of the screen, you will see a page of page box. Immediately to the left is a box with an arrow at each end and a kind of vertical rectangle somewhere between them. This vertical rectangle can be used with the mouse pointer to scroll forward or back. The arrows will move a page at a time. So if you want to move measure by measure, use the vertical rectangle. It is very sensitive, so it is difficult to drag the mouse (probably should work to click on it and then have the arrow keys work--a feature I've been intending to request). But if you will click immediately to one side or the other, movement will be by a measure, and should be useful in the situation you describe above.

You can also use View Measures on the Measure menu, to select a range of measures to display.

Your crash sounds familiar, but not connected with Composer. It was a former computer and I never did find out what caused it. Mark may be able to help more on this issue.

all best,
mgj
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  #4  
Old 10-08-2007, 06:02 PM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Gary, I'm pleased

Hello Gary,

I'm pleased that Notation Composer has made a sort of love at first sight impression with you. I believe you will find that Notation Composer also has depth of character below its initial friendly greeting to you.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

1. Using Garritan Personal Orchestra I can have up to eight instances of the player with eight instruments each, so I have several instruments using the same channel number, but on different instances. But when I assign, for example, flutes to "GPO Studio 1: channel 1" and violas to "GPO Studio 2: channel 1" there's a message in the flutes dialog, next to "channel", that says "shared with violas". But it's NOT shared, because it's on a different device.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>That you're using GPO shows that you care a lot about the sound, as well as the notation. Many Notation Composer users enjoy the sound of GPO.

The problem you described was fixed in version 2.1. Notation Composer now reports that the same channel is assigned to multiple tracks (staves) only in the case that they are assigned to the same MIDI device. If you're using Notation Composer version 2.2, you shouldn't see this problem.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

I'd rather have the option of seeing the score as one long horizontally scrolling document view... [second post] The functionality is great overall, but it really is bothersome to have the score paged when I'm editing performance dynamics.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>This is a fairly popular request. The priority of a Horizontal Scroll View is becoming fairly high for a future release of Notation Composer.

In the mean time, try out some of the ideas that MG suggested in his reply in this thread.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

3. It would be nice to be able to drag and drop the little green arrow at the top of the score to select a place to begin playing. Is the3re a way to position this? <!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>An easy way to place the green arrow is P+Click, which means holding down the 'P' key as you click the mouse. Although that requires two hands, typically P+Click would be a much faster way to move the green arrow than to drag it with the mouse, especially in the case where you want to move it to another page.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

4. When composing a new piece from scratch I have no idea how many measures it will have. Is this really necessary when creating a new score?<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>If you do not know how many measures your piece will be, just accept the default of 16 measures. You can easily add or delete measures later. Also, if you record from a MIDI keyboard, Notation Composer will automatically add more measures as you record.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

The other problem I'm having is more mysterious. This may be a known problem for you, but unfortunately I can't give you any details about the crash. In the space of 20 minutes I had my whole system go to a black screen and reboot XP five times.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>That is a serious problem. Please let us know if you see any error messages, or if you can associate the crashes with any particular pattern of your usage of Notation Composer or perhaps conflict with Notation Composer and some other software.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #5  
Old 10-08-2007, 06:34 PM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default Thanks MJ and Mark for all tha

Thanks MJ and Mark for all that information. I figured there might be a way to accomplish what I wanted to do, but I couldn't find it in the manual. As for version, I just downloaded the trial version yesterday and was running it for the first time. The splash screen says "trial Version 2.2".

As for the mystery crash, This is a used machine that I just bought a few weeks ago. As I mentioned, I'm not completely convinced the problem has anything to do with Notation Composer. If it happens again I will jot down all the details of what I was doing at the time.

Thanks,

--gary shannon
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  #6  
Old 10-10-2007, 02:02 AM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default Some additional debugging info

Some additional debugging information:

If I run Notation Composer without launching Garritan Personal Orchestra it still crashes within 3 to 5 minutes of launching Notation, so it doesn't have to do with GPO. It usually begins by becoming unresponsive when I try to drag a mod wheel curve. I click and drag and nothing happens, although the mouse pointer still moves. When it crashes during playback it usually begins by freezing on the last note played, sometimes starting again before crashing ans sometimes just crashing from the frozen state.

About 50% of the time I get a message for my video card just before it crashes saying that my video card has become unresponsive and that I need to reboot to reset it. (ATI Radeon 9600) I downloaded and installed the latest video drivers with no difference. Notation still crashes within a few minutes of launch.

CTL-ALT_DEL to bring up the task manager often shows Notation as "Not Responding", but then sometimes it will begin responding again before the whole system crashes.

I'm running P4 3.2 GHz Windows XP Home, 1 GB RAM.

Hope that info helps.

--gary shannon
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  #7  
Old 10-11-2007, 01:02 AM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Gary, Given all of th

Hello Gary,

Given all of the information you've provided, I suspect that the problem is with your MIDI driver rather than video driver.

Please try assigning a different MIDI device to the tracks and see if the crash during playback goes away. If so, then try updating your soundcard drivers.

It might be an entirely different problem that you're not able to drawing Mod Wheel curves in Composer. I just now tried that in version 2.2 on XP without a problem. The next time you find that you cannot draw a Mod Wheel curve, please try the following perhaps strange experiment: Do some other simple edit, such as changing the pitch of a note. Does that work? Look at the Undo history in the Edit menu. Do you see Change Note Pitch as the most recent command, and then Draw Mod Wheel Curve as the second most recent command? And as the third most recent command, to you see listed the other edit you did prior to Draw Mod Wheel Curve?

I think we should focus primarily here on the likely possibility that there is a problem with the MIDI/soundcard driver. The problem with the Mod Wheel editing is probably a separate issue.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #8  
Old 10-11-2007, 05:07 AM
Sherry Crann (sherry)
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Default Howdy Gary, You mentioned a

Howdy Gary,

You mentioned above:
----------------------
The functionality is great overall, but it really is bothersome to have the score paged when I'm editing performance dynamics. I'm trying to edit the CC1 controller (used by GPO to control timbre and sustain volume) of the string section in a phrase that is eight measures long. The first of those eight measures is at the end of one page and the following seven are on the next page. I need to play that section of eight measures, adjust the controllers, and then play it again until I get it right.
----------------------

One technique you can use when you want to do such edits is to briefly switch the Part that is displayed, to only the staff (or staves) you're editing. This allows you a bit more flexibility in (1) how large the display of (2) a certain number of staves, to make editing easier. You can (as Mark pointed out above) use "P + click" to drop the play-back marker to whatever measure you want.

Alternatively, if you're fine-tuning a particular section, you could set that 8-measure (or whatever measures) span as a "Practice" loop. Then when you hit "Alt + space bar", Composer will automatically begin playback at the designated measure, and play through the segment that you've designated as the "practice loop". Just hit the space bar again when you're done listening to it, edit it some more, then hit "Alt+space bar" to listen to it again. You can use Perform/Practice setup for this.

Have lots of fun - Composer is a great way to make use of all the performance-enhancements available in GPO! I'm looking forward to hearing your music. Please feel free to post it in the "Share your music" section of the forum here!

ttfn,
Sherry
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  #9  
Old 10-11-2007, 11:19 PM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default Sherry: Thanks for that idea.

Sherry: Thanks for that idea. I'll try it out.

Mark: I tried the following:

Loaded existing song. Assign all MIDI outputs to external midi device. Before ANY attempt to playback, I tried to edit a mod wheel curve and it crashed and rebooted XP.

Loaded existing song. Assign all MIDI outputs to soundcard synth, did NOT try playback. Tried to edit mod wheel curve and it crashed and rebooted XP.

Loaded existing song. Assign all midi outputs to GPO, did NOT try playback. Tried to edit mod wheel curve and it crashed and rebooted XP.

Assigned midi to GPO, loaded existing song and played. Played about three pages then crashed and rebooted XP.

Opened Notation and clicked "Create New Song". Started new song, set to blank (One unknown instrument) and clicked "Next". Notation froze. Task manager showed "Not Responding". Got message "VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands." Then rebooted XP.

All other Midi aps work fine, including: Cakewalk Pro Audio, Reaper, Noteworthy Composer, WinAmp.

All other video and audio aps work fine including games, DVD players, CD players, etc.

Hope that helps.

--gary shannon
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  #10  
Old 10-12-2007, 12:48 AM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Gary, Thanks for your

Hello Gary,

Thanks for your further reports on this problem with Mod Wheel drawing.

By any chance is your video card an ATI Radeon 9600?

Are you using a special mouse, or perhaps does a KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) box sit between your mouse any multiple computers?

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #11  
Old 10-13-2007, 08:53 PM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default Mark, Yes, my video card is

Mark,

Yes, my video card is ATI Radeon 9600. I'm beginning to suspect that the video card is the problem since this same kind of crash has happened twice now in other programs besides Notation Composer. Once in Cakewalk and once in Noteworthy Composer. In both cases I got an error message from the video driver before the crash.

I'm strongly considering replacing my video card.

--gary shannon
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  #12  
Old 10-13-2007, 09:30 PM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Gary,

Hello Gary,

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

By any chance is your video card an ATI Radeon 9600?<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>Yes, my video card is ATI Radeon 9600.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>Lucky guess on my part??? Not entirely. Just a day before, another Notation user isolated a very similar mouse problem to the ATI Radeon 9600.

Did you just recently start using the ATI Radeon 9600 video card, or did you recently update the driver?

I recommend that you visit the the ATI manufacturer web site to read up on this problem, and/or search around on Google to see how other folk are dealing with this problem.

Good luck!

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #13  
Old 10-13-2007, 10:18 PM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default Mark, Yes, the Radeon card

Mark,

Yes, the Radeon card came with a new (used) system I just bought. I've already found a lot of similar problems on the web. Interestingly, there's one button on the ATI control panel that causes the system to crash every time I click it. Definitely time for a new video card.

--gary shannon
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  #14  
Old 10-13-2007, 11:32 PM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hi Gary, Which system did t

Hi Gary,

Which system did the Radeon video card come with?

I hope the ATI Radeon 9600 isn't shipped standard with a major manufacturer such as Dell.

Perhaps you shouldn't give up hope in the video card yet, though. For example, decreasing the video card's graphics accelerator speed might fix the problem.

Cheers
-- Mark
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  #15  
Old 10-14-2007, 06:52 PM
Gary Shannon (fiziwig)
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Default Mark, I bought system used

Mark,

I bought system used from a third party. It was a custom built generic box. I'll fiddle with the card settings and see if it helps. Some other possibilities I tracked down include over heating. Apparently others have corrected the problem with a better on-board fan on the graphics card.

Also, it happened yesterday for the first time in my web browser, so it's not just Notation Composer that does it.

--gary shannon
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  #16  
Old 12-08-2007, 05:20 PM
Nigel Randall
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Default I am a complete beginner with

I am a complete beginner with COMPOSER and first impressions are, on the whole good, but I have noticed a few odd things happening, more of which maybe later. A specific problem I encountered early on was how to place an arbitary numbers of notes in a given beat, (rather than just 3's or 5's) as in a cadenza like passage. Also having acheived this, to then reduced the size of the notes. Any suggestions?
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  #17  
Old 12-08-2007, 09:03 PM
Sherry Crann (sherry)
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Default Howdy Nigel, I'm glad y

Howdy Nigel,

I'm glad you're enjoying Composer!

For the problems that you've mentioned above, perhaps it would be more helpful if you post a file you're working with, and give us some specific examples of what you're trying to do, and where you're trying to do them (ie, measure number, and which beat, etc.). Then it will be a bit clearer for us to help you out, and you'll get your tasks done as well

ttfn,
Sherry
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  #18  
Old 12-11-2007, 11:57 AM
Nigel Randall
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Default Thanks Sherry. Here are 2 exam

Thanks Sherry. Here are 2 examples of what I would like to write &amp; print out. I am not so interested in having the computer actually playing it for me. As you see a free form has to be adopted regarding note values.
In the 1st example, working on a piano solo reduction of Scheherazade from a score, the solo violin part has 4 beats in the bar , but the third &amp; forth are in 3 groups of 3 each! Finally the last cadenza bar is written not only to indicate the freedom and expression of playing, but is in small notes - this is quite common.
The 2nd example from the 1st Chopin Nocturne, shows a group of 11 and 22 notes (bars 3&amp;4). There are many more examples to be found - but this gives the general idea.
I hope Composer can cope with this.
Nigel
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  #19  
Old 12-11-2007, 12:40 PM
Sherry Crann (sherry)
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Default Howdy Nigel, Thanks for the

Howdy Nigel,

Thanks for the specifics!

Currently we don't have a "cadenza" or "free form" designation for measures. However, it is possible to print out such scores (as well as hear them performed) by "emulating" them this way:

1. Put in all the notes for your cadenza across however many measures it takes.
2. Now go back, select the barlines that divide those measures, and delete them. You'll end up with some weird time signature for that huge measure, depending on what you've entered.
3. Now double-click on the that odd time signature to bring up the "Change meter" dialog.
4. In the top right of the dialog, you'll see "Show or hide", and you should select "Hide". Then click "Ok".

Now your cadenza measure will show all the notes within one measure, and the time signature will only show the regular meter.

ttfn,
Sherry
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  #20  
Old 12-11-2007, 05:42 PM
Nigel Randall
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Default Hi Sherry, Many thanks. I'

Hi Sherry,
Many thanks. I'll try this out.
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  #21  
Old 12-27-2007, 12:25 PM
Nigel Randall
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Default Hi, well I tried out your solu

Hi, well I tried out your solution which works to the extent that I can get the notes I want on the RH, but of course, it messes up the timing in the LH.
Having now played with the software for some time, I don't think it is quiet ready (for me!). Three real problems I encountered in just writing for piano, were:
1. inability to put an arbitary numbers of notes within a given interval, ie. - general lack of dealing with ornamentation.
2. not able to reduce the font size of individual or groups of notes.
3. I found it a bit irritating that some things had to be selected in strict order, which I suppose I would get used to in time. More seriously, sometimes it was impossible to select certain items. Closing down and re-opening usually cured this problem!

Unfortunately I got the chance to compare it to Sibelius4 which seems on another planet in dealing with just about anything - but at a price!! A few more facilities added to your software and it will be a great product.....I wait with pencil and paper still in hand.
Regards, Nigel
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  #22  
Old 12-27-2007, 07:35 PM
Mark Walsen (markwa)
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Default Hello Nigel, Thanks for try

Hello Nigel,

Thanks for trying out Composer. You have run into a fairly basic limitation: Composer does not support tuplets other than triplets and quintuplets. One of your examples is three groups of three sixteenth notes in the span of a quarter note, which is really a 9-tuplet with additional beaming adjustments. Another example the 22-tuplet.

For your purposes, the lack of support of N-tuplets is probably sufficient reason that you would be better off choosing another higher-end notation program, such as Sibelius, at perhaps the cost of both a higher price and steeper learning curve. Some of our customers enjoy using both Notation Composer and Sibelius or Finale, where they use Notation Composer during the activity of actually composing or arranging music. Then they export the music as a MusicXML file; open it in Finale and Sibelius; and then polish off the score there.

Notation Composer is clearly targeted for the majority of musicians that have fairly common notation requirements, which Composer handles well. Notation Composer is well-suited for a wide variety of popular, folk, and church music styles. Notation Composer fall shorts of meeting some of the notational needs of 20th and 21th century classical music styles.

Eventually, Notation Composer will include support for N-tuplets, as well as some other fairly common classical notations such as cross-staff beaming, cross-staff phrase marks, and 3- and 4-voices (stems) per staff. However, near-term priorities for Notation Composer focus on even greater ease-of-use for everyday musicians, and more options for playback sound quality.

Sincerely,
Mark (developer of Notation Composer)
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  #23  
Old 02-13-2008, 11:58 PM
Ira
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Default <font color="red"&

<font color="red"><font size="5px">I Think that this program is kinda anoyying. Some suggjestions i havea re mabye adding some more programming for the cresendos/des when adding them, you have to like adust the line and its realy annoying. you have to like adust the size and leangth on your own. making it look messy. if you wanted to, you could have the cresendo go all the way accross the page!! up across and down!! i think you should beable to click on the measure. and it would automaticly create it, and then you would drag the mouse for how long you wanted it too be. and for how loud you wanted it to be.

Also, the whold conducters score thing is messy too. you have to make a whole new copy of the same music Manualy!! it seems like whatever is on the conducters score, should automaticly go on the intrument score (vise versa).

THere are alot of things that just seem to make the music look messy</font
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