At 05:59 PM 7/22/05 +0200, Johannes Gebauer wrote: >There is no possible way any such comparison is ever going to be totally >objective. Noone is going to enter if it involves doing endless pages of >complex notation. If I am going to enter the comparison I want it >limited, and I am not going to time it (that's not the way I work, I am >too perfectionist for that). But I would write a report on how I did >what and which things took time/were complicated/had me consult the manual. > >3 pages at most. And no limitations like using MakeMusics default files >(I never use them), or not allowing any tweaking (that's silly) or not >using any third party additions.
I agree with you, except the complex notation and time issues. It seems to me that the power of a program resides not in its defaults, but in its flexibility in solving frequent notational challenges -- whether it's an ossia or feathered beaming, tablature or chords, plainchant or graphical inserts -- and solving those challenges both time-effectively and in a legible, elegant, and stylistically appropriate way. No program can do it all (in any presentational genre!), so that a program that offers add-ons, plug-ins, scripts, etc., contributes significantly to a strong result. (And, of course, there's the question of the effective demo to accompany the score.) A proper comparison, it seems to me, would include (as do performance auditions) music from numerous genres. For me that might include a comparison of settings of... ...a page of plainchant in appropriate fonts ...a page of Couperin complete with ornaments ...a page of a Bach cantata including figured bass ...the opening page of a tuplet-heavy Chopin prelude such as Op. 28 No. 8 (complete with ossia) ...a snippet of gigunda pages from Gotterdammerung or Gurre Lieder or Sacre ...a page of big band arrangement of Lush Life or a section from Mingus's Epitaph or Bley's Escalator ...a middle page of Stravinsky's Anthem: A Dove Descending ...part of Berio's Gesti or Cage's Music of Changes ...and the killer, Stockhausen's Nr. 11 Refrain (back cover of the original edition of Gardner Read) What program could do them all, and do them well, time-effectively, and produce a demo? (And I agree with Simon that a showcase might be more effective than a competition.) Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
