John T Sylvanis wrote:
Well, yes, in this case I am an "pen and ink" composer and that's why I'd use a traditional notation software. But I also want realistic rendition, that is as close as possible to real sounds. It's been done, Kontact 2 (the whole package) is very good about it, at least the demos. This is what I'd expect from a notation software rendition wise. In other occasions I am not a "pen and ink" composer, but electronic. But why should I buy 10 packages for what I want to do, when one versatile suite would be sufficient? Of course, I would not expect that the suite do everything. However, I'd expect that it do a good part of it. And I think this is what Dennis is also saying.
Interestingly, I think it's the very economics of this small niche marketplace which will keep things as they are for the foreseeable future.
Finale included GPO (finale edition) in Fin2006, which included much more realistic playback but with a limited soundset. They were able to license this at a reasonable rate from Garritan as a sort of loss-leader to entice people to feel limited by what Finale included and want to purchase the full version. Thus Garritan not only made money from the licensed smaller version which a person bought with their upgrade or original finale purchase, they also made a lot more money when that person got frustrated with the limitations and bought the full version.
Garritan also made money by not including some very important instruments in their GPO product, most notably saxophones and electric guitars and basses, very reasonably claiming that those instruments aren't part of the standard orchestra. So they then forced people who wanted THOSE sounds to buy an extra product as well. Very smart marketing. And all those people who purchased the standalone Jazz and Big Band product who still wanted full orchestra sounds needed to buy both products. Even more money for Garritan.
So you see, in such a limited marketplace to begin with, each little company is afraid of packaging their product with another, because then each company makes less money than selling standalone versions. And for the price to swell to accomodate the economic requirements of each of the companies contributing to a merged product, the upgrade or purchase price will need to be so high that people will simply refuse to upgrade and new product purchases will slow significantly.
Now if Recordare can keep the momentum alive with MusicXML, and if Michael Good can keep bringing more musical applications into the fold so that MusicXML becomes the common language between musical applications, you may be close to getting what you want, depending on how much you are willing to spend.
Garritan's products (quite pricey if you buy all that you would need to cover all the possible situations) work very well together and very well with Finale, and it would seem with Sibelius, too, if Sibelius' recent offering of an extra-cost GPO(Sibelius edition) is any indication, and would probably work very well with Sonar also.
Reason as a sampler and sample-playback as well as other synthesis engine, serves very well as a standalone product which the midi output from any music application can be routed through.
So you can build most of what you want right now. The big triangle of what you want (incredibly realistic playback, sequencing and notation) is in place with one big broken link, which MusicXML is working hard to bridge, and that is between sequencing and notation.
With this current marketplace, people can build just what they want. For those who want something like Sonar, Reason and Finale all working together, it costs around $1300 for the three applications, and then will cost more as MusicXML falls into place as the final linking mechanism between sequencing and notation. Any integrated package would also need to cost somewhere near as much, which wouldn't be palatable to many of us who don't want the same triangular integration you want.
And the economics of this small niche marketplace would dictate that any product which came out priced at around $1300 would most likely die a quick and painful death.
I would never pay for such an upgrade, and I'm sure that many Finale users for whom playback is only secondary or not important at all would also fail to buy such a product, and annual upgrades is a big part of what keeps MakeMusic alive.
And the other fly in the ointment of your "musical uber-application" is what should be included? Garritan? or maybe East-West might be better? How about GigaSampler libraries? What about Reason? Would they maybe be better? What about the Jaco Pastorius samples? Sequencers, which would satisfy more customers, Sonar or PowerTracks or MasterTracks or Opcode (I'm sure I've left some out)? What about notation -- Finale or Sibelius?
Because once such an all-encompassing program is offered, adherents of the non-included portions will simply refuse to bite. You won't get Sibelius users buying such an uber-product if it includes Finale rather than Sibelius, and you won't get Finale users buying it if it includes Sibelius.
I think your first step would be to find some sort of marketplace consensus as to what products to include in your merged super-program, and I don't think that you'll find a large enough consensus to make an economic success.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
