At 10:23 AM 6/20/2007 -0400, dhbailey wrote: >That someone could engrave such a score by hand 45 years ago by no means >proves that the vast majority of human engravers at the time would have >been able to do that. It just means that one person could. And was it >engraved or was it lithographed?
I'm pretty sure it was inked. Most of the new compositions with graphic elements at the time were inked, not engraved on metal -- Cage, Crumb, Thorne, Schuller, etc., come to mind. Many were even the composers' manuscripts. Cage's "Music of Changes" looks like his manuscript, where page 7 is nearly illegible in the Peters edition. >The fact that you've made a somewhat easy to read (are those notes which >are between the staves but have no ledger lines supposed to go with the >outer staff or the inner staff? And without the ledger lines but so far >from the top or bottom staff line, what pitches do they actually >represent?) It's part of a series where various elements are left indeterminate. In my June "Lunar Cascade" piece, you'll also notice no accidentals. In terms of interpretation, think of Larry Austin's "Square" as a model. (The previous five in the series are all at http://maltedmedia.com/waam/ where there are also the scores to "Starry Night" with similar non-specific pitch patterns, "Sequenza Nova" with a mix of images & linear notational elements, and "Return to Nineveh" with its graphical expression staves.) >graphical representation of your spiral score shows that >it's possible to do just what you want to do. Just not with Finale. Again, a score is a score. That Finale has choked on a lot of material from the past 75 years does not redefine the scoreness of the score, only that Finale hasn't yet come up to the job even after 20 years of existence -- and isn't seriously improving in those areas. >Sort of like complaining that you have to use Pagemaker to do a great >job with book layout when you wish you could do it in Word. If only it were so easy with scores -- just re-read the post pleading for effective Midi input yesterday! PM and MSWord can import or export the bulk of each others' files, and it's a matter of what sort of finesse or editorial flexibility are needed. I've edited and designed books in both (Word and Pagemaker respectively below) and know that they both can natively perform the entry, editing and layout functions: <http://www.amazon.com/My-little-life-growing-forties/dp/0965932605/> <http://www.amazon.com/Marching-Browns-Ghost-Civil-Rights/dp/0965932621/> >So the problem is . . .? That you want to be able to do it in Finale? Absolutely. It's a notation program, and there's the score. Which one of the two would you say has the problem if, for example, you can't natively Finale-ize Chopin's 170-year-old Op. 28 No. 5 Prelude without a kluge or plugin because the score beams over barlines in the second voice (only) in mm. 2-3, 18-19 and 34-35? Was old Frederic just an incorrigible jerk? You know -- and this is another topic -- that the limitations of tools often contribute to corresponding limitations of the art in the hands of those without vision or determination. My problem with the software is not so much my problem, but my problem with the implications to future composition. Scoring programs, conservative as they are, lead younger composers to conservative conceptualization; on the other hand, there's much imagination in areas where open-ended sound tools are used. Who will write staggered barlines, simple as they are, if the software doesn't offer the option? (On the other hand, the sound tools are often 12TET-based, leading to a different kind of limitation, and iTunish stuff has a limitation of quality, such that portability and intimacy have taken preference over fidelity for what could be an entire generation.) There are many studies about this, from 19th century furniture-making reflecting the tools used to make it through the computer poorly mediating communication by limiting expression and flexibility and altering the representation of participants or their work. A deeply limited tool like Finale or worse, Sibelius -- limited, at least, when set beside graphical or sound software, for example -- have such strong biases while also having such 'authority' (because they are used in teaching) that more walls are erected to imagination than a simple blank sheet of paper would do. Is it a good thing? Is it good to democratize notation while allowing flexibility only by those with vision and determination? Should doing the "good stuff" be hard? I dunno. I'd rather have it both ways. Now to be fair, I have managed to kluge my way through Finale-izing 46 of the 47 WAAM scores that I composed this year. No software could have done them all, and being able to produce 46 in Finale (where, simply for lack of time, most were actually rendered directly into Finale) is a testament to the program's flexibility and utility (and probably my experience in using it for 15 years) -- though not to Finale's native ease-of-use. >But I still don't see how the lack of spiral score capability refutes my >claim that Finale's notation isn't mature. That was only one of the items I mentioned. And your followup email just arrived... At 10:40 AM 6/20/2007 -0400, dhbailey wrote: >I have just >submitted 3 feature requests (or asked that my name be added to the list >of users wanting these features, if such lists already exist): >1) spiral, circular or other graphically-based score capability >2) uneven bar-lines >3) ability to beam across barlines with a single keystroke from within >speedy entry or simple entry, to expedite the process that's now >possible but is more time consuming. Excellent, thank you. #1 is basically asking that all items be malleable as vector graphics. Do that and a good chunk of many graphical problems just go away. >But I still hold that these things are not the signs of an immature >product. ;-) You did say, "the notation aspects of Finale are very mature and there isn't all that much room for improvement" -- which I take to mean that it's okay for the programmers to have ignored a large swath of the significant compositions of the past 75 years (and plainchant, too). Dennis Please participate in my 2007 project: http://maltedmedia.com/waam/ My "We Are All Mozart" blog: http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/waam-blog.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
