And the rest of you? Any good shareware? Professional stuff? ABCtex?
Defense of pencil and staff paper?
I have a midi keyboard, and Cakewalk to make it run. The Cakewalk
notation is limited (certainly no harp symbols), but quite easy to
use.
I have used the tex based stuff (abc2mtex is the actual interface I've
used). I'd only recommend it for someone who was pretty comfortable
setting up complicated computer programs. Given the setup, it's about
as easy to use as anything as long as you don't need words. It's
major advantage over anything else I know about is that you have to
explicitly put the barlines in, so writing unbarred parts for
Renaissance music is really easy.
I have fiddled with the professional stuff, but not since they started
having easy midi input. Everything I saw produced good output, but
the input was more trouble than it was worth for my purposes.
If I know I won't have to transpose, I am currently mostly using pen
and staff paper. I find pencil doesn't xerox well enough. I am much
more comfortable writing music now that I know about the trick of
pasting a staff over an error. They sell stick-on staffs, if you have
the right size music paper.
Laura Conrad
Email: lconrad@world.std.com Work Email lconrad@paragon.com
Phone: (617) 661-8097 Work Phone 617 937-9800 X 293
Snail Mail: 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139
Fax 617 937-9877