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- Path: sparky!uunet!ogicse!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnews!milo
- From: milo@cbnews.cb.att.com (guy.f.klose)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio
- Subject: Copyist (was Re: Music programs ?)
- Message-ID: <1992Sep3.164550.29300@cbnews.cb.att.com>
- Date: 3 Sep 92 16:45:50 GMT
- Article-I.D.: cbnews.1992Sep3.164550.29300
- References: <92245.140120MLO@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> <52874@dime.cs.umass.edu>
- Distribution: usa
- Organization: AT&T
- Lines: 92
-
- In article <52874@dime.cs.umass.edu>, barrett@snoopy.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett) writes:
- > BTW, I am sick of the lack of notation programs on the Amiga, and I
- > have decided to do something about it myself. By December, there might be
- > another alternative on the Amiga.
-
- I just recently bought Dr. T's Copyist, and I thought I would post a couple
- of comments after having used it for a couple of weeks. I don't feel
- qualified to do a full-scale review, so I don't want to attempt that.
- So, here's so random comments:
-
- $200 from Safe Harbor for Copyist DTP. Seems expensive, and the price
- hasn't really ever dropped much from its initial price years ago.
-
- Copyist DTP offers a couple of advantages over Copyist Apprentice. Such
- as score lengths of 99 pages (if you don't to do part extraction or
- transposing, score length seems to be no big deal...you can always
- separate your score into files of five pages each). Copyist DTP gives
- you the Adobe Sonata font. More on that later. Copyist DTP also gives
- you part extraction (separating out a single part from a multi-stave score).
-
- The printing seems great. On my home dot matrix printer, draft mode is
- kind of clunky, but certainly better than DMCS printing. The higher-
- quality printing mode is really pretty good. Very usuable, I think.
- Printing on a Desk Jet looks even better, but is a little compressed
- (in both directions). That may be an advantage if you're doing big
- scores (more than 12 staves on a page), or a disadvantage if you are
- writing busy parts (lots of 16 notes?). Best of all is printing on
- a Postscript printer, with the Sonata font. Really high quality.
- Publication quality, I would think.
-
- Make no bones about it, Copyist is more of a desktop publishing package
- than a music package. You lay down scores graphically, bit by bit.
- DMCS is completely different in that it will let you draw musical ideas,
- such as place quarter note here, etc. In Copyist, you place a note head
- on the page, and then place a stem, and beam if necessary.
-
- When editing a score, there is no "undo" function, and that really
- sucks. My first project was to lay down a blues head on a page, and
- then transpose the head for Bb instruments. I dicked around quite
- a bit when trying to edit, and would invariably lose a chunk or two
- here and there. I've learned, I hope, to now do a quick "save"
- before trying to delete anything.
-
- The biggest problem I had was deleting accidentals. It's kind of tricky
- to highlight just an accidental, and then delete just it. I've done lots
- of deleting entire sections of a score, when I just wanted to get rid of
- an accidental. Two hints: either place accidentals on last, or move
- a note up off the staff and then delete it's accidental.
-
- Moving notes, and cutting and pasting is easy. There are some strange
- conventions, though, such as not getting true "cutting and pasting".
- "Cut" will copy a highlighted item to a buffer, and then you can paste
- it, but "cut" does not erase the item. "Erase" delete and item, but
- I don't think it copies the deleted item to the buffer, so you can't
- do "erase and paste".
-
- There are also some backwards conventions with stem directions. Count
- on being confused at first. I'm still confused after two weeks.
-
- Lots of people complain about some commands being mouse-operated and
- some being keyboard-driven. I think once you become pretty adept with
- Copyist, it shouldn't be that annoying, and until then a quick
- reference card will help.
-
- Copyist coexists with other Dr. T products that have MPE...I've been
- working with Tiger Cub, XOR, and Copyist, and it works pretty well
- except for two things: I have an A2000, and XOR is really slowing
- things down (I had a loop running on Tiger Cub, and I was changing
- effects settings on my synth....maybe it's supposed to crawl). Maybe
- it's time for an accelerator. Also, my version of Tiger Cub was buggy
- with WB2.04. I've got a new version arriving today.
-
- I was loading standard MIDI files into both Tiger Cub and Copyist, and
- there haven't been any problems yet.
-
- I wouldn't consider running without a hard disk. If you're on floppies,
- this program will probably be slow and annoying for you. Copyist alone
- is pretty speedy without an accelerator. With MPE, that's a different
- story.
-
- Lastly, although the manual says it is copy-protected, it isn't. In fact,
- it seems all the new versions of Dr. T's software have done away with copy
- protection, regardless of what their manuals say. Even this new version of
- Tiger Cub I'm getting is supposed to be free of copy protection.
-
- I'm probably forgetting lots of stuff, so if you have more questions,
- either post or send e-mail.
-
- Guy
- --
- Guy Klose
- milo@mvuxi.att.com
-