Notation Software
 

I have Ubuntu Studio 7.10, amd64.
I've been using Finale for notation, I already use it using wine, but
would like to know if you guys can describe the process for composing (I
mean which software you use). I'm just starting to make audio on Linux.

Also, I don't know how to install a Genius Mouse Pen 8x6. Does anybody?

Thanks,

RoLo

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

RoLo kirjoitti:
> if you guys can describe the process for composing (I
> mean which software you use).

asmok@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache search music notation
texlive-latex-extra - TeX Live: LaTeX supplementary packages
abcmidi - converter from ABC to MIDI format and back
lilypond - A program for typesetting sheet music
noteedit - KDE Music Editor
rosegarden - music editor and MIDI/audio sequencer
rosegarden-data - music editor and MIDI/audio sequencer data files
rosegarden2 - music editor and MIDI/audio sequencer
rosegarden4 - music editor and MIDI/audio sequencer
asmok@ubuntu:~$

http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/doc/en/

Best Regards Asmo Koskinen.

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

On Wednesday 21 November 2007, RoLo wrote:
> I've been using Finale for notation, I already use it using wine, but
> would like to know if you guys can describe the process for composing (I
> mean which software you use). I'm just starting to make audio on Linux.

Linux notation software falls into roughly three categories:

Rosegarden:

There is Rosegarden at the top of my list, because I use it, and have been
working there for years. However, I have been thinking about buying a copy
of Windows (or a Mac and OS-X) and Finale or Sibelius for years too, so I
think I can be pretty fair looking at both sides of our application. There
are good things about it, and things I hate, and fixing the things I hate is
a never-ending struggle.

What makes Rosegarden so hard as a notation package, and so different from
anything in the commercial realm, is that it tries to be a true hybrid MIDI
sequencer and score editor. It lacks several features considered important
by MIDI purists, and it lacks I think even more features important to
composers. You can't do proper percussion notation, grace notes have been
broken forever, dealing with multiple voices is still unwieldy, it's not
possible to do much in the way of staff groupings, or printing certain staffs
at different sizes. Several features (segno, coda, different barline types,
etc.) are only implemented as unwieldy LilyPond export directives (because
adding them as proper native features would have taken vastly, vastly more
time, and this is much better than nothing.)

Most of all, getting any music to play is much harder with Rosegarden, and it
seems to frustrate every new user who intends to use Rosegarden for notation.
We are a sequencer too, and we have to be both things, so we just can't make
the same sort of compromises that pure notation packages do without
fundamentally changing our nature. This means you have to have something of
a MIDI user's knowledge of how it all works, even though you just want to
pick a damn trumpet out of the list, and have it play a fake trumpet.

In the balance of compromises though, one thing we do that nobody else can do
is that we (within the limitations of what is possible) are the only
application I know of that lets you have crisp, legible notation at the same
time as you have a human-sounding, non-mechanical playback performance. We
actually keep two different versions of every note, one for playback, and one
for display. We also have trigger notes that allow you to write ornaments
cleanly, and yet still specify exactly how they are performed. It think it
is a really exciting concept, if only we ever had time to really close the
last gap, and fill in these remaining limitations. It is MUCH harder to
implement something like a DS al Coda inside Rosegarden than it would be in a
purely notation-driven application though, and we have been struggling to
push the limits of our model for years. We think everything is technically
possible, but many of these missing features are so difficult to get right
that they remain as yet unfinished.

Notation-driven GUI Editors:

This is NoteEdit/Canorus (I'm not sure what the status of this project is, or
which if either of those is currently under active development) and mScore
(the notation spin-off of MuSE.) Both of these are notation-based, rather
than MIDI based. You draw a quarter note on a trumpet staff, and the
application converts that into a rude MIDI approximation for you. You have
little or no control over the MIDI, but you don't have to fuss with so many
details, and many things (eg. DS al Coda) are so much easier to implement in
this kind of context.

I would be a NoteEdit user myself, instead of a Rosegarden developer, but
since long ago it has always seemed like the application that ought to feel
most suitable for my purposes, and yet didn't actually work out. I've never
managed to accomplish anything with it, I'm afraid. I wound up putting my
money on Rosegarden, even with all its other, different frustrations. Plus
Rosegarden has IMHO a vastly more friendly notation entry interface.

mScore is/was supposed to be patterned after Sibelius. It builds a soft synth
into itself, and comes bundled with a soundfont, so you never have to worry
about noise problems. When I last looked at this, it seemed very promising,
but very rudimentary and not yet really usable for anything at all. I
haven't looked at it in quite some time, but Ubuntu Feisty doesn't have any
packages (of this or Canorus either one), so I don't take this as an
encouraging sign that it has come a long way in the last while.


LilyPond:

LilyPond renders very good notation using a kind of text scripting language.
It's hard to imagine anything further from Finale than LilyPond, but I think
LilyPond's output looks MUCH better than any other computer-generated
notation I've seen. They have put a great deal of effort into producing
beautiful notation, and they have succeeded in large measure.

The problem with LilyPond is you have to learn a complicated language to make
full use of it.

LilyPond front-ends:

For the user who wants to avail herself of the beauty of LilyPond without the
foreign language aspects, it is possible to use graphical front-ends. Thanks
especially to Heikki Junes, Rosegarden now does such a good job of exporting
to LilyPond that we are making it the only print engine in the near future.
Somewhere in the middle is Denemo, which is a graphical front-end that's
aimed at someone who understands the underlying LilyPond syntax, and who
wants a helper. It's kind of like Rosegarden is the OpenOffice.org of
LilyPond. It's a quasi WYSIWYG editor that doesn't produce very nice
LilyPond code. Denemo is more of a Bluefish kind of editor that helps
someone who knows HTML write code more easily.

That's kind of a nutshell summary. Actually, this message is just expansive
enough that I feel like I ought to go back and do a better job all around, or
I should have made it much shorter. It almost suggests we need some kind of
notation HOWTO with links and comparative up to date reviews of the current
state of all these applications. (I settled on Rosegarden in 2002, and I
haven't paid more than token attention to anything else since then, but I
don't want to come off like all these other projects are worthless. They're
not. Though I do have doubts about whether any of the other projects are
actually as usable as Rosegarden yet. We ALL have problems, but I think
Rosegarden is the most finished in the spectrum of half-complete offerings.)
--
D. Michael McIntyre

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

On Wednesday 21 November 2007, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> have any packages [of mScore], so I don't take this as
> an encouraging sign that it has come a long way in the last while.

The latest release was September of this year. It requires QT4, and they're
hinting that percussion notation might come soon.

I have a feeling I need to build this and check it out, though I can't see
dividing my efforts between two projects, and I have a lot of history at
Rosegarden by now, so I'm never going to be able to see this as anything
other than the "competition."

I'll give it a try though. The last time I looked was 0.2.0, so maybe it has
come a long way.
--
D. Michael McIntyre

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

I remember talking with fellow ubuntu developer Mark van Der Borre,
who also is a classical guitar player, about this half a year ago. He
made me think the state of notation software in linux was still very
premature, but thanks a lot Michael for your great explanation and
detailing of the pros and cons of what we have.

If you were to decide to ship one of this by default in Ubuntu
Studio... which one it would be?

Luis de Bethencourt

On Nov 22, 2007 3:54 AM, D. Michael McIntyre
<michael.mcintyre@rosegardenmusic.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 November 2007, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> > have any packages [of mScore], so I don't take this as
> > an encouraging sign that it has come a long way in the last while.
>
> The latest release was September of this year. It requires QT4, and they're
> hinting that percussion notation might come soon.
>
> I have a feeling I need to build this and check it out, though I can't see
> dividing my efforts between two projects, and I have a lot of history at
> Rosegarden by now, so I'm never going to be able to see this as anything
> other than the "competition."
>
> I'll give it a try though. The last time I looked was 0.2.0, so maybe it has
> come a long way.
>
> --
> D. Michael McIntyre
>
> --
> Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
> Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
>



--
Luis de Bethencourt Guimerá
luisbg
<luisbg@ubuntu.com>
GPG: B0ED1326

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

On Thursday 22 November 2007, Luis de Bethencourt wrote:
> premature, but thanks a lot Michael for your great explanation and
> detailing of the pros and cons of what we have.

It's not quite thorough enough, and definitely biased, but you're welcome for
the effort anyway.

> If you were to decide to ship one of this by default in Ubuntu
> Studio... which one it would be?

That's a silly thing to ask a Rosegarden developer. :)

But to produce a fair answer, I really should spend some time taking a fresh
look at everything for the first time in years. I know I'll still come out
liking Rosegarden best of all, but it might be really useful to see which
application can and can't do what at the present time.

Of course this all assumes Ubuntu Studio is even concerned with notation. Is
it? Is this really a big question for your users? Should we take all of
this somewhere it's more on topic?
--
D. Michael McIntyre

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

Music Notation is a concern for Ubuntu Studio. We don't have
nightmares over it but we are very interested.

I know you prefer Rosegarden as you are a developer, but we already
ship rosegarden by default.

Please, by all means, look at all the good software out there and let
me know what are your findings and opinions. You are far more
experienced in this field so I trust your word.

Luis de Bethencourt

On Nov 22, 2007 6:25 PM, D. Michael McIntyre
<michael.mcintyre@rosegardenmusic.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 22 November 2007, Luis de Bethencourt wrote:
> > premature, but thanks a lot Michael for your great explanation and
> > detailing of the pros and cons of what we have.
>
> It's not quite thorough enough, and definitely biased, but you're welcome for
> the effort anyway.
>
> > If you were to decide to ship one of this by default in Ubuntu
> > Studio... which one it would be?
>
> That's a silly thing to ask a Rosegarden developer. :)
>
> But to produce a fair answer, I really should spend some time taking a fresh
> look at everything for the first time in years. I know I'll still come out
> liking Rosegarden best of all, but it might be really useful to see which
> application can and can't do what at the present time.
>
> Of course this all assumes Ubuntu Studio is even concerned with notation. Is
> it? Is this really a big question for your users? Should we take all of
> this somewhere it's more on topic?
> --
>
> D. Michael McIntyre
>
> --
> Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
> Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
>



--
Luis de Bethencourt Guimerá
luisbg
<luisbg@ubuntu.com>
GPG: B0ED1326

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 21:09 -0400, D. Michael McIntyre wrote:
> mScore is/was supposed to be patterned after Sibelius. It builds a soft synth
> into itself, and comes bundled with a soundfont, so you never have to worry
> about noise problems. When I last looked at this, it seemed very promising,
> but very rudimentary and not yet really usable for anything at all. I
> haven't looked at it in quite some time, but Ubuntu Feisty doesn't have any
> packages (of this or Canorus either one), so I don't take this as an
> encouraging sign that it has come a long way in the last while.

Hi,

I'm also interested in music notation programs, and had not come across
mScore before. I've downloaded the sources, and am in the process of
building an Ubuntu package for it, which I will then upload to my
PPA[0]. I find it strange that they bundle FluidSynth sources in their
tarball, but I've patched the build process to use the shared library
from Ubuntu.

I never know why upstreams bundle libraries, when they could just depend
on them as shared objects. If they need patches, then send them further
upstream!


Toby Smithe

[0] http://ppa.launchpad.net/tsmithe/ubuntu
https://launchpad.net/~tsmithe/+archive
--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

On Thursday 22 November 2007, Toby Smithe wrote:
> I'm also interested in music notation programs, and had not come across
> mScore before. I've downloaded the sources, and am in the process of
> building an Ubuntu package for it, which I will then upload to my
> PPA[0].

That sounds very good.

> I never know why upstreams bundle libraries, when they could just depend
> on them as shared objects. If they need patches, then send them further
> upstream!

It reminds me of the whole Ardour in Debian debacle of years ago.

Then again, Rosegarden is bundling a KDE theme now, so we don't look so crappy
for your GNOME users with default environments. It might be interesting to
see how that goes when we release. If we can stop finding bugs long enough
to release that is. Our next release will happen in August 2007. Chortle.
--
D. Michael McIntyre

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users

Notation Software
 

On Thursday 22 November 2007, Luis de Bethencourt wrote:

> Music Notation is a concern for Ubuntu Studio. We don't have
> nightmares over it but we are very interested.

That's more than encouraging enough to get my attention.

> I know you prefer Rosegarden as you are a developer, but we already
> ship rosegarden by default.

Plus you haven't come by to ask us when the GTK2 port will be finished. We
appreciate that. :)

> Please, by all means, look at all the good software out there and let
> me know what are your findings and opinions.

OK, I'll come up with something.
--
D. Michael McIntyre

--
Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list
Ubuntu-Studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users