Before I make any purchases, I need to find out if I’m even understanding the capabilities of music notation software.  I’d like to arrange my own music, but I’ve never been able to get over the tediousness, discomfort and mess of leaning over blank staff paper with pencils and erasers ---- lots of erasers. 

Am I correct that I can connect my Motif to my computer, and with the appropriate software, see the notes appear on the screen as I play them?  It sounds like it couldn’t be any easier, but I could be missing something.  Is there anything about this method that makes it not quite as easy as it sounds?  Like the difficulty of making changes to what you’ve just played?  (Over and over again?)

I’d appreciate any advice, or any experiences of success or failure.  And how much would I have to spend?  I believe that
Finale Songwriter does the basics I’m looking for, at a reasonable price, but is there a good reason to buy something more expensive?  Thanks, guys.

Re: Finale Music Notation Software

Well..... yes and no.  It probably isn’t quite that easy, but it is MUCH MUCH easier than paper!

There are actually two ways that most applications (I use Sibelius) allow you to use a keyboard to enter data.  The first is what you’re describing, where you just play and notes appear.  There is a big potential downside to this: you have to be close to EXACT in your durations or you will end up with some rather bizarre results. 

For example, if your resolution is set to 32nd notes, you need to play every quarter note perfectly or you’ll end up with a bunch of eighths tied to sixteenths tied to 32nds, rather than a quarter.  And I’m not talking about just tempo, but also duration - the amount of time you physically hold down the key.  If you’re a pianist who uses the sustain pedal AT ALL, well… you can’t.  The software doesn’t interpret that.  You can lower your resolution to 16th or 8th notes… but then you can’t play grace notes or jazz licks, or anything like that.

FORTUNATELY, there is another (and easier for me) way to do keyboard entry.  You first tell the system what the note duration is, then you play the note on the keyboard.  In Sibelius, I use the number pad to indicate the note duration, then I play the note.  I can also do rests this way.  Once you get a little bit of practice with this method, you can enter parts pretty quickly.

Sorry for the long-winded reply.  I hope this helps you.  If you have additional questions, feel free to holler. 

Eric

Re: Finale Music Notation Software

Finale is not THAT easy.  It is not a sequencer so I find that it is easier to play the music into Cubase, save it as a .MID file and import it into Finale.  You could do the same from the Motif saving as an SMF file and then import.  I find this to be easier.  I am mainly using Finale to make jazz charts and it takes me 5min to chart one song whereas it took 15-20 with paper and pen....

Re: Finale Music Notation Software

Mike how about the notation features of Cubase?

Cheers

Re: Finale Music Notation Software

I have not upgraded to Cubase 4 yet (but will soon with the price drop!), so it’s difficult for me to compare.  Our church actually bought Finale for us Dave and I have underutilized it.  The thing that is nice about using it for contemporary P&W is that it makes doing a chart very quick and very neat.

I play the melody into Cubase then save it as a .MID file.  I then import it into Finale.  Then with my keyboard I can play the appropriate chords over the melody and Finale reads the chords and places the symbol at the appropriate location.  This process with a song like “Lord I Lift Your Name On High” just for example, would take less than 5 minutes and the result is a very professional appearing chart.  I doubt Cubase has the chord recognition feature and I find it comes in handy.  Finale is definitely a powerful piece of software and I would guess it is much superior to Cubase 4 in this area, but Cubase 4 is superior in the area of sequencing and digital audio.

Hope that helps!  Cheers.

Re: Finale Music Notation Software

I’m still using Cubase SX1, but I was assured that SX4 is no better
in assigning 8VA/8BA and fingerings.
Sibelius on the contrary has everything you need, but I failed
to find out how to process MIDI-0 right from the Motif.
May be I didn’t dig deep enough or spent too few time on it.
Btw.: I never use remote connections.
;JOOP!