DG,

It's the list of plugins for e.g. Crescendo/Decrescendo, Harmonics, Ornaments to name a few.
I admit to sounding a little determined about this, but it's the hairpins and dynamic response that take the most time.
And it's important you understand I still use Sibelius, more for a lack of anything else, and it is the best notation program i've used or tried.
But, for me, Dynamics, and the ability to manipulate those dynamics, are an essential part of any notation. I write symphonically (Mainly) and in my studies, i'm constantly trying to incorporate dynamic changes to gain a greater sense of reality in my work. As i've written elsewhere in the forum, my studies include Russian, Austrian and European composers, all of whom use a challenging and exacting dynamic profile to create a musical picture. Ease of use dynamically, more than anything else gives me more time to write, and less time spent on programming.
The constantly fluid changes in my latest work mean a constant switch back and forth, and activating the plug in, for each and every event. I'd much rather a live and immediate response, to make adjustments on the fly. And a batch plugin activation doesn't help, as the relation between dynamics sets a new 'profile' with every change, and so the whole process begins again. I confess at this point to being a pursuer of excellence, often obsessively so, so my comments should be taken with this in mind. As you may or may not have read elsewhere in the forum, i'm also a positive fellow, passionate about my craft, so please don't think i'm ranting and raving about this, it's not my style.

In addition, i consider the modern sample industry a real and big step forward, (VSL being a great example). It was a luxury a few years ago to have such wonderful sounds, now as more and more companies produce ever better products, samples are considered essential for the modern composer, and a notation program that integrates that capability represents a view of the future for me. And there's a direct relation between dynamics and ever more lifelike sounds.
I'm currently working on a laptop, mainly because i'm studying here in Moscow till september. Sibelius gets used every day, split about 50/50 between writing and manipulating dynamics. The rest of the time i'm writing on parchment, planning, laying out and studying. Because of the subtlties of the dynamics i use, and as i admitted, my obsessive pursuit for excellence, it's a lengthy process getting the result i want, made longer by the mechanical process of verifying and adjusting hairpins.
It's a matter of opinion of course, and mine is just one tiny voice in the overall scheme of software industry, so i'm musing more than griping.
It's more a wistful hope really, freeing up more time to write, and reducing programming.

Most of all, i respect the opinions of you and others, and my views are strictly my own.

My regards to you,

Alex.

p.s If any of you can show me how to bypass the accursed hairpin plugin and get instant dynamic response in this program, i'm definitely open minded enough to reconsider my opinion. Likewise, if i can get samples to play directly from Sibelius's mixer without loading another program like logic or cubase thereby further taxing my system, i'm all ears. Running both programs takes most of the resources, with little left for effective playback.
With a lot of determination, various patching programs and limited experience, i'm still unable to to achieve this, relying instead on a very old and battered collection of soundfont banks and small unarticulated samples, played through DLS/Quicktime. (One bank at a time)

If VSL were to build an fully integrated program,good notation editor, arrange editor, using their superb sample library, Mir, mixer, etc.. I would be very interested indeed!

Regards,

Alex!

Alex as I said, I fully understand your requests, but none of the above mentioned are notation fundamentals, they all concern playback, which is a totally different thing.

DG

"...the sheer weight of these programs, with a lot of features i don't use, doesn't do that much for me....'

Yes. Everytime they tout something like "New Bass Amp plug-in," I'm reminded where their R and D is focused. They're content with its current feature set. I think we're in the Logic minority.

Keymap will indeed be spectacular based on Andrea's previous work. Unfortunately, playback will be limited to one program at a time, if I understand Andrea's previous posts. I've been hoping for a stand-alone EXS playback instrument for a while to ransom my older Mac from obscurity.

I spent a long time studying Prischl's notation guide (I think he also wrote the Score chapter in the manual, or at least, he had in previous versions). I concluded that nearly anything was possible in Logic's score, but it seemed like more work than it should have been.

I dearly wish there was a better automatic rest display when using two or more voices -- those clashing symbols currently need to be addressed by hand. It's tedious. It'd be great to have "Smart Score Styles" which could see how many voices we're attempting, understand their pitch and adjust both the type and location of rests accordingly. I'm willing to go through gyrations for the more uncommon triplet read-outs, but auto rest placement would seem to be a more basic, universal need.

And here's a nit-picky annoyance -- that has continued to annoy me since Logic 2.5: I'd love for the cursor to become whatever note I'm entering. Nothing is better than a floating quarter, half, whole, whatever note for intuitive note entry (like the old Music Printer Plus). That goofy little pencil is fine in Matrix and Arrange, but in Score it has got to go.

In any case, Logic is peerless when coaxing out a MIDI performance. Hyperdraw is extremely intuitive and lightning fast for expression. So I should just be thankful that the Score is as good as it is.

Hermitage-
I use Sibelius 3 and agree it is by far the finest notation program out there. I also totally agree with you about the lack of plug-in integration, especially commonly used ones like harmonics and cresc./dim. playback. The main problem in my opinion is something you didn't talk about directly - NONE OF THE PLUGINS HAVE AN "UNDO" FUNCTION. This is such a pain in the butt, and it forces you to check every single step you do with a plug in and make sure to save an alternate copy of the file just in case you didn't want to do that. In my opinion, if Sibelius just created an undo function for all the plug-ins, it would make people much happier.
Just for your information, I have talked directly to Sibelius experts in person at music conventions and voiced my concerns about this. The Sibelius expert told me that he was quite aware of this, and has heard many complaints about this, but because of the programming code in which the plug-ins were written, it is impossible to create an undo function. The plug-ins, as I understand it, are written in an open-source format and anyone can write one for Sibelius - the problem is that they can never be fully integrated into Sibelius. This seems like a major flaw that needs to be adressed, and possibly they need to release a new programming code format that will allow full integration into future releases of Sibelius.
-mvanbebber

Mvan,
I was told the same, and i'm not surprised there's more who wish for an undo function. Still, it's their software, and our choice if we want it or not.

I have a question at this point.
I looked at finale years ago, and haven't been near it since.
Does Finale rate near Sibelius theses days, and given the discussion we've been having, can you input hairpins and hear them live, as a built in design?
If someone can give me a comparison (objectively) i'd appreciate it.

And does Finale have a version for Mac?

Regards to you all, I'm off to computer school to learn how to write software programs for proper musicians.
(if you want anything done............)


Alex!

I love both Video and dynamic parts. I was grumping about the missing video integration more than once. Also for the type of scores I did recently I really could have used the easy copy-paste into word functionality.

I agree, however, that when the playback can fully deal with VSL the complete dream comes true.

Hermitage-
Sorry to say that Finale is way, way behind Sibelius in just about every way. Having downloaded the Sibelius 4 demo, now I can say that they are many years behind in every concievable parameter that I can think of. I have been a Finale user from Finale 1.0 (in 1989) to Finale 2004, so I know Finale perhaps better than Sibelius. When I tried Sibelius 2, I was an instant convert. It just makes sense, and is so much more elegant than Finale, it's not even a fair comparison between the two. I think Finale needs to scrap the whole project completely and start over again with a completely new approach, but that will not happen. Its funny, I can see so much of version 1.0 (from 1989) in Finale 2004, the core of the program hasn't really changed very much at all. Most changes to the program have been cosmetic over the years, and there have been no major changes in thinking. At its core, Finale is really very archaic in the way it requires users to complete tasks, way too many keystrokes and not in any way intuitive or visual like Sibelius.
The crescendos work the same in Finale, but are much more difficult to enter in the score (in my opinion.)

I'm only an ocasional Finale user so not as passionate as anyone else here. I have Finale 2004, but I see on the website that Finale 2006 integrates the Garritan Personal Orchestra. Likewise a new program called Notion includes specially recorded samples of the LSO. Which leads me to my wish item: a version of Finale (or equivalent) that incorporates VSL samples with all the articulations -- i.e. draw a staccato and hear a staccato. And have it play back Quicktime video AND have audio plug-ins. That would be something!

JD

To chime in about the Sibelius issue, I'm coming to Sibelius-->ESX from Sibelius-->Kontakt, which I've been using for 8-9 months with good success. I understand and share some of your frustrations, but here are some obvservations, for what they're worth.

First, I've been very happy with the Sibelius-->Kontakt setup I've developed. It took a while to understand and create a setup that allowed the two programs to speak to one another transparently, so that, at this point, I never fuss with Kontakt once I'm set for a piece. (Oh, I rarely decide to add or adjust some aspect of the samples, etc.) It it a real trick to learn and implement everything, but once you're set, I have no complaints about how well it all works. I'm switching to Logic/EXS for two main reasons: the lure of potentially more available samples at one time, some of the parameter options/capabilities of the EXS, and the fact that upper level VSL is native for EXS. Later, I expect to also use other functions of Logic, but not the Score function. Don't get me wrong, for what it does, the Score part of Logic is great. It's just not Sibelius, which is clearly superior at notation...it should be, that's what it is. (By the way, I only work on paper or directly in Sibelius. I worked only on paper until 2000, when I did my second symphony directly in Finale, which I have 20 years experience using. From that background, I can tell you that I simply love working in Sibelius compared to Finale.)

As for various issues in Sibelius, I have them, too, but I've found a few ways to streamline the problems. Some examples:
1) I use macros to program my computer keyboard function keys (and other key combinations) with various often used tasks. I use a program called Quickkeys, but there are others. For example, Function Key 1 opens the zoom tool (glad to see that's now available in Sibelius 4, as well as the ability to program various shortcut keys). Function Key 2 opens the cresc./dim. plugin. (I could, in fact, program several specific operations with that plugin if I wished...several levels of volume change that might work for a variety of settings. I haven't done this, but it would not be hard to do.) Another function key is set to open the Live Velocity options window, where you can add, subtract, or scale velocities of groups of notes. You can even do this for an entire vertical stack of staves at once....not having to repeat this for each staff. If you have a staff you want to leave out of your vertical selection, simply Command-click it, and it becomes unselected without de-selecting anything else.
2) As for getting around the lack of an undo, here's one idea that can avoid copying backups of whatever you're fussing with dynamically. Setup your Advanced Filter to filter only Control Change 7 (or 11, if you're using that for volume). Select the passage you want to redo the volume on, filter it, and delete the CC data. Redo until you're happy. With experience, you become pretty good at guessing what numbers to use, based on the velocity of the passage. You can also fine-tune using velocity if you get fairly close. It's not a bad idea to make a chart of the mapping between Sibelius' 0-100% numbers and the 1-127 midi numbers. It's really silly for Sibelius not to include an option to switch between these two scales, but it's also fairly easy to live with this until they fix that.
3) Once you have the cresc/dim like you want it, you can use the Advanced Filter to copy it and paste it to other instruments...all at once, as many staves as you wish...even non-contiguous ones.
4) As for changing articulations, you can again use the filter function to copy and paste these wherever you wish. Remember that copying something in Sibelius is simply a matter of selecting it and Option-clicking in the spot where you want it...whatever IT is. For ex-Finale users, this one trick alone is amazing. You can also rubber-band select items or Command-select for noncontiguous items.
5) Also, don't forget the Live Velocity bars above the notes. If you turn this on, you essentially have Hyper-editing for velocty right above the notes. You can drag a velocity curve right there.

Sure, I've got complaints about Sibelius. Who doesn't? But I'll NEVER use Finale again unless it's to work with my composition students' files or to edit my old pieces. When I'm finished with a piece having done it in Sibelius, I'm done, and with an amazingly small amount of very quick cleanup, I'm ready to print.

Hope this helps or spurs more ideas. Now I have a question for everyone about hard drives, which I'm about to post in a different thread, and I welcome any advice.

Cheers,
Blind Lemon

blind_lemon - too bad, your post got cut off, and I guess you didn't get a warning? It's a known problem, unfortunately posts with more than around 4000 chars get cut off...

I begrudge spending £100 on an upgrade which, new features aside, is a very overdue bug fix. if you look at the list of fixes from version 3 to 4, there are hundreds of things that have been fixed, and many of them have been a pain in the butt for me and many of my Sib user friends. If they are going to charge the price they charge for a program (which I happily paid since there is nothing in my mind to touch it) and then keep charging existing and loyal users significant amounts of money (many of you will have been on board since version 1 or 2) for some new features, but also a well overdue bugfix then they can't be surprised if many current V3 users don't upgrade.

I complained to Sibelius before about the cost of upgrading from 2 to 3, and their response was not one of caring about their existing customers. Still, their product is fantastic, and they have a business to run.

Oh God...I have been ranting aimlessly...sorry guys.

While we're discussing the pros and cons, can anyone give any opinon on Geniesoft's Overture?

Raw, i can understand your feelings. I think if there is an aspiring software developer out there reading all of this, now's the time to build the next generation notation program, complete with sample player, mixer, sequencer, etc.

I only wish i was clever enough to do this myself!


Regards,

Alex.

@Another User said:

now's the time to build the next generation notation program, complete with sample player, mixer, sequencer, etc.

www.notionmusic.com

*Banquo

@Another User said:

now's the time to build the next generation notation program, complete with sample player, mixer, sequencer, etc.

www.notionmusic.com

*Banquo

Hmmmmmmm. methinks not. Playback not as good as in any sequencer, notation shocking [[:|]]

DG

Okay. I have just tried sib 4. I love the video thing (and the time code thing for that matter) but it still is missing the midi functionality needed in a few key areas (as far as I can tell)

You need to be able to shape midi controllers. The dynamic tool is limited to only 2 controlers and it is very unforgiving to use. Is there another version of this plugin that gives you more flexiblity?

I didn't go any further past that limitation but the other issue would be how easy it is to manipulate key velocities and note lenghth and also tempos. (also possibly channel changes mid measure etc. for when you want to end with clean scores and midi playback)

As cheezy as finale is, it's "midi tool" is 100% more useful and powerful than the sib 4. Like most things in finale its quirky but very powerful. If you don't beleive finale can produce great sounding midi go to my website

www.SymphonicUproar.com

and listen to any of the synth demos. They are all done soley on finale with giga studio and exs 24 running samples.

If we are making requests then, of course, I request a pefrect notation program with perfect intergration of sequencer like capbiblities. Man when are they going to freaking figure this out?!?!? It is a pretty simple request, no?

Magates-
Can Finale switch midi channels on the same staff? What version do you have?
thanks,

Finale can do any midi command that a sequencer can do. It is actually better than a sequencer at changing patches/channel on the same staff. The way I and others do it is to create an expression (it can be hidden or have no text at all if you want a clean score) and then select playback options there you can assign it to change channel/or patch along with a huge amount of other options.

I use 2005 but theese features have been available for a lot of versions.

One word of warning be careful with patch changes they won't playback unless you play from at least where the change occurs (this is true of most sequencers as well). (I think they will playback if you use the space bar mouse start method as opposed to the playback controls).

Firstly,
Mvan, thanks for the tip about Finale. I tried it and couldn't get on. Lots of stuff that seems incredibly unwieldy, and i agree, Sibelius is better than Finale.

But,
I've downloaded the demo of a program Called Overture 3 (version 4 out soon)
and had a lot of fun putting stuff together quickly and easily. It's easy to learn (given some basic knowledge of notation software), and the input is almost instinctive. By that i mean, it does what is says on the packet, without having to set up a lot of stuff first.
Better than that, Version 4 will be a native host for VST (Not RTAS or AU just yet)
so a wrapper for those in OSX will help with this. (I'm wondering if it will work with Andrea's Keymap due out soon as a 'midicabled' standalone.)
It's easy to to use, and with dynamic control specifically bullt in, including hairpins (not as a plugin), the response is immediate. The interface is easy on the eye, and doesn't give you a headache after the first ten hours (I tested this!)
I'm going to use it further and post here with updates.

Regards to you all,

Alex.

@hermitage59 said:

But,
I've downloaded the demo of a program Called Overture 3 (version 4 out soon)
and had a lot of fun putting stuff together quickly and easily. It's easy to learn (given some basic knowledge of notation software), and the input is almost instinctive. By that i mean, it does what is says on the packet, without having to set up a lot of stuff first.
Better than that, Version 4 will be a native host for VST (Not RTAS or AU just yet)
I'm going to use it further and post here with updates.

Regards to you all,

Alex.

There is a lot of talk about this on NS at the moment. I've also tried the version 3 demo, but it looks horrible (compared with Sibelius and Finale) and it can't do what my sequncer can, so for me it seems to be a good solution mainly for hobbyists and students (nothing wrong with that!).

DG