Cakewalk is no longer handling Overture? Aack--

I really like the folks at Cakewalk, and was happy when they took over Overture--it is a very good notation program, much more intuitive that Finale(which I find to be a completely klunky, and awkward program, and I figure after playing with the thing for eight years, I am entitled to my opinions) with handy buttons to interpolate for jazz--best thing is that it allows full scale midi playback of the score--and has sequencer capabilities--problem is that it relies on OMS--also, as far as I can tell, it won't calculate chords--

John,

There are a lot of people around who think that they can circumvent learning about music(or anything else, for that matter) with a computer program, and there are a lot of people who subtly encourage that mindset in order to sell software, hardware, MIDI instruments, etc--Most of the "serious" programs suffer from the "we have ways to let you do everything syndrome", which end up making it very difficult to do the simple things, that, as you point out, are really all most of us need all the time, anyway--

I didn't mention it before, but one can learn a lot about arranging and notation by simply opening up some of Lesley Nelson's wonderful MIDI files from the Contemplations Site: http://www.contemplator.com/--