Help: Music Program

Subject: Music Program
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 27 Jun 01 - 07:22 PM

Hi all; I'm looking for a program to insert music into a book. Something I can use with word or possibly adobe. I have Gateway 2000 486/33c. Needless to say this thing is a dinosaur. (You've all heard me complain about it before but the price was right.) I'm looking to resubmit the song book but several people have told me that having music would be a definate boon. I can access most of the music but need a way to transcribe it. Thanks in advance, Kindest reguards, Neil

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: GUEST,andi
Date: 27 Jun 01 - 07:25 PM

I have been told that Music Time for PC is very good for that and it will run on win 95 and win 3.x andi

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: GUEST,JLouis Thiry
Date: 27 Jun 01 - 08:17 PM

Tou should try to manage PostScript files through the abc.language (it's easy and free) and use them as illustrations (e.g. Illustrator) in a layout program as Quark XPress or a word processor see : http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/#collections

You also should try Harmony Assistant (http://www.myriad-online.com/) a very affordable french software which can output PostScript files of sheet music, play midi files and much moreÉ

Hope this can help

JLouis

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 27 Jun 01 - 08:29 PM

You'd probably find (provided you have Windows 95 or higher - I'm don't think there is a 16 bit version) that Melody Assistant (Harmony Assistant's little brother) will do the job for you and it is only $15 shareware. Here's a link to the site JLouis mentioned: http://www.myriad-online.com/.

Jon

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: John P
Date: 27 Jun 01 - 09:18 PM

It all depends on how nice you want it to look. Most notation programs don't give you much control over note placement, size of measure, page layout, line breaks, that sort of thing. Finale is pricey but is the industry standard. It will probably do anything you could ever want, including export files in a variety of graphic formats. It has a little brother called (I think) Allegro that is supposed to be pretty good and is a lot more affordable. The company is called Coda Music.

John Peekstok

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: MMario
Date: 27 Jun 01 - 11:21 PM

I've had luck with NoteWorthy Composer -

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 12:43 AM


John In Remote Kansas (JIRK) on LIK's cookie

I have been putting together an update of a local session book, and have done quite a bit of research (but not spending much money) on ways to put music on paper.
There are many good - and cheap - programs you can use to print music, but the one problem that comes up with most of the cheap ones is that you can only print one song per page easily.
There are probably cheap ones that let you print or save a "selection" as a graphic, but I haven't found one.
The expedient I have used is to load a PostScript printer driver and print to file using the PostScript driver. This gives you a perfectly good .EPS file, that can be used in a document.
The only problem with this is that there is no "preview" bitmap in the EPS, so you can't see what it looks like except by printing it (using a PostScript printer). A few layout programs will display a PS insert, but I've used a program called "ghostview" to clean up the EPS (adjust boundingbox, etc), and just lived with having markers in the Word document.
This isn't much help if you don't have a PostScript printer, but a surprising number of newer printers do have that ability. There are also shareware "RIP" programs, that will convert the PS to raster suitable for other printers, but I haven't looked them up recently because I have a PS printer.
For those who have access to it, it may be noted that the EPS file is an intermediate step to putting your document into PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format) which is a very good way to handle stuff.

Bottom line: if you can print it, you can print to file through a PostScript printer driver, and you get the "standard" EPS file format universally used by book printers/publishers.

It does take some minimal equipement - a PS printer or RIP program - and a friend with some experience with PS would be a big help.

If you're limited to raster printers, the suggestion would be that you concentrate on the cheaper/shareware programs. There are a number of them that are reasonably good, but any of them will take practice to use the capabilies that YOUR program has. In the under $100 (down to $25) you can do a lot with ABC, Noteworthy, PrintMusic, Allegro, etc., but each has its limitations. You can easily spend $600 for Finale, Ovation, or Cakewalk, and the same caveat applies. General rules are made to be violated.

John

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 08:45 AM

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: MMario
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 09:50 AM

I export from NoteWorthy at a windows meta-file then paste into documents. If necessary I trim in a third party graphics program.

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: jeffp
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 09:57 AM

Neil, If you wish, I would be happy to work with you on this project. I used to freelance doing graphics and desktop publishing. I intended to contact you when you were calling for comment on your songbook, but things got in the way. What I can do is use ABC to create a PostScript file, which I bring into Adobe Illustrator to clean up. I can then insert the words (usually the first verse) and line them up with the appropriate notes. Of course some fiddling is normally required here. I save the Illustrator results as an EPS file, and then use PageMaker to put the book itself together. PM me if you're interested in collaborating on this project.

jeffp

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Pinetop Slim
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 11:19 AM

Sarge: In preparing a pocket songster on a low budget, I'm transcribing the melody line, chords and first verse in Scorewriter by Cakewalk (cost me $39), which allows me to print the music in Adobe. From Adobe, I fine tune it and convert to EPS format.
I'm doing the layout with QuarkXpress (wickedly expensive, alas), drawing in the music notation as if it were a picture or graphic and word processing the additional lyrics.
I expect you'll get a lot better advice from jeffp, but offer this as a possible alternative. (One benefit of Scorewriter is that words and notes are more or less automatically lined up, as long as you put the -'s and _'s in the right places. Still, transcribing would seem to be a lot more work than converting from ABC).

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Irish sergeant
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 11:21 AM

I meant to answer earlier than this but my computer wasn't showing the reply box when I accessed. Thank you everybody! Jeff, I'll be in contact or you can pm me. I'm in the middle of about five different projects but i will be in touch. Again thanks and i'll let everyone know how it comes out. Kindest reguards, neil

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 05:57 PM


John In Remote Kansas on LIK's cookie

I have just received a SPAM (advertising) email, apparently based on my comments above in this thread.
Since only members have access to my email address on this site, it must have come from one of us.

My own thought on this is that it is an abuse of membership.
I have no problem with people suggesting resources in a thread, with links that I can use to contact resources in which I am interested.
Unsolicited email advertising is NOT WELCOME.

Perhaps others would care to suggest some other appropriate attitude - in keeping with MudCat and DT traditions and policy, but for now this guy has blown it off with me.

Does it happen to others here? Often??

John In Remote Kansas

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: IvanB
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 06:58 PM

John in Remote Kansas, first I must say that I've never received SPAM in response to a Mudcat posting, so I'm a little surprised by your post. And I frequently put a link to my email address (I don't use the actual address in print due to the 'crawler' programs used by many Spammers) in a post. Of course, if your email address was accessed through Mudcat, it could be done by any member reading this thread, not just those who have posted to it.

If you go to the membership link, you'll note that you can opt not to have your email address public to other Mudcatters. I agree that unsolicited advertising sent to you could be an abuse of membership and, if you can identify the sender, you might PM him/her to try to solve the problem, then report the incident to Max if you can't reach a solution.

Just out of curiosity - you say you're using another's cookie. If that's so, how did a member get YOUR email address?

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 07:46 PM


John In Remote Kansas on LIK's cookie

IvanB
LIK and I share one email address. It is withheld in the MudCat Database, so we are not listed openly there.
As you may or may not know, you must have your own unique email address in order to be a unique member of MudCat (and have your own cookie).
Since we have no other reason to have separate email addresses, all of our email comes to the one address - and we use LIK's cookie for both our posts to the Cat.

I can't be sure that the SPAMMER got our email address here, but we have not recently communicated an interest in music or book publishing elsewhere, so the assumption is that, regardless of how he got the address, it was probably triggered by my recent posts to this string.

Like you, we avoid publishing our email address, simply because we know that it inevitably leads to a lot of useless junk mail.

PLEASE note that I am not in any way accusing anyone at MudCat of anything very serious, and I apologize if my post made it sound like that.

I am curious whether others have found people "mining" the Cat for commercial purposes.

I guess if there's really a subject for discussion here, it probably should be a new string, but I'm due off to listen to some music now.

John (JIRK).

Subject: Privacy and Spam and Mudcat
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 08:33 PM

Hi, John - I haven't noticed any Mudcat-related Spam. If there are details you'd like to discuss privately, please send an e-mail or personal message to me or Max. If your e-mail isn't anywhere public on Mudcat, it's unlikely the Spam came as a result of your participation in Mudcat. If you post your e-mail address on Mudcat Resources, I guess it's possible that the search programs that feed on e-mail addresses may harvest yours. Same think if other Mudcatters have included you on their bulk mailing lists. I think the information in our membership database is pretty safe, but it's probably not impregnable. I have some pointers on Privacy in the FAQ (click).
However, I guess I have to say that if you want to be on the Internet, you have to accept Spam as a way of life. It's well-nigh impossible to protect yourself 100 percent from Spam. I suppose I get ten Spam messages a day through my normal Internet service, and lots more through Hotmail. I make pretty liberal use of my e-mail address in posts because I want people to be able to contact me, although I try to make my e-mail a clickable link whenever I can.
--Joe Offer (click to e-mail)--

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If there's need for further discussion of Spam, maybe it's better to start a new thread on that topic.

Subject: RE: Help: Music Program
From: Jeri
Date: 28 Jun 01 - 08:55 PM

I also think it's unlikely Mudcat had anything to do with it, or we'd all be having problems.

Other ways spammers can get your address include entering it at websites, posting to newsgroups and group e-mails which people forward without trimming the headers. I'm pretty sure I got my address collected that way a couple of times. (One of the reasons I hate petitions and chain letters.)

Other than group e-mails which I can't do anything about, I don't enter my address at websites unless they have a statement they don't deal with third parties. I alter the "reply to" address in newsgroups, and if I post it here, I make a clicky so the address doesn't show. I don't reply if the message says "e-mail us if you want to be removed from our list" because it just lets them know it's a valid address.

I get about one piece of spam a month.

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Whoops - sorry Joe. Sent it in before I saw that "Please start another thread" request.