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Music Software for Macs
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Music Software for Macs |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: GUEST,Jon Date: 25 Apr 05 - 05:28 AM Barfly. I think it is the best dedicated abc program going - shame it doesn't exist for Windows or Linux. The Java based Skink will run. Melody/ Harmony Assistant will import/export abc. You may like to look at abcm2ps.. It is the best for printed output. I believe you can run abcm2ps from within Barfly. |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: Stu Date: 25 Apr 05 - 04:53 AM I can recommend Garageband, although I have to really get into it yet. Does anyone know of any ABC software for the Mac? |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: Amos Date: 24 Apr 05 - 10:29 PM I-Mic is a priceless little add-on for routing sound in/out from a standard mike into your pc or from you pc out to earphones or speakers. Makes the process a lot simpler than using the default sound jacks on the back of the pc, and it uses USB. I have had good results using a more complex device, M-AUdio's Omnistudio, for providing multiple mike-in channels directly to Mac over Firewire. Works a champ but was a little pricey. A |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: Peter T. Date: 24 Apr 05 - 09:38 PM Amos, Gargoyle, and I agree on something -- whew! GarageBand is great. To really benefit from it on contemporary Macs you still need to buy the extra bauble called i-Mic. yours, Peter T. |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 24 Apr 05 - 01:03 AM GARAGEBANDhis is the ONLY software published in the past decade = that would make be consider going over the a plug-N-play MAC. Fabulous freviews and a very approcable interface. Ten minutes with a teen-ager and something viable is coming out.
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: M.Ted Date: 23 Apr 05 - 09:05 PM We're not talking about midi channels or tracks, we're talking about 128 stereo sound streams--I suppose you could keep your lunch on one, beverages, hot and cold-- |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: Amos Date: 23 Apr 05 - 06:53 AM For recording, for most home-brew purposes, Apples own Garageband is a technical marvel, especially now that it supports multi-channel recording. It provides a large array of instruments that can be configured as accompaniament as well, including some bizarre rhythm devices known hitherto only to musical anthropologists. A good all purpose recording tool is SoundStudio. Amadeus is also user-friendly. A |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: GUEST,Ellenpoly Date: 23 Apr 05 - 06:12 AM This is great stuff! I'm going to copy it all out for her, and also make sure she checks this site herself as soon as she's set up at home. I'm really so grateful for all your help. ..xx..e |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: JohnInKansas Date: 23 Apr 05 - 01:18 AM M. Ted: Re the Forbin Project: Lots of the better midi programs I've seen use up to 5 channels for each "simple" instrument, since they "write" attack, sustain, and decay in separate voices and "blend" instruments for tonal color. So 128 midi channels, if it's from a "sophisticated" midi writer, is only a 20 piece band - allowing for the 13 channels of canned percussion sometimes used. Of course .wav sound might blend midi channels to fewer "sound channels" but then you'd need the new 10TB storage decks to get more than a few seconds of playback. And newer computers are equipped for 7-stereo-channel "surround sound" (5 channel is considered "wimpy" by some now). John |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: JohnInKansas Date: 23 Apr 05 - 01:03 AM As M. Ted notes, the written notes are just a skeleton of a tune, and the performer supplies the variations in dynamics and timing to make music out of it. A midi made directly by recording what's played on a midi equipped instrument can reproduce what the player did. A midi made from a score can only "play" the notes as written, and may be rather "mechanical." If you tweak the score to "write it exactly like it's played" you'd get a better midi; but the score would probably be pretty much incomprehensible to someone trying to read and play from the written music. Similarly, when you import a midi recorded from someone's playing on a midi instrument, into a score program, it usually looks like someone spilled a bucket of maggots on the paper. Some of the notation programs, especially the "high end" ones, allow "notating" midi effects, particularly dynamics and accents, and they're getting better at it - at least according to reports (and advertising claims). In some you can "hide the midi" notations to print the conventionally written score, and still get the tweaks in the exported midi. Many of the middle- to high-end notation programs include "feel filters" that add a little bit of "style" to the midi playbacks made from the notation, largely by supplying rhythmic accents and a little "mistiming;" but at present it's probably still not all that great. In checking out links for the post above, I note that a few of the more expensive notation programs have added direct "export MP3" and "export WAV" functions, allowing you to "play back" your score with widely available equipment; but the MP3/WAV export would be subject to the same limitations, I suspect, as the midi export. An increasing number of cheaper programs are now including "scan to score" programs that claim to be able to convert scans (usually .jpg) of a printed sheet to a score editable in the program. (Similar to OCR that converts a scan of a text page into a wordprocessor document, by recognizing the individual characters.) These have been around for a while, but were generally "separate purchase programs." Sometimes they seem to work fairly well, and sometimes not. They should be a lot better now than the last time I test drove one. A few score writing programs claim to be able to take "audio" input from a microphone and turn it into a written score. Separate programs claiming to do this have been around for a while, and some worked "sort of," but mostly only for a single instrument playing a single melody line. Even chords on a single instrument confused most of them. Current accessories packed with the programs now may be better than what I've seen, but I'd not recommend buying a program based on just this "ability" without test driving to see how well it works - or doesn't. Lots of programs are cheap enough to try out, and many of the expensive ones have free demo versions. Before committing to one of the expensive ones, it really is important to decide just what you want to do and then find the program that suits your expectations. John |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: GUEST,Jon Date: 23 Apr 05 - 12:21 AM Wow! I wonder how many lifetimes I would need to understand it... |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: M.Ted Date: 22 Apr 05 - 11:25 PM Here is the Bull Goose Pro Logic 7 which, for $999 promises unlimited capabilities--this basically means that it allows you to do all of the above,and on a huge number of Macs, connected into a supercomputer," Colossus, The Forbin Project" style. Music was one of the first areas where computers were widely used, so the technology is really developed--there are thousands of folks who work with this stuff professionally, and they do a lot of stuff that most of use are completely clueless about--I, for one, am a little vague on what anyone would need 128 stereo audio streams for-- The thing that is important for us is that the hardware and software for good quality recording, sequencing, and scoring is now down in the "anyone that wants it can have it" range-- |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: GUEST,Jon Date: 22 Apr 05 - 10:38 PM Ellenpolly, Just to explain one of MTeds comments, and some on the other thread as I'm beginning to think it can be confusing at first. You can split music software into types for holding recorded music, eg MP3 and wav or types that some way represent the music that is to be played on musical instrument (including MIDI devices). Within the second type, we have notation software and sequencing software. Notation software tries to produce music in traditional notation (or tab, etc.). The weakness with notation is it doesn't minutely represent how a tune is played. It is a guide that people place their interpretation on. Sequencing software (like MIDI) can time notes to the milisecond, carry instruction like how hard to play a note, etc. Im other words, it can create a "performance". The problem is that can not always be converted back to readable notation and the end results can come out with all sorts of wierd note lengths. As you see, there are conflicts of interest. As was mentioned on the other thread, software can attempt to deal with both (and I'd be interested in looking at Overture after reading MTed's comments) but as John had said we have notation software that can do some MIDI and sequencing software that can attempt some notation. It is important to set out which is your main aim or (although Overture may provide a solution) even consider 2 programs. I use Cakewalk and abc (largely infulenced by my choice of format for folkinfo) depending on what I want to do. I'll leave you with an example I've used before here is a MIDI of The Golden Eagle sequenced to time it more or less as I attempt to play it and here is a MIDI produced from the (dotted hornpipe) notation. |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: JohnInKansas Date: 22 Apr 05 - 09:35 PM For those who missed out, this thread is a continuation from: Music Composition Software? A few more details of what is needed were given there. John |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: M.Ted Date: 22 Apr 05 - 04:27 PM GenieSoft has the wonderful (I use it) Overture program, and a nice simplified version called Scorewriter II that costs about $50.00--I hadn't realized that Harmony and Melody Assistant were available in Mac versions--Your friend might end up wanting a big professional program, but I would recommend starting here-- Keep in mind, though, that this is the software that folks use to write notes and chord symbols on a printed page, not programs for creating MIDI's, and not programs for actually recording music--which are music programs, as well. I mention this because you were a bit unclear as to what your friend's daughter simply want to write music which she will offer online, or whether she wants to create music files that people can listen to and download. |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: Bardford Date: 22 Apr 05 - 04:04 PM Also - check out Harmony Assistant and Melody Assistant. Free to try. Quite inexpensive to buy, given the robustisness(?) of the products. |
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Subject: RE: Music Software for Macs From: JohnInKansas Date: 22 Apr 05 - 03:44 PM Ellenpoly The only one of what I'd consider a "leader" that has been mentioned, that I can confirm is not available for Mac, is Noteworthy Composer. http://www.finalemusic.com/ leads to Finale, Finale Guitar, Finale Allegro, Finale PrintMusic!, Finale NotePad and Finale NotePad Plus. An additional program shown there, SmartMusic, is not a notation program so far as I can tell. http://www.sibelius.com/ will get you to Sibelius. http://www.gvox.com/ will take you to Encore, and Music Time Deluxe. (Click Products) I haven't updated my links to others recently enough to trust them. If your friend has experience with notation programs, she should be able to tell whether one of these might be suitable. If she doesn't have any experience, Finale NotePad is a free download, and would give her a cheap look at how one works. If she wants a "basic" make marks program with a little more features, PrintMusic or Finale Guitar might be okay for a reasonably priced entry. They're very similar except "Guitar" adds TAB capabilities. If she wants "more sophisticated," I'm afraid she's looking at a major purchase (with my pocketbook, even with academic discounts) and she should look at the "big gun" programs at the top of the same pages to get an idea of what features are available. She'll likely also want to do a little searching on her own. Links in the other thread may still be helpful. If she does decide on one of the "big bucks" programs, she should Google the program name and look around a bit. Many of these programs are availabe from resellers for less than the list price at which you can buy them directly from the makers. If buying from a reseller, check the version/rev numbers carefully. Many of the better programs do have free downloads, and sometimes local music stores will have free "Demo CDs." I have an old Sibelius on CD that was free from a local store, and I seem to recall downloading a Finale demo some time ago. John |
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Subject: Music Software for Macs From: Ellenpoly Date: 22 Apr 05 - 03:16 AM OK. Forgive me all you people who kindly answered my Music Composition Software thread, but I would like to narrow this down to what can be used on a Mac, since at the end of my other thread, it was suggested that a lot of the posts could be eliminated as not being useful for Apple Macs. If you would, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could just list the software you know will work on that computer type, as it's the one my friend's daughter is getting. Thank you so much for your help! -Ellen |
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