Pittsburgh 7, Oakland 3.
I notice we're supposed to post scores in PDF.
Well . . . this is something of a nuisance for me. I work mainly with pen and paper, which doesn't copy well, and when rendered in PDF is almost illegible.
I'm old-school, meaning that while I own Finale and Sibelius, I've never used them, and will continue to write on manuscript with pen or pencil.
Further, I discourage the use of programmes such as Finale and Sibelius because they muck up the process of composition. They're far too slow, and are an unnecessary intermediate step in the process of getting music down on paper. This goes along with my shoot-on-sight policy where electronic tuning devices are concerned.
I do use a little programme called Anvil Studio for making quick facsimiles of works in progress, but have never gone so far as to use it to print a score.
Surely we can post handwritten scores in HTML or as jpeg's? What's with the PDF bias/prejudice?
Replies
Hello Greg,
PDF is the preferred file type posting for scores because it is the closest thing to a universally-readable format and because you can upload a single file which contains any number of pages. If you want your scores to reach the widest possible audience, that's the format you should post in.
I'm not a fan of notation software. It's too slow for my taste.
It's a modern sickness, this not only buying into techno nonsense, but cheerleading it. Across the board it's a white elephant that doesn't help one bit, and doesn't represent progress in any way, shape or form.
The only advantage I can see is mass-production of scores, and that's an open question, given that you can walk your score to the nearest copyist store and get the same result. You also get to meet real people in the bargain.
Greg,
As you please. There are some composers on this site who will not look at a composition without an attached score. I will, but am less likely to comment on it if a score is not attached. Best -
Gav -
All righty . . . this Luddite is just going to have to get with it, then. :^)
Gav Brown said:
I have both Finale and Sibelius. I'm going to go with Sibelius and start transcribing some of my music.
As I understand it, Sibelius saves things as something called Scorch. So . . . how do I go from Scorch to PDF? Or is there a function in Sibelius I'm not seeing?
Gav Brown said:
Greg,
Scorch is not PDF. Please check with Sibelius about how to create a PDF
Gav -
Sibelius 6. Is that bad?
I don't see why people can't just post things like this:
A handwritten Score.tiff
Pff.
- write with pen & paper
- either scan the pages, or if that produces poor results, take photos of them
- combine the separate page files into a single PDF (this is purely for reader's convenience)
- profit
Ning MAY generate issues related to the size of the end file (regular score PDFs are very small, if the PDF is made of graphical files it's going to weigh several MB at the very least), but it that becomes a problem, you can always upload the piece to Dropbox and post the link rather than an attachment.
That being said, unless you're doing complex contemporary notation, Finale / Sibelius will in fact be faster than pen and paper - provided you're actually pretty good at using them. They muck up your process of composition as much as being quite unable to use a pen proficiently would. Whether it is worth the time it takes to get competent with the software is, of course, your call. If you write a lot of music, it will probably be beneficial in the long run.
Well, that's just not true. If you're doing complex piano scores, there are no notation programmes that aren't a major pain in the arse. Notation programmes are good for simple stuff, but they've never been any good for complex scores.
What put me off both Finale and Sibelius (I have both) is the endless hours I spent mucking about, trying to force the programmes to faithfully reproduce my scores. What I ended up having to do, in certain instances, was write in three clefs, then merge two of them.
There are no really good notation programmes for doing piano scores. Not until they can get with the WYSIWYG programme.
Pen and paper is much faster because there's no fiddling around.
Greg Brus said:
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