Re: Steinberg's progress report on new notation software

[Jan-Peter Voigt]

I'm not that surprised.
During the last few years I became something nerd-like. After beeing a 
Mac-User for a long time, I now only use Ubuntu or Debian and all its 
related tools for my everyday work.
So for me using lilypond is a quite natural thing and I am getting 
better and quicker using emacs - well, frescobaldi is still my lilyeditor.
But most people I talk to say something like: "I want switch on my 
computer and immediatly work with my everyday tools without needing to 
touch the keyboard! Beyond the mouse there is a touch-screen ..."
To see, that one is giving away a lot of control over his own work that 
way, is not a matter of course.
Now to the steinberg-post:
I was an intense user of steinberg cubase vst in the middle of the 90s 
until I switched to emagic logic because cubase sx did very bad on 
macosx in the beginning.
These two applications are to compose and produce music. When I came to 
create sheet-music a few years ago, I luckily found lilypond on my newly 
installed ubuntu computer ... the beginning of a deep friendship ;)
As I worked as a software-developer (mostly java) for a long time, the 
text based input didn't have any bad taste for me.
But when I want to compose music, I will not use lily. It is an amazing 
software to engrave music. But to let the musical inspiration flow, 
something like logic with all its bundled software synthesizers, will 
let me make music together with others, who aren't nerds like me ;) One 
just has to build up the (home-)studio hardware and start to sing, 
groove, rock, dream, whatever.
Nowadays there is no room for that kind of individual fulfilment. And if 
there is a need, I will examine ardour, if it fulfills my needs. So I am 
a software-developer, a musical typesetter and a musical interpreter 
(singer). I did compose music, but that was a long time ago.
Back to the point.
I have a demo-version and the notepad-version of finale using wine on my 
ubuntu computer. If I import some musicXML the virtual instruments sound 
much better than the standard midi output of either timidity or 
mac-quicktime.
AFAICS there are some ways to have a reasonable midi/audio workflow with 
lilypond, but it needs some "nerdish" tweaking ;)
This is not what I want from lilypond, but I think many people want to 
*hear* *immediatly* what they are creating.
And if a common musician is used to a tool to compose music and that 
tool creates nice PDF-sheets, he will use it to create his publications.
So the steinberg software might create good typesetting results. And 
finale and sibelius can produce them too, if you know how to use them! 
What can we say?

IMO we shouldn't close any doors to the capitalist world outside there!
What I don't like anymore is closed software from the day I tried 
opening my old micrologic files in logic 8 ...
I want control over my work and the ability to look what is saved in my 
documents.
And the possibilities with lilypond are amazing *and* open a wide 
horizon of dreams, what one could else do with it.

It is not the fact, that I have to pay for software. It is the 
dependency to the tool creator, who might one day change something and 
force me to follow him.
And it is the worth of what I am creating. With a new mac or ipad and 
garageband you can create a song in about 5 minutes.
But what did you use to create that tune? You bought most instruments, 
beats, patterns with your app - so is it your song?
Back to easy notation-software: You will produce a sheet for your choir 
in about 5 minutes with the steinberg app. And it will look OK.
Your choir will get used to that look.
If now someone comes and produces a good looking lilypond-sheet, who 
will really recognize the difference?
Who will say, it is worth doing it this way for the composition and the 
acting musicians?
Using all those tools to easily and *quick* produce sheet-music (or 
whatever) IMHO are open to reduce the /inner/ worth of the compositions 
and there graphical representation.
It is easy and quick and it is OK. But can you do better?

As I know some publishers, I would be careful using "free to copy" 
symbols without providing a "don't copy" glyph! If all choirs only buy 
one sheet and then copy as much they need, those publishers will not be 
able to produce more. If you sell old music, you won't get a provision 
from any license so the paper has to run your business.
The problem is, that anything needs to be cheaper than yesterday, so the 
audience will not pay the price for a concert, the musicians will not 
pay the sheets, the publisher will not pay the typesetting and the 
typesetter can't pay the ticket for the next concert. And all are only 
thinking, if they can get cheaper what they need and not, if it was 
valuable what they received.

Ok, enough of this!
Sorry for this diffuse rant ;)

Cheers, Jan-Peter


Am 08.08.2013 10:35, schrieb SoundsFromSound:
> I'm surprised that no one else in those comments responded to any of the
> LilyPond mentions.
> As a former SCORE user, personally I can't possibly imagine /ever /going
> back now that I've tried LilyPond. There truly is just no comparison.
> Period.
> With LilyPond, you're only limited by your imagination.
>
> When I go to pack away my scores for the definitive and long-term archive
> master, I engrave everything in LilyPond.
> I'm currently in the process of converting all my older scores now too, to
> LilyPond.