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In article <3787@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> jww@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU (Joel West) writes:
>A revised version of DMCS will support Sonata, which, a year ago, was
>listed as "Real Soon Now."  I have not heard anything since then.

DMCS version 2.0, supporting the Sonata (postScript) font, MIDI, and
cutting and pasting music to the clipboard (like into MacDraw) has
been out for at least 4 months. Electronic Arts wazs very good about
mailing people an upgrade offer. Many problems were fixed. Printing is
drastically improved. The manual describes a user interface for creating your
own DMCS sounds. 

To use DMCS with MIDI, you tell DMCS which serial port the optional
MIDI adapter is on. You then decorate the sheet music with things like
DMCS's change voice commands, that tell it which MIDI channel to send
that staff on, and which sound to tell the synthesizer to use.  I
believe it can generate 8 staves of MIDI data with 256 different
numbered sounds (MIDI patch change commands). (By comparison, Studio
Session does 6 staves, and as many different sounds as will fit in
memory (figure 30k per sound.) Both will let you use the same sound
many times in a piece (of course.)

You can play on the keyboard and DMCS will auto-correct your tempo, to
turn your playing into sheet music. (You'll need an optional MIDI
adapter (DMCS 2.0 comes with a discount offer for one, inside the
package.) However, you need to play in such a stilted style, that it
isn't clear how useful this is. You can also read files from OpCode's
MIDI sequencer, which should have much better auto-correction. (I haven't
used it, I'd like a recommendation. Anybody out there use it and like it?)
You can mix MIDI voices and Mac voices.

To use Sonata on a LaserWriter, you'll need to buy the
postScript version of Sonata from Adobe. (DMCS 2.0 comes with a
discount offer for one, inside the package.)

Studio Session is much easier to use and sounds tons better than DMCS
(unless DMCS is driving a 6 channel sampler over MIDI :-)  DMCS beats
Studio Session on printing though.  The file format of Studio Session has
been published, and DMCS 2.0 can read and write MIDI data to disk in a
standard format.  Has anyone written a DMCS <-> Studio Session converter?
(If yes, please tell me about it. If no, let me know, and I'll do it.)

DMCS was written by a programmer who doesn't seem to like the Mac
much. Although it looks like a Mac program, it subtly does not feel
like one. For example, if I were writing it, clicking on # (sharp sign
modifier) would turn off b (flat sign modifier), and clicking on #
again would turn # off.  Instead, you have to click on <clear
modfiers>.  You pick a short note value, and drag right, at the time
you create the note, to lengthen its tempo. I usually find that even
if I drag the mouse to the margin of the screen, I can't get the tempo
I want. You probably can type "q" to change the currently selected
note to a quarter note, "h" for half, etc. but I am not sure.  (It is
a big, complicated program, and I always discover new things about it
whenever I sit down with it.)

There is still a bogus measure after the last note in the piece drawn
on the screen, but at least now it doesn't print.

I found Electronic Arts very sensitive to complaints like these. I wrote them
a letter, and the DMCS (Mac) programmer called me to talk things over.

I really like being able to cut a few measures of music and paste them into
a page layout program.

If I had written it, I'd have had a tighter association between the notes
and the lyrics. As it stands now, there is none, and you have to type
spaces to get the lyrics to lin up under the notes. If you move a note, 
you must adjust the lyrics by hand.

The guitar tablature font is neat.

Conclusion: Studio Session is the better buy for those who never print.
(particularly if you also buy the the MacNifty (now Impulse) audio digitizer:
great sampled sound, like 30 different instruments in a single piece,
(although only 6 running at once.) lousy printing though (at least in the
version I've got.) Because the Mac version was done before that for
any other machine, it feels "right" to a mac user. My wife has just
completed a cassette, done in large part, in Studio Session.

DMCS is the better buy for printing sheet music, and controlling a few
MIDI instruments.  To control many MIDI instruments, you'll need a
program that is just a sequencer.  I also like patch librarians that
use the big (by music standards) screen of the mac to give your
synthesizer a decent user interface. Because DMCS is part of a family
of Electronic Arts DMCS products, the user interface feels subtly off
to a mac user. My wife has just completed collaborating on a song book
done in DMCS.

It is a shame that you can't cut and paste between DMCS and Studio
Session. If Studio Session could read/write MIDI sequencer data, then
the two would work together. On the other hand, the file format of
Studio Session has been published, while that of DMCS has not (correct
me if I am wrong.) A simple tool, that may already exist, would let
them read/write files that the other could use.

--- David Phillip Oster            --My Good News: "I'm a perfectionist."
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --My Bad News: "I don't charge by the hour."
Uucp: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu