From: scottj@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott A. Jordahl)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Jim Miller Personal Composer
Date: 12 Aug 1992 17:16:51 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems
Distribution: world
Reply-To: scottj@Eng.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: frick

In article 339@cs.ucla.edu, parkerw@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Parker Waechter) writes:
>In article <1992Aug5.102659.1@v9.vitro.com> terr05@v9.vitro.com writes:
>>Hello,
>>	Does anyone have information on the Jim Miller personal composer?
>>	I've just heard about it but I have no details.
>>						Jim
>
>[I tried to email this, but v9.vitro.com bounced...]
>
>I have used all the versions of personal composer since 1988 or so, and
>as a whole, I am unhappy with it.
>
>The main problem with it is that it tries to be a jack of all trades, but
>is therefor a master of none.
>
>The sequencing part of it is WAY inferior to cakewalk, which is somewhat
>cheaper.  The scoring part is not all that good.
>
>The support also sucks.  They charged me some $$ to get on their newsletter
>mailing list...I got the first issue...time passed...I got no more...I called
>they said "oops, we must have deleted your name", I got one more...I gave up.
>Another good phrase (I just called :) is "Technical support is on vacation
>and will return Mon Aug 10".


For those who do not know, Jim Miller died of cancer last year. I was
wondering myself why I wasn't getting the newsletters. The one I
received before he passed on talked about the neat things he was
planning/working on involving integration into the MS-Windows 3.X
Multimedia extentions. Too bad he was unable to complete his work.

I received a newsletter from his wife a few months ago explaining that
things were on hold since Jim's death, but that she was looking at
re-starting the effort to come out with the Windows based version. That
was the last thing I heard. I was a little concerned what would really
come of it as Jim was the real creator behind Personal Composer.

I have the latest offical released version of Personnal Composer (3.1)
and have done some productive work with it. The reason I purchased it
is that it was a "complete" package all-in-one. I like it for the most
part, but must agree there are many ruff edges. I would like to find a
decent software package that would do well all the things Personal
Composer tried/advertised to do.


>
>It is an OK package if you want to do some fairly basic things with midi
>and score them.  However, it can't read/write standard midi files (it
>supposedly can read them, but I have had trouble with MANY files I have been 
>given by others that had no problem in cakewalk).  Also, it has memory problems,
>in that if you want to record a wide piece (I.e. many channels with several 
>notes at a time through big chunks of the piece, or even one channel with
>a lot of pitch bends etc), it will barf or hang.
>
>They do claim to be working on a windows/new dos version which, as I recall,
>is due for release in the fall.  Cakewalk for windows looked pretty good though,
>so I think I may go with it instead.
>	
>	Parker
>-- 
>Parker B. Waechter					UCLA Biocybernetics Lab
>parkerw@cs.ucla.edu					4731 Boelter Hall
>							Los Angeles, Ca.
>							90024-1596

-- Scott


---
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