From: milo@cbnews.cb.att.com (guy.f.klose)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Subject: Copyist (was Re: Music programs ?)
Date: 3 Sep 92 16:45:50 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnews.1992Sep3.164550.29300
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T

In article <52874@dime.cs.umass.edu>, barrett@snoopy.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett) writes:
> 	BTW, I am sick of the lack of notation programs on the Amiga, and I
> have decided to do something about it myself.  By December, there might be
> another alternative on the Amiga.

I just recently bought Dr. T's Copyist, and I thought I would post a couple
of comments after having used it for a couple of weeks.  I don't feel
qualified to do a full-scale review, so I don't want to attempt that.
So, here's so random comments:

$200 from Safe Harbor for Copyist DTP.  Seems expensive, and the price
hasn't really ever dropped much from its initial price years ago.

Copyist DTP offers a couple of advantages over Copyist Apprentice.  Such
as score lengths of 99 pages (if you don't to do part extraction or
transposing, score length seems to be no big deal...you can always
separate your score into files of five pages each).  Copyist DTP gives
you the Adobe Sonata font.  More on that later.  Copyist DTP also gives
you part extraction (separating out a single part from a multi-stave score).

The printing seems great.  On my home dot matrix printer, draft mode is
kind of clunky, but certainly better than DMCS printing.  The higher-
quality printing mode is really pretty good.  Very usuable, I think.
Printing on a Desk Jet looks even better, but is a little compressed
(in both directions).  That may be an advantage if you're doing big 
scores (more than 12 staves on a page), or a disadvantage if you are
writing busy parts (lots of 16 notes?).  Best of all is printing on
a Postscript printer, with the Sonata font.  Really high quality.
Publication quality, I would think.

Make no bones about it, Copyist is more of a desktop publishing package
than a music package.  You lay down scores graphically, bit by bit.
DMCS is completely different in that it will let you draw musical ideas,
such as place quarter note here, etc.  In Copyist, you place a note head
on the page, and then place a stem, and beam if necessary.

When editing a score, there is no "undo" function, and that really
sucks.  My first project was to lay down a blues head on a page, and
then transpose the head for Bb instruments.  I dicked around quite
a bit when trying to edit, and would invariably lose a chunk or two
here and there.  I've learned, I hope, to now do a quick "save"
before trying to delete anything.

The biggest problem I had was deleting accidentals.  It's kind of tricky
to highlight just an accidental, and then delete just it.  I've done lots
of deleting entire sections of a score, when I just wanted to get rid of
an accidental.  Two hints:  either place accidentals on last, or move
a note up off the staff and then delete it's accidental.

Moving notes, and cutting and pasting is easy.  There are some strange
conventions, though, such as not getting true "cutting and pasting".
"Cut" will copy a highlighted item to a buffer, and then you can paste
it, but "cut" does not erase the item.  "Erase" delete and item, but
I don't think it copies the deleted item to the buffer, so you can't
do "erase and paste".

There are also some backwards conventions with stem directions.  Count
on being confused at first.  I'm still confused after two weeks.

Lots of people complain about some commands being mouse-operated and
some being keyboard-driven.  I think once you become pretty adept with
Copyist, it shouldn't be that annoying, and until then a quick
reference card will help.

Copyist coexists with other Dr. T products that have MPE...I've been
working with Tiger Cub, XOR, and Copyist, and it works pretty well
except for two things:  I have an A2000, and XOR is really slowing
things down (I had a loop running on Tiger Cub, and I was changing
effects settings on my synth....maybe it's supposed to crawl).  Maybe
it's time for an accelerator.  Also, my version of Tiger Cub was buggy
with WB2.04.  I've got a new version arriving today.

I was loading standard MIDI files into both Tiger Cub and Copyist, and
there haven't been any problems yet.

I wouldn't consider running without a hard disk.  If you're on floppies,
this program will probably be slow and annoying for you.  Copyist alone
is pretty speedy without an accelerator.  With MPE, that's a different
story.

Lastly, although the manual says it is copy-protected, it isn't.  In fact,
it seems all the new versions of Dr. T's software have done away with copy
protection, regardless of what their manuals say.  Even this new version of
Tiger Cub I'm getting is supposed to be free of copy protection.

I'm probably forgetting lots of stuff, so if you have more questions,
either post or send e-mail. 

Guy
-- 
Guy Klose
milo@mvuxi.att.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio