Re: evaluating the transposing software discussion

Hi Chuck...I suggest you take another look at Rich Morse's last post.
I am sure there are different opinions on what's best, but Noteworthy
Composer at about $40 is a very user-friendly and reliable way to
create sheet music on the computer and print it out in a very high
quality form (I use its output in a booklet of box tunes I sell at an
accordion shop, and it looks pretty professional). There is a
transposition function provided in the software so you can move any
tune around between keys.

Noteworthy assumes that you're a person who can read and write sheet
music...you are clicking on spots on the score and applying quarter
notes, dotted eighths, rests, etc. to those spots. You can have it
play back sections at you to check your work.

ABC is a text language for coding music into a very small file that
can be exported to the internet. If you want to download tunes from
the internet, usually you will download an ABC file. Since Noteworthy
does not import or export in ABC format, there is a third party
shareware product that Rich mentioned which can do that. But if all
you need is to create, transpose, and print sheet music, ABC is not
needed in that process.

Some posters have suggested that you create your music in ABC in the
first place. Opinions will differ, but for myself as a musician, I
think in notes on the page, not in text character codes. I would find
writing out music using ABC to be very clumsy and nonintuitive.

I think you misunderstood when you thought you heard that "transposing
software has a long way to go". I think that had to do with software
that can read in sheet music from a scanner. Products like Noteworthy
(low priced) and Finale (high end) do a very capable job of enabling
you to create high-quality sheet music on the computer in a very easy
to understand and user friendly fashion, and they have transposing
features built in. No rocket science here.

Hope that clarifies things.

Mitch Gordon
Guerneville, CA 

"chuckmac78" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote ...
> There has been a lot of responce to the transposing discussion. I am 
> reading a lot of stuff with terms and procedures that I don't really 
> understand. 
> 
> I am a fairly intelligent person with limited midi  and computer 
> software knowledge. I'd like to think that it's where I am in life 
> and what I had been doing with my time over these last few years that 
> lends to my restricted understanding. Maybe I'm expecting too much 
> here. 
> 
> I guess I don't quite know what software to try. 
> I don't understand ABC, OCR things like that. I would expect that the 
> software itself would have a decent read me file so I could no doubt 
> figure it out. I just need to know what might be the easiest route to 
> simply transpose music score from one key to another. If anyone has 
> been following this transposing thing the last few days and, after 
> digesting the information and possibly learning something themselves, 
> could give an opinion on how I ought to attact this it would help. 
> 
> After reading a remark that "transposing software has a long way to 
> go" I'm wondering if I can do what I want to do her without tons of 
> work. Let me put it this way. We all need a place to live. We can 
> rent, buy or build a home. The first two options are the least time 
> consuming. Option number three takes a lot of time and effort 
> although the end result can afford a lot of extra add ons. I just 
> need a place to sleep.  
> 
> I know opinions are like noses, everyone has one but some people 
> contribute input that is a means to an end and others duscuss what 
> they have tried and like. I can't seem to sort it out. I'd like to 
> try something that has the least learning curve and still be able to 
> do the job. Simply put, I'd like to get the score into the computer 
> and then change the key and print the new score out. Maybe it's not 
> that simple.