I would like a fast and easy way to enter (and see) the necessary info to choose different patches on my keyboards or other MIDI gear at all the necessary points in a score to go from one part to another. So my focus here is on program change, MSB, and LSB, though the same principle would apply to any MIDI parameter you could modify in the score for playback on an external hardware device or other software on your computer. (E.g. velocity for volume changes and swells and such.) Think minimal clicks, minimal fiddling with menus or pop-ups or dropdowns or whatever, just entering the info as fast as possible.

In Encore 5, as far as I can tell you have to use drop-downs to choose a program change, MSB, LSB. And you can’t even see the number until you choose a sound, and you can’t see it in the score at all. In addition, as far as I can tell you just choose one per voice per staff and that’s it. Guitar Pro has the same problem with program change (only drop-downs, no way to just type in a number), but you can alter the sound on the same staff and transcription voice via their “track” settings. That’s important for electric guitar, where you switch sounds (most often distortion or effects) without changing instruments, and the same would apply to keyboard or electronic drums, where one player could be playing various sounds throughout the song, even though it’s the same person, same part, and therefore the same staff for my purposes. That said, choosing the point where it changes is still awkward in Guitar Pro–you have to first set up the sounds you want to be able to use throughout the score, then set up automation points by measure number and “tick” number to map the sounds to the score. (And how the ticks work is unclear–only comment I can find seems to indicate that each quarter note has 480 ticks.) Also, I don’t think you can tell Guitar Pro to use one sound for, say, voice 1, and another sound for voice 8, as it’s assumed the voices all belong to the same instrument, but simply require different transcription for timing (sustain) purposes. I have never felt a need for that option, but I could see how it might be useful, so no harm in keeping it in Encore.

PowerTab, which I used before Guitar Pro, didn’t have a lot of MIDI features, and you could only set up 7 guitars/sounds in it, but choosing points to change the sound was decent–you clicked a spot, chose “Guitar In”, and specified which sound you wanted to use with a checkbox. Not ideal, but not terrible when working with only a small number of options. Still better than what I see in Encore 5 in that the sound can be set to change on any note anywhere in the score.

Both Guitar Pro and Power tab let you show the changes in the score visually for the reader…but just as text like “Guitar 1” or in Guitar Pro’s case, the name of the MIDI Program Change according to their list–which may have nothing to do with your external device’s name, as in one case where my score says “Tango Accordion” but actually means “Bell Strings”.

Now, all of the above relates to what I’m setting up Encore to do in ordinary manual transcription to send data elsewhere for playback/tone generation, but on the incoming side, Encore 5 is a bit of a mess in realtime note entry/transcription. I tried using a Yamaha PSS-A50 keyboard and the first issue was the metronome stopped after four beats. Ok, checking “Transmit sync” seemed to result in a metronome sound coming out of my keyboard, but then when I play the score back, I get no sound at all, even though the keyboard is set as the “out” device. And on top of all that, the notes themselves appear to stack up as a single chord or not be entered at all until I stop the recording, when suddenly they are all laid out in what presumably must be whatever form the program actually captured them in and interpreted them to be, though it’s hard to tell if it correctly separated arpeggios or stacked chord notes on top of each other. It’s confusing: “Is it working? What’s wrong? [Stop.] Oh, it worked…I think…” I can see understand it might be hard to display accurately in real time, at least with timing, but seems like the notes themselves shouldn’t be that hard. And what’s up with the silence on playback? Did it not capture a program change message from the keyboard when I started playing? What’s the explanation for why I can hear the metronome on my keyboard while recording, but nothing at all on playback–no music or metronome?

If it would be helpful, I can demonstrate all this in a screen capture video sometime, though no guarantee it will be soon.