greatzot

Yeah, mostly I’m just looking for an update with an improved user interface/workflow and without all the bugs that works on modern systems. Some new features might be nice but if you get carried away with those you’ll quickly end up with a bug-ridden mess. What made me pass many years ago on both Finale and Sibelius and go to Encore instead was how cumbersome I found basic stuff like note entry. Encore was a lot easier to get up and running with. What I don’t want is stuff like the direction Guitar Pro and MuseScore seem to have gone, which is apparently trying to turn what started as transcription software into software synth or even recording/audio editing software. There are plenty of both already; transcription software should focus on the actual transcription part, and how it gets rendered visually, not 5,000 sounds to play it back or yet another “me-too” DAW. People seem to forget that you don’t need one program to do everything, as long as you have simple, reliable ways to pass info between them, like MIDI, or Music XML, or whatever.

So, on the OCR/OMR topic…I tried Audiveris, which is what MuseScore is using, and got a little bit of one of the scores MuseScore gave me nothing for, but found it not at all obvious as to how to even get started with editing. But looking further I ran into SoundSlice, and with the same classical guitar score, I got an excellent, almost totally accurate result (in terms of notes and rhythm, not secondary stuff like fingerings), even distinguishing the two voices (presumably identifying them by the fact that certain notes had two stems). I was really surprised at that. I’ll have to do some more testing to see how it fares with a bit more variety, but one neat thing about it you can play it back and see it in sync with the original you uploaded, so you can theoretically see as it plays whether what it’s playing is consistent with the original. The downside is so far I don’t see a way to keep the scrolling in sync when you’re editing–that’s more useful to me as normal playback is often going to be too fast to really catch the errors. Anyway, I don’t know if anyone else out there is using a similar strategy, but one of the guys from SoundSlice wrote a blog about the project: https://www.holovaty.com/writing/machine-learning-thoughts. It’s subscription based, but they offer a month to month option, so you can just use it for a few months and cancel when you’re done, meanwhile exporting Music XML, MIDI, or apparently a GPX (guitar pro?) file. Anyway, I’m not a big fan of transcribing in a browser window, but for editing OMR output or doing things like online lessons it looks like it’s probably perfectly fine and user-friendly.

Just for perspective, my favorite guitar amplifier maker touted a new, small amp maybe 5 years ago. They finally got a prototype to a show 3 years ago. They said it would be released in 2020…then 2021…then 2022…and we’re still waiting for production, as they’re still backlogged with other work, and they ran into inflation, unfavorable exchange rates, and supply issues for parts. It’s too bad, but that’s life. No guarantees. Just be thankful for what we do have, and hope that it works out. Presumably Don is doing his best.