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“I bought Sonic Writer 5 for only $69.00 and it does everything Encore 5.0.4.875 did …”
Oh not everything. I downloaded Score Writer just to see. If you do what I do, there are a few absolute deal killers for me, especially this one:
“Lyric Verses — Overture: 8; Score Writer: 4”
I often need more than 4 verses in my church work. Encore has up to 8. Score Writer would be useless in my Christmas book, also. I’d like to do it in Encore but the slurs are so bad (at least on the Mac) that terrible doesn’t even begin to describe it so I’m doing my book in Overture (don’t need Finale or Dorico for this). BTW, Finale slurs didn’t really look good till 2009 and Encore 5 was released in 2008.
The cross-grade to Ov5 is $129 and it does have all of Encore’s functionality + a lot more – glad I spent the extra $60. I still want Encore 6, however. Overture and Score Writer take me longer to use. There are other functions doable in Encore, not possible in Score Writer but that’s the big one for me.
I couldn’t get the Score Writer Installer to work on my iMac Pro over Ventura (Overture works fine) so I had to fire up my old MacBook Pro. Here’s the feature comparison between Overture and Score Writer:
How many other apps out there that haven’t had a paid upgrade in 15 years or an incremental update in 9 years have users waiting for a new version?
Me too, BTW. I just hope it retains the easy of use that keeps me using it (or most of it, at least).
“ Be able to delete measures without the entire score shuffling back those measures”
Encore has always been able to do that. After you delete the measure(s), correct the number of measures per system. Say you had 5, you delete 1. To maintain the spacing on the rest of the page, change that one system to 4 and reflow (Adjust Measure Spacing) if necessary.
The layout tools in Encore are quite simple compared to everything else. It’s the feature I like best and hope that doesn’’t get changed (much?).
I’ll find the tutorial that I wrote nine years ago based on Richard’s email to me for removing all traces of older versions of Encore for Mac, especially those horrible early beta versions of 5. The 5.0.7 installer doesn’t do this. I’ll create a new thread for that.
Score Writer is the “lite” version of Overture 5. Since I have O5 already, I’ve never looked at SW — perhaps I should.
“ Also why I, like many have gone to Finale, Sibelius and MuseScore.”
I do not like Sibelius or MuseScore but have had Finale and Dorico since the beginning of each. My “heavy lifting” has been done in Finale since 1989, pen and ink for the 20 years prior. I keep waiting for Dorico to be a useful tool for me—takes me way too much time to get anything done. I have bought and discarded about a dozen other notation apps since my Mac Plus in 1986.
I used to use Notion 6 to open MusicXML from Sibelius but it doesn’t work with he current version. The Dolet 8 plug-in lets the current Sibelius export MusicXML 4.0 which opens in Finale 27.3.
My point is that I use the best tools I have to get the work done. Encore has a definite place in my toolkit, especially for my church work and lead sheets. Like everyone here, I want it back. That E6 is not ready isn’t keeping me from getting things done.
“I’m using 5.6. I have 5.7 but that is buggy as well and I experience even more crashes with 5.7.”
Exact answers to specific questions can be most helpful. There was never an Encore 5.6 or 5.7. I do know that you have a Mac, at least since the last version for Windows was 5.0.4.
I’m not playing word games here. There was more than one build for Encore 5.0.7. Oddly enough, if you run Get Info in the Encore menu on the very last version of 5.0.7, you get
Encore
5.0.6 1303M
Encore 5.0.7 Copyright © 2014 etc.
This was the last build and it’s quite stable over MacOS 10.14 Mojave. Some issues including Core Fonts and Barline Types only work properly in that version over that OS. If you don’t have 5.0.6 1303M, it can be found. I don’t post my contact info but I’m not hard to find if you need that build.
You should purge every old version of Encore from your Mac. Old fonts, especially, can cause crashes no matter what version you are running. I can find Richard’s 2014 email on that if needed.
“Like my 1st post says I use Encore to sequence so Velocity is big for me”
Good luck with that. Overture combines the features of Encore and MasterTracks Pro. Unfortunately, Ov5 cannot open Encore files but Don says that Ov6 will. I think your solution will lie in that direction. If you’ve not downloaded the demo, it would be a good idea.
“I don’t know Mike, but don’t we need someway to tell what each note VL is set too?”
In 55 years of doing notation, I’ve never needed that. Not once, not ever. Of course, the first 20 years were pen and ink. Sill, I know of no notation app that does this. MIDI, yes after a fashion but not notation.
“….The Add Text Function is crazy buggy OMG. If I add Text elements they can dismantle playback, cause crashes by untold amounts, disappear into a blackhole after being placed”
Huh? What version of Encore are you using? I have never experienced that. Disappearing and misplaced Text elements, yes, but the rest of it? No. I’ve had Encore and Overture since version 1 and MusicShop before that.
MusicXML import in MuseScore leaves a lot to be desired. Notion, Dorico and Finale handle it much better. Unfortunately, xml export from Encore is only v. 1.1 (Windows) or 1.3 (Mac) and does not support lyrics or expressions.
If you printed your Encore scores to PDF so that they retain font info, you might check out Melody Assistant’s PDFtoMusic Pro ($199). For evaluation, it can only handle one page. It’s not very good but its .xml or compressed .mxl opens in Finale, Dorico and Overture much better with lyrics and expressions (text is hit and miss) — still not very good into MuseScore. It will not import into Notion at all. The non Pro version ($65) does not export MusicXML at all and is totally worthless, IMO.
SmartScore 64 Pro is a straight scanning app and lets you edit your scan before exporting MusicXML 3.0. Its $399. Works a lot better than PDFtoMusic. No discount for MuseScore owners but Encore owners can get it for $299 ($199 if you own Finale). Its .xml imports to Notin, also.
https://www.musitek.com/store/CrossGrade.html“The way I see it, Encore 5.0.4 comes with a VST player.”
Good luck getting it working. I don’t know that it ever really did.
“How can I insert pictures here like you did with the link to Sonic Scores?”
I pasted in the url to the Sonic Scores web site and that’s how it appears.
“I can’t stress enough again.. we need note velocity displayed when hovered over..”
Does any notation app do that?
Per Don in another thread about VST support in Encore 6:
“At some point we plan on implementing VST support, but probably not in the initial release.”
Over in the Overture support forums, Don has posted that, when Encore 6 is released, Overture will be updated to open Encore 5 files. Overture 5 does have VST support but cannot open Encore files.
“hat I remember, E5 cannot read files that old. An intermediate save in E455 or early E5 may be needed.”
4.5.5 can often read older files, be saved so that the early version of 5 could read it, then save and be opened by the later version of 5. Getting any of this to work often requires multiple computers and a bit of sneakernet between them. Having given away all my old hardware, I can no longer do this.
“As an alternative, Harmony Assistant reads E455 files pretty well.”
In what universe? Also this: “I am working for a classical / choral music publisher”
Harmony Assistant is not only pretty terrible at reading old Encore files, it’s lyric handling stops after one verse.
Back to the OP: One of your problems will be that, even if you found a computer old enough to run E3, your original output will look terrible by any standards (printed slurs are ghastly, even in Encore 5). Another is that, even if after a few conversions you get it open in E5, MusicXML export does not handle Lyrics or Expressions — in a choral work?
You can wait for Encore 6 so that, if Andres is able to import them into E5, you might be able to open, view and export correctly. Since E6 is late, no one knows if/how well that might work. No one.
If you need to be working on these files now and you have printouts, there are a couple of decent sheet music scanners out there including SmartScore 64 Pro—best with Finale and Dorico or ScanScore Pro—best if Sibelius is the house notation app.
The last Mac version was 5.0.7 (5.0.6m on the Get Info screen) and works pretty well. There are some download sites where it can be found if you are good with a Google search.
It works as well over Mojave as any version of Encore ever. I have not tried it with a MIDI controller, however, and have no idea if that can still be made to work.
