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MIDI Composition Tools
By Walt Reid

In response to the questions about music writing software I have the
following to offer. Use it if you feel it is useful

I started with professional composer (running on a Mac). Found it lacking in
several areas of flexibility. I had the opportunity to upgrade (for a fee) to
Mark of the Unicorn's Composer's Mosaic. It took them three subsiquent
upgrades (free) to get the bugs out. However, it seems to work well when used
with a midi instrument for input and test output. If you have a lot of midi
instruments, you can "patch" each voice as needed to other midi channels for
a midi ensemble. I do not think it useful as a sequencer--although it will
work somewhat like one. I purchased my software only for the notation
abilities. And that was before I had a Midi instrument. Composer's Mosaic
Prints nice Postscript music and I assume truetype (using Adobe Type
Manager). I am enjoying the way it works but it has some limitations:

No Midi inport utility (as far as I can tell) to allow you to take a midi
file from elsewhere and notate it. It will accept midi from an instrument.

Copy protection-yuk! You have to set the folder to NOT be compressed if you
use disk doubler. Its not too bad, just bad enough to be an occasional
problem.

It does cost a large (for me its large) chunk of money to purchase.

All of the above is only my opinion. Use it with caution.

Walt¶
waltreid@aol.com

"What would the world be like without Hypothetical Questions?"

(Message sent Sat, 21 Oct 1995 23:10:50 -0400 , from time zone -0400.)

Key Words in Subject:  Composition, MIDI, Tools