Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Rosegarden vs. Note Edit
From: Chris Cannam (cannam_AT_all-day-breakfast.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 01:29:23 EEST
On Friday 13 Jun 2003 9:40 pm, Chris Cannam wrote:
> I wouldn't mind seeing a reply from
> one of the NoteEdit developers, as I've probably inadvertantly
> slandered them somewhere.
Actually, reading it through again, I realise the opposite may be
true: I probably haven't done much of a job of explaining why anyone
would prefer to use Rosegarden. What a great salesman I am. Not
that it makes any difference, since they're both free.
The principle about Rosegarden is that all of the non-notation stuff
is actually useful when working on notation as well, particularly if
you're doing composition rather than just transcribing scores. For
example, it does a good job of helping prepare reasonable MIDI
performances: it can estimate things like velocities from the score,
and can remember the performed times and durations of notes even
while tidying them up for score purposes. It includes a quantizer
dedicated to producing readable score, that admittedly still needs
work but still does pretty much as good a job from performance
timings as (say) Sibelius does (although Rosegarden really needs
tempo-tracking as well -- it's on my to-do list). You can use it
(with a soft synth or external synth and mixer) to render your
compositions down to audio tracks. It has configurable program/bank
patch maps for MIDI devices, including a number of popular devices as
standard. Flashy stuff like antialiasing for notes isn't just for
show, it makes it much easier to see and follow scores in smaller
sizes; and having a nice friendly GUI is also a genuinely useful
thing.
There are also several areas where it has interesting potential rather
than immediate utility, but they maybe aren't of much interest here.
And there are some real downsides (here I go again with my
non-salesman stuff). It sometimes behaves inconsistently or
unexpectedly for reasons connected to the fact that it's manipulating
sequenceable data behind the scenes -- i.e. things like tuplets and
grace notes are stored in playable form rather than displayable form,
and it takes some testing to get all the potential conversion cases
working correctly. Many of the natty features described above are
incomplete: for example the notation quantizer can guess slurs,
tenuto etc but it tends to do so in rather inappropriate places at
the moment. The lyric editor is weaker than NoteEdit's (forgot to
mention that last time). And of course perhaps what you want is an
editor you can enter whatever you like into, and that will do
whatever you tell it with it, instead of an editor that thinks it
knows what you're doing.
And the Rosegarden developers talk too damn much.
Chris
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