Since a couple of weeks I've been busy at an easy pace with some Notation program with LSO sounds. Let us name it: Xnote. First captured by the demo version and the ease of workflow I ordered this together with an update for Sonar (bundled package: Elite). Much later I bought some additional sounds.
Every day - a modest amount of hours, to keep things relaxing -, I worked on a project, in fact copying notes from a printout of an older work, notated with my very first notation program Mozart which has no decent playback facilities.
Now, after almost one month of struggling with the ins and outs of Xnote, which has some great advertisments and marketing department, I must come to the conclusion that in spite of the long life (I reckon it saw daylight three years ago) this Xnote will be the source of many deseases, like headache, migraine, stress, sleeplessness (and not only in Seattle), domestic problems, broken glasses, smashed in windows and finally the local police to calm down everything.
To list
- no mordents
- no inverted mordents,
- no turns in either direction
- no <> with or without a dynamic at the beginning, middle and end
- changing keys gives a list just the half of the circle of fifth
- no blockwise filling rests
- no automatic movement to next bar/measure when inputting
- no breaks with pause (system breaks are different stuff)
- no hidden bars/measures
- system depth not consistent at print time
- spacing staffs is fixed, no manual intervention possible to space the staffs
- input of articulations often not a single key (e.g. hitting 6 three times for "attack" is rather stupid when you must do it on a block of selected notes)
- note lengths determined by letters instead of arguments of two (W=whole, H=half, Q=quarter, etc...)
- no small(er) note heads, except for grace notes
- no beaming system where you can determine which type of beaming you want
- no keyboard input of compound triplets/multiplets, e.g. triplet of eights where the middle is divided into two sixteenths
- no multiple voice input with keyboard when both voices are playing the same melody (so you want inputting only one note for both/all voices)
- accidentals aren't following the key and extend their scope to all subsequent notes unless you hit escape, so a sharp on one note will give a sharp on all following notes
- inputting notes with a keyboard doesn't follow the key, so you can have a g-flat in a piece with key D-major
- no tremolo lines between two different notes, which are often used in orchestral pieces to shorten the layout
- slurs for independed voices on one staff aren't possible, it is always a slur for the first voice (I tricked it to get it done)
- enharmonic correction doesn't work correctly when you have more voices playing the same note. Only the one for voice 1 (most upper) will change, the other ones must be done by dragging with the mouse
- cross-stave beams aren't possible, often used in piano sequences
- midi output of a grandstaff is limited to only one midi track, instead of two (right hand AND left hand)
- midi output of multiple voices is just one combined midi track, I would expect two for two voices, three for three voices.....
- copying from voice one to voice two isn't possible
- no tempo setting within a bar, only at the beginning (even Mozart has a tempo change at either beat!!!)
- no splitting voices when you do a "part output" to print
and I can go on and on with playback features (.e.g. the trill on a VST piano doesn't work; I had to write them down), the mixer, adding multiple ARIA players, changing instruments, ....... it all looked so promising.
Conclusion, this Xnote can be used for crossgrade to Finale and that is what I am intend to do as soon as possible......... Some of you may remember my "problems" about the demo version of Finale. I surrender!!!!
Just recovering from a very, very deep notated depression,
Raymond - singing like a woodpecker
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Originally Posted by Michael_uk
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