The composer wrote somewhere that the three most important things about organ playing technique are articulation, articulation, and articulation.
One of his other organ works has the wonderful direction “NB. Non si deve usare qui il maledetto legato d’organista di chiesa anglicana” - “don’t play this with an English cathedral organist’s stinking legato”
The ff chords at the start and end of that snippet are pretty much a wall of sound (with the pedal part cutting through everything else), but the mf bit in the middle is two part counterpoint, though not quite what that Bach might have written.
Don’t be misled by all the 32nd notes. The tempo marking is Moderato, but that’s based on 8th notes not quarters.
I used it years ago. Yes, it appears there has been no recent development.
Since them I have used SmartScore. X2 is the current version. With all of these programs, there is a question of whether it saves enough time and trouble to be worth even using it. With SharpEye, I found that most of the time, it wasn’t worth the effort. With SmartScore, I think the ratio was better.
But X2 was introduced in 2014, and hasn’t been updated since 2015, as far as I can tell. In other words, it is a dead product. I could not recommend it. moreover, it is substantially faster to work in Dorico than in Finale. So the ratio is changing. There aren’t many cases where I would even bother with SmartScore now.
From what I can tell, Photoscore is the only product in this category that is actively being improved and advanced. If you look at this Wiki page, it says that Photoscore uses the SharpEye SDK. That would be a concern, as it appears SharpEye has been dead well over a decade. I suspect Photoscore has moved on.
(On edit, it appears at some stage Neuratron, the makers of Photoscore, acquired the rights to SharpEye, although the Visiv site still offers the 13-yearold SharpEye product. My interpretation is that Neuratron is continuing to develop the SharpEye engine for use in Photoscore. I would have thought if the software is any good, it would be worthwhile for them to promote the product a bit. There really is very little information out there on Photoscore.)
Unfortunately the Photoscore site is extremely lightweight, providing no videos or other meaningful examples. They do offer free trials, of course. I would appreciate hearing real world experiences of the recent Photoscore versions.
Dear cparmerlee,
As I use Photoscore quite extensively since 3 years, I’ve had some nice experience with their support. You send a mail explaining the problem and someone answers quite accurately. I simply miss a forum like this one, it makes everything simpler.
In the last version, they’ve added a search and replace function which could be very useful. It turns out that if I search for cresco to replace it with expression cresc., it changes cresc. into lyrics or composer (I don’t remember… but not expression). Now they know the bug, and they told me to chose Subtitle to convert into Expression. Ok. But this needs to be repaired, right?
So I’m here waiting for an update
Apparently, there’s a lot you don’t know. SmartScore X2 Pro is not a dead product. Ok, it’s still 32 bit and the Mac scanning documentation is a disgrace being applicable to OS 10.5 and earlier. It’s easy enough to figure out from OS 10.6 on. In any case, it still works and pretty well—better than anything else I’ve used.
Musitek has promised a 64 bit version of SmartScore X2 Pro. For those of us on Mac OS, this is important as OS 10.15 is supposed to drop support for 32 bit applications. X2P is ok and works better in Finale due to Dorico’s … uhh… less than stellar MusicXML handling. Still, I find it well worth the $199 (Finale owner price). A 30 day demo is available but I’d hold off till the 64 bit version is released.
SS-X2P is the only one that I can count on to give acceptable results. Hopefully the next version will be better. I will upgrade in any case even if to maintain the same functionality.
Musitek’s Music-to-XML is the $99.99 app that was supposed to be bundled with Finale 25 until MakeMusic pulled it over copyright concerns (right or wrong decision should best be discussed in the Finale forums—and it has). Music-to-XML is a black box app in that in scans and outputs .xml. You cannot edit before you export. I’m not a fan. There is a $200 upgrade path to X2P if you buy it, however— overall savings is $100 off the $399 direct price. There’s no demo but Musitek will scan a file for you and email the .xml for free so that you can check it out.
Marc, I also took the opportunity to update Photoscore Ultimate to the newest version (2018.7) today. O dear, this application is still 32Bit (Mac version) and we are lucky that we can still use it. macOS Mojave is the last system version to support 32Bit. Hopefully Neuratron will be able to habe the App updated soon…
Concerning PhotoScore Ultimate, I spoke to Neuratron on the phone today. They are aware that the Mac version needs an update in the nearer future. They seem to be working on it. macOS Mojave is the last version supporting 32Bit applications…
Did you also get Audioscore 2018 in the bundle? I have done a lot of searching and could come up with only one video that actually showed that program in use. It was a string quartet, and showed a good result. I am curious how well it works across the board. And also the same question about Photoscore.
I do many arrangements of pop or jazz tunes. Some are elaborate, taking several weeks. Most are “quick and dirty.” I did 4 charts over the weekend for a combo that will be doing a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. I would love to have a workflow (someday) where I could begin by plugging in a recorded MP3, and have the software at least figure out the key, measures, melody lines etc, and build that into a score that has the right number of measures and maybe something approaching a useful bass line and melody.
Judging from the comments about Audioscore on the Sibelius forum, on a scale of 1 to 10 it rates about zero. I can’t remember anybody ever saying it was actually useful for anything. Some people go so far as to say their marketing department should be sued for fraud.
This video seems to be consistent with that sort of comment. The only thing that “nearly worked” was importing MIDI data, not audio - and Dorico does that already.
The Audioscore website makes claims like
Quickly Create Scores by Hand - Even if you cannot read or play music.
AudioScore Ultimate offers the novel concept of ‘serving’ you a set of notes already input which you can then quickly split, join, resize, and adjust the pitch of, purely on a performance level - no worrying about rests and technicalities such as the key signature, accidentals, augmentation dots, beaming, ties etc.
I rest my case, m’lud…
A typical thread from about a year ago on the Sibelius forum. All the answers are from regular, well known forum members there.
AudioScore problems
Does anyone have any success working with AudioScore? Even turning down the sensitivity and flattening pitches, any “sheet music” that I am able to generate with AudioScore is jibberish, musically discordant nonsense. I have contacted Sebelius and Neuratron (which makes AudioScore). Even with the simplest of CD music, I cannot get satisfactory results. Any help out there?
It’s useless. If you paid for the Ultimate version ask for your money back. If refused, ask for a real-life demo.
+1. Audioscore is rubbish.Uninstall it, you are just wasting disc space!
+1. Never got it to do anything useful.
Perhaps we’re all using it wrong. Anyone from Avid want to defend it? I know it’s a third-party add-on, but it’s advertised alongside Sibelius and the lite version is bundled with it. That implies a degree of recommendation!
No it just doesn’t work. Produces nothing of any value.
Unless, of course, it’s still offered for sale, works as advertised and is supported. All of which are still true.
Fortunately, your opinion is just that. Although you are entitled to it, you are wrong in this instance. No one makes you buy or like it. You really shouldn’t spread false information. And doubling down as you did is exactly that.
I have no oar in this nor any affiliation other than being a registered user (as I am of so many other apps). And the documentation is terrible… The app and company, however, are very much alive.
I didn’t spread any false information as far as I am aware. Please refrain from making personal attacks without offering any evidence. I said that the company has published no news, releases, or even patches in any public way that I can determine. That makes it, IMHO, a dead product, for which I hold a license. If you think any of this is inaccurate, please show us the evidence of recent developments, product news, patches or anything else that would indicate an ongoing status for this product.
I have several authoring products from Serif. These programs still work and I still use them from time to time. But they are dead products. The company has moved on. The fact that a program continues to work does not mean it is a live, active, progressing product.
The Sharpeye website looks like it died about 20 years ago IMO. The fact that Neuratom have stuck a “copyright 2018” notice on the bottom of it doesn’t change that.
One of the “joys” of the web is that it costs next to nothing to leave antique software up for sale for ever. If only one person per year buys it, that covers your costs. Anything more than that is 100% profit. Even if it only runs on Windows XP, there might still be somebody out there who refuses to upgrade there OS for religious reasons and wants to buy it.
I completely agree and appreciate your sharing this information. I jumped on QuicKeys years ago with the last version they released and spent hundreds of hours developing macros. They were finally called out that they were clearly not developing it and they said their developer died but they were actively looking for a new developer so I held on for years. They sold, and supported and kept the forum active and deleted any reference to Keyboard Maestro or other apps that would be active useful alternatives. It was clear however the app was slowly breaking with each new OS.
I certainly am leary ever buying software from any company that doesn’t have any real updates in the past year, unless it is a utility that doesn’t really need any.
It looks like it is still Windows only, I’d be interested to hear the progress of the Mac version.
