Yes: the first 1000 years of western art music was all notated, and I think we can conclude from this data set that the quality of the music was pretty high.
Every single great composer whose name we still hail and who died prior to about 1980 scored their music the old fashioned way.
Possibly, but there will be great and awful music written with whichever tool you use. The point, I think that everyone is trying to make is that to be good at anything youāve got to put an awful lot of time in. There are no easy routes to greatness in any field.
And part of that time is in learning the language and techniques of whatever you want to be good at and part of it is in learning the tools. Weāre very lucky in our field to have a huge number of tools at our disposal. The easiest way is to pick the one that seems to connect you to the act of music making the best for you and get on with the difficult bit, which is learning the never-ending craft of musicianship.
Best of luck in all your endeavours.
P
I donāt believe that there are any studiesā¦ after all, music is an art. And ALL art is subjective.
As far as working in a DAW, many great film composers (Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri, etc.) start work in a DAW, and then finish into notation. There are other great composers who start with a piano, pen, and paper. And still yet, there are some wonderful composers who start with notation software. It all depends on what suites you best.
From my personal experienceā¦ I have seen MANY terrible examples of music created solely in a DAW. And that had nothing to do with the DAW process, but rather the ācomposerāsā lack of musical knowledge.
I believe there is a great insight that comes from learning to read music, getting to see how music is put together, and being part of rehearsals where you find your place in the music. You see the bigger picture and little picture all at once. People who learn only from DAWs sometimes lack that knowledge (not always of courseā¦ always exceptions), and the music they produce clearly demonstrates that of knowledge and understanding.
Robby
Hereās my final thought on this thread hi-jack ( for whatever itās worth): Who cares? Who cares how you make the music that is to be heard?
If notation works, use it. If DAW works, use it. If both work in conjunction, use them. 2 sticks and a log? use it. It doesnāt really matter in the end. What works best for me may not work at all for you and so on, ad nausea.
Having come all the way from version 2 of Sibelius I simply reconfigured the number pad to the same configuration and carried on seamlessly. Job done!
Honestly, by the time I got to the bottom of the page, I forgot that was the issue that started the whole thread! LOL
Well, they also couldnāt use 4 or 5 as the quarter note as that would be copyright infringement on Products A and B.
I honestly doubt you can copyright key combinations for common functions.
I have to assume that @Tokkemon is making a peculiar kind of joke.
Software wouldāve run out of key commands not long after WW2ā¦ OTOH, copyright expires after 70 years, so letās claim the first ones in the public domain real quickly!
I think this whole niche industry could use a bit more levity. Itās all just dots on a page, after all!
Copyright in most countries these days expires 70 years after the death of the last surviving creator of the copyrighted work, or 95 years after the date of creation in the case of works for hire. Copyright does not have a fixed term for works which are not works for hire.
Says Bach, āHold my beer.ā
yes, but my point earlier was that key commands are not going to fall under the same category of copyright. Programs, at least as I understand it, usually fall under intellectual property and cannot be duplicated outright, but that doesnāt mean that their functions cannot be duplicated by other developers. This is why there are a million photoshop knockoffs. This is why there can be umpteen music notation apps. You cannot reproduce the code (and there are, I imagine, limits to reverse engineering algorithms too) but you are not prevented from engineering similar functions. Input to computers is pretty universal: keyboard and mouse, with a few tweaks for design and language here and thereā¦ but you cannot copyright input into the program, as this is a fundamental and universal building block to computing. From copyright.gov (the USA copyright governmental entity):
How do I protect my idea?
Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something.
A method of input would be a āmethod of doing somethingā, I would think.
I was responding to PjotrB, trying to make sure that erroneous information about copyright isnāt being given out.
I quite agree that a person/company canāt copyright the use of any particular key to achieve a desired input result. The only reason Finale and Sibelius used different numbers as far as I can tell is so that people wouldnāt accuse one of copying the other.
I donāt think thatās it at all. I can speak with direct experience of the design decisions of two of the ābig threeā scoring applications, and the choice of which number key should produce which duration for both Sibelius and Dorico was entirely pragmatic, concerning the specific design goals (in Sibeliusās case, efficient use of the numeric keypad to handle common durations and common accidentals with the main grid of nine numeric keys; in Doricoās case, efficient use of the number row above the main keyboard). We chose 6 for quarter note in Dorico because it made sense given what we wanted to do with the other keys on the number row, not because it was different from both Sibelius and Finale.
I hope it was more or less clear that my comment referring the duration of copyright was made in jest, not aiming to provide any factual information on legal issues.
Well you were pretty specific with that ā70 yearsā so I just thought being more accurate would be good. No big deal.
Think of what we did for hundreds of years prior to computers. For many of us, itās how we did it before for 20 years or more. Yes, Iām that old and the personal computer is that young.
Close but not quite correct. Per the US Library of Congress Copyright Office for works published on or after January 1, 1978:
The term of copyright protection of a work made for hire is 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever expires first . (A work not made for hire is ordinarily protected by copyright for the life of the author plus 70 years.)
I worked on that.