[Smt-talk] Music Notation Software Alternative

[Steven L. Rosenhaus]

As a composer and arranger of, ahem, many years, and as a teacher of composition, please allow me to make some observations and venture an opinion or 3.

* When I compose I prefer to work at a "real" instrument with paper (!) and pencil (!) (and eraser!). These days I will get to a first draft stage and then enter what I have into Finale. By real instrument I usually mean piano, but it can be guitar (my first instrument), and what I use depends on the genre of music I am writing.

* I find I can not compose using an electronic keyboard (digital piano, etc.) under any circumstances. I did it once and while the music I wrote is "okay" to my ears it sounds stilted.

* I have composed directly into Finale on occasion but always with a clear idea of the music in my head at the time. And this is only a recent phenomenon.

* I require my beginning composition students to write their first drafts in pencil on paper. I suggest but do not demand they do so at the piano though.

To me it is not so much the use of this or that instrument but the act of making a physical connection to the music one is writing. It helps somehow to clarify thought and to improve one's ability to critique one's own work on progress.

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Steven L. Rosenhaus
srosenhaus at earthlink.net

On May 7, 2014, at 4:39 PM, Paul Lombardi <lombardi at unm.edu> wrote:

> Dear Felicia,
>  
> I agree with you. I find that when people (students as well as composers with degrees) write directly into notation software, the results are often unmusical, awkward, or limited in musical depth. 
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