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Now that PC MIDI and digital audio software has come into its own with
relatively affordable and very capable packages like Cakewalk, Logic and
Cubase, a new market for dedicated notation packages has opened up. PCs have
also invaded the traditionally Mac-heavy education market - sequencers are
increasingly common in music class and band settings.
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Although packages like Cakewalk feature on-board notation capabilities - a
"staff view" in which you can view, enter and edit notation and print the
results - anyone who has seriously tried to whack out a lot of pages,
especially complex ones, can tell you that they're often limited or
downright buggy - not at all fun or easy to use.
Cakewalk's Overture 2.0 is a full-featured notation and publishing
solution that is easy enough for anyone with a basic grasp of music notation
to use. It takes a wide-bore approach, throwing in about every feature under
the sun and making them as easy to get at as a word processor. Dive into its
toolbar-driven, WYSIWYG environment and you'll get immediate results - dig a
little deeper and you'll uncover more advanced features than you'll ever
need.
The workspace is laid out with a row of toolbar icons and a transport
control topping a resizable and scalable staff view - the "score" window.
The Score Menu options allow you to tweak the default layout - choose how
many "systems" (linked staff groups) per page and how many measures per
system, page dimensions and margins, spacing between staves, systems, and
"groups" (which are series of systems, say all the woodwinds, or the rhythm
section). Even the spaces between various values of notes can be finely
controlled through a library of "allotment tables", which can be useful for
giving visual feedback as to the rhythm of a piece. An "engraver" table
wraps all of these functions into one dialog box when you're ready to
publish.
Everything is point and click. The first group of toolbars offers you the
standard selection, cut and paste, copy and erase tools, and gets a lot of
work done. You can also select groups of notes or individual notes and scale
them smaller or larger - for highlighting passages, or perhaps to notate out
or footnote an appogiatura or other ornamentation (often seen in classical
guitar or harpsichord notation), without taking up too much space.
The next group controls individual note and note-modification entries -
click and hold each one to bring up a detachable and floatable "palette" of
options. From these palettes you can select every input possibility - note
values (128th to triple-dotted whole notes, standalone and tied, tuplets,
nested tuplets - even harp pedal settings), ornamentations, dynamic and
articulation markings, notehead styles (standard, percussion, even gospel
"picture" notes), string instrument tablature, guitar-specific markings
(bends, hammer-ons, string numberings, etc.), jazz-specific-articulations
like slides and flutters.
The next group covers text markings - dynamics from pppp to ffff, tempo
markings, free-form comments, expression markings. The toolbar finishes with
options for clef selection, staff type, barline style (straight, repeat,
bracketed, endings, etc.) and quantization options. In short, you've got at
your fingertips anything you need to notate and annotate a score.
If you're starting a blank file, you can enter notes one by one with the
mouse or computer keyboard. Or more typically, you can record or step-record
a MIDI performance in real time. You can also import any standard MIDI file
(Cakewalk users note: you will have to save your .wrk files as .mids before
Overture can import them). Overture will play back anything that can be
displayed. Once you've created or imported a MIDI file you can concentrate
on the fine points of structure (repeats, codas, alternate endings),
dynamics, articulations and page layout. The toolbar system makes it easy to
accomplish all this in a short time.
Overture fully supports drum and percussion part mapping and notation. You
can play your MIDI drum kit over the entire range of a MIDI keyboard and
Overture will remap the notes onto a standard five-line percussion staff.
You can load various drum library maps or create your own custom ones. The
control here is excellent - you could, for example, notate both closed and
open hi-hats (or ringing and grabbed cymbals) on the same staff line with an
X and a circle-X symbol.
As mentioned above, Overture also has extensive string-instrument tablature
functions that make it easier to notate fixed or floating positions, finger
spans, alternative tunings, or capo positions. It even transposes fret
position numbers from string to string intelligently.
Likewise, the guitar-specific notation tools - for things like barre chords,
string bends, fingerings, hammer-ons, whammy bar markings, and tapping -
will be highly useful to anyone who wants to transcribe or notate
a guitar performance with real accuracy. The bend articulations are
available in increments as fine as 25 quarter steps within a range of 6
whole tones (-3 to +3 whole tones). You can also permanently attach many
articulations like bends to specific notes - move the note somewhere else
and the articulation stays with it - a real time-saver.
Chord patterns are easy to use, whether from preset libraries or your own
user-defined ones. In MIDI mode, Overture will also recognize step-recorded
chords. And it will transpose them intelligently.
When it's time to publish, the printout options are extensive for engraving
style and quantization. Again, you can draw upon standard libraries or
create your own templates. No problems printing with true-type fonts.
Who will benefit from using Overture? Anyone creating and handing out custom
charts - anything from full-blown band and orchestral arrangements to
chamber music to simple chord charts. Even the fussiest requirements are
supported, so probably all but the most avant-garde musicians (those using
non-standard or non-Western notations) will be satisfied. Overture is also a
suitable pedagogical tool - for school band and orchestra leaders, music
teachers, for multimedia developers who have music-education projects - all
can quickly whip up examples and excerpts. And for the growing
number of self-publishing musicians who want to quickly communicate their
musical ideas in a wider currency than just demos, it can't be beat. If you
can create MIDI - drumbeats, comps, pads, etc., Overture will output
readable, professional charts from your raw ideas.
Overture also makes a nice tool for experimenting with musical
textures as represented in visual terms. For example, you
could set up three staves. On the first, input a rapid stream of random 16th
pizzicato notes. On the second, lay in pulsing, dotted whole note horns. On
the
third, stabbing 32nd note piano clusters. Play it back and see how it sounds.
Add an accidental here, transpose there, play it again. You might be
surprised how this random visual approach can generate some interesting
sonic and textural results. You may end up with something you'd never have
imagined while shackled to your keyboard and your same old riffs (of course,
you might come up with utter crap - but it's only going to cost you a few
minutes). In the above case, I ended up with a
fun little piece of Stravinksyesque cacophony that I exported as a MIDI file
for later development and honing (they say if you take 100 monkeys, give
them 100 typewriters... ).
But seriously, Cakewalk has succeeded in creating an accessible,
full-featured, and very useful notation package that will please
professionals with demanding notation requirements along with those who just
need to make it look official. You can bang out the work and have some fun
doing it. If you need it, get it - it's worth the money.
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