Sibelius 7 Sucks

Well, I talked myself into buying Sibelius 7 because the classical guitar sound they have is marvelous (I heard another composer's score with that sound). Problem is, THERE IS NO SOUND OUTPUT. I really, really hate stuff like this, because it's 2012 and there is no excuse for user-hostile interfaces anymore. Especially on a program that I spent several hundred dollars on.

My test for notation programs is simple: Can I figure out the basics intuitively, without needing manuals or tutorials? If not, it's a failure. Sibelius is a failure, just like Finale was (Another program I spent several hundred dollars on only to toss in the trash after a few hours of miserable frustration). Only Encore and Guitar Pro 5 have ever passed my test, so those are what I use (GP5 only when I need TAB, which is hardly ever). After using Encore for nearly twenty years, it is still the only one that allows a fast enough workflow for a COMPOSER/ARRANGER to use. Sibelius and Finale are only for digital typesetters, publishers, and those into self-flagellation.

I figured this might happen though, so I was prepared to only use Sibelius for the sounds by importing Music XML files and MIDI files I created with Encore. Even that failed.

When I launch Sibelius, I get that wretched, blasted Sibelius schmaltz, so I know the output is working, but when I press play, no sound. I went through all the steps on the AVID Help page for Sibelius, and still nothing. Poppycock.

Now, if I chose MIDI instead of Sibelius 7 Sounds I can hear a piano sound way back in the barely-audible range, so I know the MIDI file is playing back, JUST NOT THE SINGLE SIBELIUS CLASSICAL GUITAR SOUND I SPENT $500.00 FOR!

When will I ever learn: Encore is the only notation program that a composer can use.

UPDATE: It's worse than I thought. After spending a couple of hours reinstalling the program from scratch (There are FOUR discs), I did finally get sound... but only a piano sound, far, far away. Guess what? There's no way to permanently change the sound without changing to a specific guitar staff. You can change the sound in the mixer, but it will sound an octave high because... SIBELIUS DOESN'T PLAY 8va/8vb CLEFS! Can you believe that BS? Since all I wanted Sibelius for was formatting and playback, this is a deal breaker and I'm going to ask for my money back. As you regular readers know, I notate complex guitar music on a grand staff with 8vb treble clefs, like so:



Well, in the Sibelius System, in the Evil Trek Universe, where Spock wears a beard... this will always be piano music.

I can't believe AVID sacrificed the sequencer capabilities in what is supposed to be a world class product FOR COMPOSERS. Everybody who uses Finale and Sibelius scoff at Encore because it's so, "primitive." Well, AT LEAST ENCORE PLAYS BACK TRANSPOSING CLEFS WHEN YOU USE THEM.

I hate to curse on MMM, but Sibelius is bullshit, and I'm going to ask for my money back.

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Happy New Year from MMM

Here's to a great 2012 for everybody. Unfortunately, I'm still dealing with my ill mother, and though she made it through the last scare, she is in hospice care now as there is nothing left to do for her. We did have a nice Christmas eve together though, so that was nice, but then she crashed again on Christmas day. Ugh.

Looking forward to happier times.

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Blog Note

I am accumulating a list of posts to do, but my mother is in the hospital and is not expected to survive. So, my schedule has consisted of nothing but daily practice, working out, and then sitting with her. Needless to say, my heart isn't in posting right now.

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Guest Post at Deft Digits

Joe Walker, who I first discovered at the excellent From the Woodshed site, has a wonderful new blog called Deft Digits - GREAT guitar blog title: Wish I'd thought of that! - and he has a series going over there called, Discover a Guitarist. The idea is to expose his readers to guitarists discovered by we who have been around for a while.

Well, Joe paid me the distinct honor of asking me to contribute an entry to the series, and so I did. Since most of Joe's readers are rock and jazz oriented students, I attempted to broaden their horizons by telling the story of my discovery of Kazuhito Yamashita, who remains the most awesome nylon string player in the world, as far as I'm concerned.

So, head on over an poke around for a while - the previous entries are excellent too - and thank you, Joe!

No pretty girl for this post, as I'm bummed about the death of a long time non-musician inspiration, Steve Jobs.



R.I.P. Steve, and thanks for making my work easier and more fun.

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Book Review: J.S. Bach's Musical Offering by Hans T. David

I've gotten myself into a nice reading habit again - since I moved into my new house - so I guess I'm going through my music theory library yet another time.



This post is about Hans Theodore David's seminal book, J.S. Bach's Musical Offering of 1945.

David was the first, I believe, to figure out that Bach had an organizational scheme in mind with The Musical Offering: Previous to his work, most musicologists thought that the collection was a casual, even sort of random, collection of fugues and canons with a sonata for transverse flute thrown in. Dr. David presents, quite convincingly, evidence that there is a specific order to the pieces, and that this order reveals a very sublime and balanced plan.

What really sets this book above most works concerned with large works or collections, however, is the analysis. David's style is quite vivid and easy to follow - you'll want a study score like my little Eulenberg edition - and not much escapes his gaze.

So, if you want some serious insights into BWV 1079, look no further. This is for advanced students, obviously, but with that caveat, I can't think of any better way to increase your enjoyment and understanding of The Musical Offering.

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Note to Garageband Users: Export Song to Disk ADDS DISTORTION

I have been supremely stumped by a problem with Garageband: The projects sound clean when played back within Garageband, but the AAC/m4a files created under Share/Export Song to Disk sound absolutely horrible due to added distortion. I'm not talking about the usual audio quality loss due to compression from the project to AAC/m4a, but a huge amount of distortion which is especially noticeable in the lower registers.

Well, I have found a workaround: Instead of Share/Export Song to Disk, which creates the AAC/m4a file directly from the Garageband project, use Share/Send Song to iTunes. The song will then arrive in iTunes as an uncompressed AIFF file, which sounds just as perfect as the playback from within the Garageband project. At that point - in iTunes - go to Advanced/Create AAC Version and the song will be duplicated from the AIFF version to an AAC/m4a file. No more distortion! You can then drag and drop the AAC file from iTunes to your desktop, which effectively duplicates it, as the original stays in iTunes. Yeah, it's quite a few steps, but the AAC conversions Garageband does are so bad as to be unusable.

For some reason, Garageband does not convert from a project directly to AAC/m4a worth a darn, but iTunes does just fine converting from AIFF to AAC. No, I have no idea why, and yes, it is very un-Apple like.

Since this has been driving me crazy FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, I thought I'd put my solution on the intertubes for anyone else who is having this problem. I had actually gone back to Protools LE and even set up Cubase LE because of this problem, so it's nice to be back on Easy Street with Garageband: If you just record solo stereo guitar, you don't need the complexity of Protools or Cubase, not to mention the hardware limitations of Protools.

Now I can get back to my recording project!

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Book Review: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by Heinrich Schenker

I bought this translation when it first came out back in 1992, so I've been through it before. After all these years, though, I had only vague recollections of it - almost all I remembered was being disappointed that there were not more insights into Beethoven's compositional practice - so I decided to give it another shot.



What I appreciate now that went right over my head before is that Schenker was responding to several egregious liberties taken with the Ninth by musicians who did not understand it, most notably the execrable Richard Wagner.



More than just a simple failure to understand the text of the score, what Wagner and those in his camp believed was that Beethoven's deafness made his orchestrations faulty. Schenker provided history with a much needed remedy to these wrong-headed ideas that goes beyond being merely a palliative: He actually cures the disease of thinking Beethoven's inner-ear was not up to the task of orchestrating in a very powerful and dispositive way.



About that powerful style: I also remembered being turned off by Schenker's mode of writing here, which is harshly polemical. Evidently, this is, if anything, more so with the original German - You could fill an ocean with the exclamation points in this book.



Now I understand why Schenker was so insensed [Dictionary says that's not a word - Ed.] (Yeah, but I use it all the time anyway - Huc.): He was trying to rescue this transcendent masterpiece from the ignorant hoi polloi who were desecrating it. For that, then, we owe Schenker a huge debt of gratitude. We take for granted now that these issues have been settled, but it was not always so. As late as 1912, when Schenker wrote the original of this book, many misconceptions about the Ninth still persisted.



If you want to get any "Shenkerian Analysis" insights from this, you can forget it: 1912 was before Schenker came up with those - IMO dubious at best - theories. Also being from 1912, the harmonic analysis is quite primitive, but useful enough as a guide that I intend to build on it next time through. Yes, I feel the need to go through this again, but next time with a full score (The only score of the Ninth I have is the Liszt piano transcription, which is great for analyzing the harmony, but impossible for the orchestration, obviously).



Not for the faint of heart then, but highly valuable from a historical perspective at least, and there are some cool compositional insights, they are just few and far between.

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