[Dixielandjazz] Smartscore

[Trumpetom at aol.com]

Romans Said:
<<Have any of you had any experience with this software?
SMARTSCORE 

http://www.musitek.com/>>
 
It is the only music writing program I have ever used, I have had it for a 
couple of years. It is unique in that it will scan & recognize printed music. It 
is also very fast for entering music manually. There are a few scanning 
recognition errors & I have to spend a little time correcting (this is easy to 
fix). Also in transposition to different keys or clefs, sometimes the note stems 
direction needs correction or accidentals are incorrect (also very easy to 
fix). After transposing, some entertaining issues come up, like C-flats, F-flats, 
B sharp chords, and the like. This stuff is easy to manually override. One 
disadvantage is it will not playback chord symbols (it will notate them nicely, 
however). If you ask it to, It will play back all note or note clusters in 
proper meter.

I seldom use the scanning feature anymore because most printed music does not 
have the uniform 4 measures per line favored by a lot of musicians. It took a 
while to learn( I have a learning disability), but I can now enter music on 
my computer using the mouse, faster than I can write it by hand on manuscript 
paper. Another advantage to me is that the printout is rather large & easy to 
read, therefore I can read my music without the inconvenience of glasses. I use 
the program mostly for making lead sheets with chord symbols. 

A couple times it was a godsend when I took a piece of piano & vocal sheet 
music to scan then transpose for a female singer & an accompanist (the 
accompanist could not play chord symbols therefore needed all notes written). It saved 
a lot of time.

I am happy with the program. It has a lot of features I have never explored. 
The people who sell it are very nice. I found it to my advantage to buy the 
printed instruction manual for reference, rather than use the same manual 
information stored in the program. 

Tom Loeb,
Riverside California
www.hotsytotsyboys.com