SongTrellis
Music and Musical Know-how For You

Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  9/26/00; 5:15:20 AM Msg#:  726 (top msg in thread) Prev/Next:  725/727 Reads:  702

Andy Sylvester, one of my beta testers for the SongTrellis editor sent me these comments recently:

Dave,

I am sorry again that I have been so slow in writing. I am going to justtry to send short notes after each time I use Song Trellis. I don't thinkwe need to have a phone conversation yet, although I noticed your phonenumber in the "About SongTrellis" window today, so I know how to get intouch by phone if I need it. I appreciate your sending a list of the updates you have made to version 0.63.

I downloaded Moontrane.mid a little while ago, and I was able to open it in SongTrellis 0.63 and play it. From the work I have done with this version, it seems to be good - no crashes so far. Last week, I tried to open anotherMIDI file that I downloaded from another site, and SongTrellis 0.62 locked up. I am going to try that file again later today. Does SongTrellis have the ability to open any MIDI file, or can it only open ones that it creates?

I did some playing around with entering chords, and I noticed how the chords were "re-voiced" as I played the chord progression (i.e., chord played in different positions). Is there a default way that this is done? I have not tried the "Revoice Chords" option under the view menu yet.

Do you know how many voices the Mac can play at a time? When I look at the Select drop-down box on the main window, I see the ability to select 3 different melody voices and the chord voices, so that suggests the ability to play up to 7 distinct notes (assuming the chords are 4 note chords).

Is there a way to have a note play when you enter it? When I use the typewriter keyboard, I type a key and see the note appear, but have to play the song or make a selection and play the selection to hear it. I guess I am thinking of having the typewriter keyboard function as a mini-organ. Iassume that when you have been entering the different songs on theSongTrellis site, you are using an external synthesizer keyboard to enter the chords and tunes.

Is there a way to do articulation of notes in SongTrellis? I am thinking of legato and staccato type articulation (as a minimum). In the small amount of sequencer work I have done, I always had to adjust the note lengthmanually, so I almost never did it because it was a lot of work.

I have noticed in my SongTrellis directory that there seem to be a number of temporary files there. They may have been created by program crashes, but is this something that SongTrellis does normally?

One last thing for this note: are you open to feature requests? To me,SongTrellis seems to be a almost-complete application, so if you arelimiting the feature set to the current set right now, I understand. Using SongTrellis has renewed my interest in composition, and in the work of Joseph Schillinger, who developed a mathematically-based system of musical composition. I am trying to see how I can use SongTrellis with the Schillinger method. One feature that I would be interested in is ifSongTrellis is a scriptable application (via AppleScript or Frontier). That would open some possibilities for applications that could work with SongTrellis. Anyway, I am not trying to pressure you in any way, justtrying to find out where you are.

Hope you had a good Labor Day weekend!

Andy

• Re: Comments on SongTrellis Editor, David Luebbert, 9/26/00; 5:20:05 AM

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