notation programs_
(vs. those ol' hand methods)_
Doing anything out of the ordinary using software can be anyway a time-consuming nightmare. But it is possible. Sibelius and Finale have catered (thankfully) for the high-end market, leaving enough interface tools to manipulate a score to better suit any aesthetic taste. Nevertheless the amount of time spent nutting out formatting logistics, notation issues, and even imaging is often better left for later.
For many the solution is to write first by hand, then post-composition transferring the score to software. Even for the composer not trying to re-inventing the wheel, there is a certain satisfaction etching out ones' ideas on paper.
You can take the page to the piano, down to the park, rip it up, cut it, spill coffee on it—and it still won't crash. Sure, it has that »retro« feel, but it is often more impressive than your souped-up software version.
Inputting an aleatoric passage in Sibelius or Finale, for example, is intensely time-consuming. But it's a job that could be done in a few minutes on paper. At the desk one also eliminates the often-lamented use and abuse (!) of the 'cut and paste' method. Unless you are a loop composer (like Bernhard Lang), cut and paste is fantastic, but not-so-perfect for those looking for an integrated whole and musical innovation. Sure, using software can disrupt the natural flow of ideas; instead of being composition-focussed, one is software-focussed: thinking about what works within the software interface and not what may be more practical for performance. Experimenting—even doodling on paper—sometimes produces some highly interesting results.
And then there are Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) sounds. If they are of low quality, they can quickly become annoying to the ear; some claim it pollutes the initial musical concept through a dependance on the synthesised sound and not the imagined sound, causing even the composer to become aurally 'lazy'. But if a composer is entirely dependent on MIDI, and cost is irrelevant, the Vienna Symphonic Library is a outstanding-quality solution.
"Wow, you wrote that all in your head without MIDI playback" or "Wow, you've composed that all at the desk/piano" is often what you'll hear. It's almost as if using a computer program means half of the composing is automatically done for you, which, I'm sorry to inform everyone though, it doesn't.
Essentially, composing is still that age-old time-absorbing task. I'm not the first to say that composing has "become much easier" with notation software—but it has certainly made some important steps forward. There are still those eternal pitfalls, akin to the stylistic constraints that faced even the best 'Joseph Haydn' or 'Wolfgang Mozart'. Even so, the old axiom still holds: the practicality and tactility of pen-on-paper should never be under-estimated. 
© Daniel Salecich, March 2007.
External links
- Apple Logic Pro | Faber-Castell | FinaleMusic | Sibelius Software | Vienna Symphonic Library