The New York music notation community had its own British invasion earlier this week, as Steinberg’s product marketing manager Daniel Spreadbury paid a visit to industry professionals. It’s been nearly three years since Daniel and his former Sibelius colleagues began the new chapter of their careers at Steinberg, where they have been building a new music scoring application.
The centerpiece of Daniel’s visit was a presentation to representatives of most of the major concert publishers with New York-area offices. Accompanied by Greg Ondo, Steinberg’s longtime field marketing manager for North America, Daniel gave a detailed three-hour presentation on the software to an assembled group of about twenty people, all of whom were seeing the application for the very first time.
Much of what Daniel covered has been documented already on his blog, in the interview he gave to me earlier this year, or in the interview he gave in May to SoundNotion. He walked the audience through the different modes of the program, from setup to writing, engraving, playback and printing; explained how the program will separate out “engraving” rules from “notation” rules; and described the fundamental philosophy of the software: “Automation is good if it does what you would have done anyway.”
The music examples that Daniel presented all originated as MusicXML files, to demonstrate how the application renders music notation without any further tweaking. There was much discussion given to the fine points of music engraving and preparation, on subjects ranging from accidental stacking to house style defaults. The experienced engravers and publishers in the room had an impressive accumulated knowledge of Finale, Sibelius and Score, not to mention expertise about non-software methods of producing music, and some of the conversation naturally referred to those platforms as the audience grasped how the Steinberg software would be similar or different.
The post-presentation chatter went on for more than an hour, as attendees were eager to talk with Daniel and among themselves about what they had just seen.
Afterwards, Daniel was given a tour of the Boosey & Hawkes New York office by editorial director Maggie Heskin, the meeting’s host. Looking at some pristine Not-a-set masters and other meticulous hand-copied scores was an inspiring reminder of the high standards that the new software is attempting to achieve.
Bob Ross
Well, does Daniel give us a name yet? If they are having a preview is there a rough target date for launch?
Peter Roos
Very cool. :)
Ralph L. Bowers Jr.
As to names for the new notation software from Steinberg:
1. Petrucci
2. Tallis
3. (Your suggestion here)?
Ralph L. Bowers Jr.
And another possibility: Bravura (fits since their font is named thusly).
Paolo
If it had been a Native Instrument product, it would have been easy: Skore.
Bryan
Lol!!,..Yup!,….Clever Poalo!! :)
Amy Macdonald
Sounds fantastic……….eager to hear more.
sousperregui
Je le nommerais BOLERO pour mille raisons…
Que je ne saurais exposer ici. et encore BRAVO! emilio
Dave Lang
So happy to hear that this software is progressing. I want them to light a fire under MakeMusic. I’ll definitely be trying this new software out.
Bryan
Here Here!!
Mat
I’ll guess… This is Steinberg, right?
Notelab or Nscribe.
Neil Sands
The top picture in the feature exposes Daniel for the frustrated double bass player he really is.
Stravinsky
The fire is going to be under Sibelius and the ridiculous approach of avid who fired the best notation team on the world.
waiting to switch to a notation app with real focus on modern music
Bryan
Yup to that too!!
John-Allen Connolly
The more I’ve had to deal with Avid, the more frustrated I’ve become. Far too many layers.
Been working with Sibelius since Version 2 and am likely to continue, unless….
Abraham
So… was there _anything_ new Daniel shared in your VIP meeting? I’d be very interested in seeing the default output of the files he showed. Did he show how the user might interact with the software? Is it mostly what we are used to already? I know I’m not the only one curious to see what’s been happening lately with his developers. Thanks for sharing, Phil!
Philip Rothman
Hi Abraham: Daniel demonstrated the software to the audience and showed its default output. It was all quite new, as the software has not been demonstrated publicly yet.
Ralph L. Bowers Jr.
Philip,
Did Daniel give any indication when it may be released or at least be released to beta testers?
Philip Rothman
No.
Hans
I hope they’ll get it up and running soon.
Already have $ 1K in a safe place for when its available
Gyorgy Gonda
May we’ll be able to write modern music as Penderecki’s scores ???
Martha Bishop
Very eager also to be able to do barless music easily!
Peter Ballinger
Will it do correct multirests in 4/2 meter single instrument parts?
Will it allow choice of eighth-rest plus 3 eighths with all three eighths beamed automatically?
Will it let you interpolate a cue-size clef at the beginning of a part without changing the initial clef?
Richard Rolf
Impatiently waiting!
Will it be possible to write “by hand”
with Ipen and Ipad.
“Bolero”
Is my wote.
Kindly Richard Rolf / Sweden
Denver Bennett
I’ve delayed any upgrades of Sibelius since version 5 anticipating the arrival of the new software.
I would suggest the name: Schoenberg
He taught theory and harmony.
DCH
“Delius”