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journal: mac
The Search For The Long Lost Software
I need your help…
I need your help…
I write music. A simple enough statement to make, but composing takes a lot of thought. And then you have to write it down. Now this is where I find a huge pit fall. I have used notation applications such as Sibelius and Melody Assistant to try and get my scores down but I have yet to find one that works as well as my very first music application.
One day in 1994, a van pulled up in front of my house. There was a knock on the door. A few minutes later I sat in the living room staring at a big white box with a huge multi-coloured Apple on the side. It was a Performa 5200. That night, when my dad came home, we unpacked it and set it up. In the wide array of included software was an application, ConcertWare by Jump! Software. It was so much fun to use, because it was simple. I was 7 at the time and I managed to use it to make simple songs.
Now, compared to today’s applications it falls far behind, feature-wise. But in terms of how easy it was to do stuff it was one of the best applications I have ever used. Unfortunately, Jump! Software have vanished and ConcertWare is buried in the graveyard of Classic apps never to be updated to OS X. It doesn’t work correctly in Classic, as the sound is all messed up.
This is why I need your help. Do you know where I can find the developers of ConcertWare? Or is there an OS X application that’s as easy to use as ConcertWare was? I would like to see this application resurrected and brought into the world of OS X before it’s too late. If you have any answers, please leave them below.
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thinkback
From: http://arts.ucsc.edu/ems/music/equipment/co mputers/notation/notation.html
“The first Mac program that printed music from a graphics screen was ConcertWare, by Chad Mitchell it was impressive for the day, but too simple for academic users. It would play scores in a very straight manner with the internal Mac sound and extract parts from a score. Later versions expanded the capabilities a lot and included MIDI playback. Chad set up a company called Great Wave software to market ConcertWare, but the program, although popular, was not a good moneymaker. (It was not copy protected) Chad also wrote educational programs, that did generate revenue. Eventually ConcertWare was withdrawn and the code was sold. It apparently wound up part of the Miracle Piano system.”
Meanwhile, the Wiki crew—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Piano—report:
“The Miracle Piano teaching system was a MIDI keyboard/teaching tool created by The Software Toolworks for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Mac and PC. It consisted of a keyboard, connecting cables, and either software on 3.5” floppies or an NES cartridge. When connected to the console or computer, a user followed the on-screen notes. Its marketed value was as a tool to teach kids and to play the piano. It provided hundreds of lessons, and was advertised as the perfect adjunct to formal lessons. Due to its prohibitive price and low sales, the keyboard and NES cartridge together are a rare find. Some of the NES Miracle keyboards were later converted for PC use - the Nintendo Seal of Quality on these boards was covered up with a piece of plastic.”
I got one of the original issues of Concertware for the Mac Classic. There were a few faults with it: The font supplied did not print with the correct alignment on my printer (which was a Mac printer) and it took a lot of correspondence with Great Wave before they supplied something that worked. Ties and slurs between different “systems” crossed over the clefs and key signatures, which looked messy. Again, this was fixed, perhaps because I pointed it out, or because someone else did. I later got Concertware Pro, which certainly worked OK under OS 7.5, but I don’t know about later OS versions. One annoying feature was that there was confusion between ties and slurs. If you slurred a phrase (e.g. to indicate smooth playing, or to be sung in one breath) and two adjacent notes happened to be at the same pitch, then these were automatically tied, and there was no way of removing the extra tie. If the programming had started from the assertion “ties and slurs may be nested to any depth”, a better result might have been obtained. Another nice enhancement would have been “stretchy” lines, for indicating the durations of syllables in a song. Generally, though, it produced a really professional-looking result.
ConcertWare works on OS X—I know; I’m using it. I don’t have Classic on my computer, either. However, there is a trick, and it’s complicated. First, you have to install the free, open-source program called DOSBox, which emulates DOS and works well on OS X. Next, you have to install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox (yes, it can be done; go to the DOSBox forums to find out how). Then, you install the Windows version of ConcertWare. Voila! (By the way, the same CD that installs ConcertWare 1.5.7 on your Mac will install a Concertware version 2.0 in Windows.) One note: to run ConcertWare in DOSBox on OS X, you either need to have a PowerPC Mac that has at least a 1.6 to 1.8 GHz processor, or you need an Intel Mac of any sort. I have tried this both in Panther and Tiger, and it works for both. And don’t try other DOS emulators such as Microsoft Virtual PC; they totally wreck MIDI. I went to all this trouble because, as far as I’m concerned, ConcertWare is the best, most intuitive notation program (and I’ve used many) to get your musical ideas down quickly.
This sounds good, since CW is the best notation software I’ve ever been dealing with too. I’m running Mac OS X on an Intel Mac now. Bu where could I get a copy of CW for Windows. I only have one for Mac.
I don’t know what version of ConcertWare you have, but you might want to just try inserting your ConcertWare CD in a Windows machine. If it’s like my CD, you’ll find it has versions of ConcertWare for Mac and Windows on the same CD. If that’s the case for you, then when you set up ConcertWare in DOSBox on the Mac, it will automatically install the Windows version.
OK, I have determined that ConcertWare does work in Classic in some instances. I have one G5 Imac on which, as I noted, I’ve installed ConcertWare under DOSBox and Windows 3.1; I also recently installed Classic on this machine and the Mac version of ConcertWare (1.5.9), but ConcertWare didn’t work. However, I also have two G4 Macs; Concertware works well in Classic on both these machines! (Can you tell I really like ConcertWare?)
Hi, I too would dearly like to run my Concertware programme that came free with a Mac in 1995 on Windows machines.
I tried putting the CD in the drive, but it didn’t want to install. Is there a trick to this?
I tried using Wise Installer but just got an error message saying Concertware is not a Win 32 bit programme.
I thought I once saw a version for Windows being marketed, but can’t find it now.
Any pointers gratefully received - or an address to buy a Windows version on a CD.
| strawberrythief | May. 25, 2008 | |
| 1:35 am |
1.
First a few questions… what made it so easy to use? What features did you enjoy about it that you don’t find in other tools? Personally, I find Melody Assistant powerful and flexible enough to allow me to design my creations, though there are some areas where it is not suited (don’t even mention the word “loop” to it or it’ll smack you). Maybe there’s a way to squeeze this ease-of-use out of another application?