Encore!

Writing music isn't easy. I don't mean composing it but the process of committing all those dots and lines to paper to produce a legible manuscript.
There's something of an art to it, and lust as some people have neater handwriting than others, so some musicians can produce neater scores than others. But as well as avoiding smudges you have other things to consider, such as which way the stems go, how certain groups of notes should be beamed and, not least of all, how to space it out.
Encore is the latest score writing program for the ST. You would expect it to do a good job, coming as it does from Passport, a respected name in music software circles. It has also enjoyed a good trial period running on the Apple Mac, and the ST version is release 1.3.5. Passport have also ported it to the PC so they must think they're on to a good thing.
The program arranges the music on staves just as if you were writing on manuscript paper. It can handle up to 64 staves per page and each stave can hold up to four voices. This will cater for 99 per cent of classical music and 101 percent of rock and pop!
One of the nice things about it is that it can play back the score you enter via Midi - over 32 Midi channels if you have Passport's Midi Transport Interface. This is very useful for checking that what's on the page is correct, although Encore does not compare with a dedicated sequencing program.


On paper
Encore produces Postscript files and offers a range of printout options. However, the trade-off for all this is the need for a high resolution monitor and a machine with at least 1Mb of ram, and 2Mb is recommended. You also need a hard disk.
To print the PostScript files, Encore uses UltraScript, a Postscript interpreter. The whole package is supplied on three disks which are not copy-protected. Well done, Passport! Dongles and key disks, especially when running from a hard disk, are a pain. Passport are definitely doing the decent thing here so don't be a schmuck and rip them off, eh!
The programs have to be installed on to your hard disk. Encore uses Gdos to display the fonts. Ultrascript is installed separately.
There is one main window which contains the score. A very useful Size To Fit function reduces the score so you always see a page width in the window, whatever size you make it.
There's also a narrow Palette window which pops up on the left of the screen from which you select note durations, clefs, dynamic markings, ornaments, music symbols and editing tools.
You can select the number of systems (staves) per page and measures per system (0ars per line) before you begin. You can alter this at any time during the production of the score so there's scope for juggling the score after it's been entered.
Add the music. There are four ways to enter a score - with the mouse, from a file on disk and from a Midi keyboard in either real or step-time. Encore can read Midi files and also files produced by Master Tracks Pro, Passport's major sequencing program.
For the ultimate in accuracy, step-time entry is best. You can select note durations from the Palette or the ST's numeric keys and either click the notes on to the score or play them in from a Midi keyboard.
You can use Backspace to delete an erroneous note, stack up notes to produce chords and add dots and accidentals. It's advisable to use Auto Space to ensure the notes are spaced correctly.
With real-time music entry you play the piece on an attached Midi keyboard and the notes appear onscreen as pitches only. You can filter out unwanted data, such as program changes, pitch bend and modulation.
This isn't used in the production of the score so it's probably as well to filter it out although it is used during playback over Midi. However, this data can't be edited which reinforces Encore's role as a score writer and not a dedicated sequencer.
Once the pitches are in you activate Encore's Guess Durations function. You can handle a part of the score at a time so any really tricky sections can be tackled on their own.
After the Guess, the score will have rests, stems and flags and you can edit any sections which are really out of whack. The next step is to beam the notes. You can do the whole score at once or just selected groups of notes. You can flip stems and adjust each beam's slope and distance from the notes.
There are several editing functions to help produce the perfect score. If the program's guess is wrong, you can reconvert it to "raw data" and have another bash. There are Undo and Redo functions and you can alter individual notes by clicking and dragging.
The program senses the direction of the first movement and locks you onto it. For example, if you move a note up or down to change its pitch the program won't let you slip off-the side and muck up its duration - brilliant!
The final method of input, from Midi file, works in a similar way to real-time input.
Despite a few minor problems the program generally behaved itself very well as long as I was sensible.  Again, it's worth remembering that Encore is a score writer by design.

Once the music is in you can edit it.  As well as the usual cut, copy and paste operations you can mix data by pasting a cutting on to another part of the score, create grace notes by miniaturising note heads, and add ties and nudge symbols in any direction to pull them into line.  The length of note stems can be changed and hollow and cross note heads, useful for notating drum parts, can be selected. A drum map would have been useful.
You can add dynamic markings (from ppp to fff), hairpins (crescendos and dirninuendos), slurs and pedal marks. There are also line, box and oval drawing functions.
There is a good selection of trills and accents, although I couldn't find a DS or Coda sign, which are two extremely common symbols used in all but the simplest arrangements.
Repeat bars and first and second time endings are selected, rather inconveniently, from a menu. They are only for show, too, and have no effect on playback.
You can add chords symbols, text and lyrics. Chord symbols are chord names, not the fretboard symbols you sometimes see in sheet music. These change if you transpose the music.
Text can go anywhere. Lyrics can be made to sit directly under the notes using the Auto Align function. However, the program doesn't increase the inter-note gap to accommodate the lyrics and they may squash. You can decrease the number of bars per line or do your own spacing using Text mode.
For some reason Encore has a tendency to squash accidentals up to the notes. This is most apparent in busy passages when it will actually overwrite the note with the accidental.
One solution is to put fewer bars on a line. Encore defaults to three.-Reducing this to two helps. You can also move the bar line to share the space between busy and quiet adjacent bars. The final option is to space by hand but that totally negates the object of using a scorewriter in the first place.
The score is displayed in one of four sizes. Size three, the default, is probably the most useful. To play the score via Midi you can give each stave its own Midi channel. There are solo, transpose, velocity and program change settings. These are made on the Staff Sheet which is similar to the Track Window in MasterTracks. You can also set the tempos for a range of bars and program tempo changes.
It's quite possible to create a bar with an incorrect number of beats in it, and this won't play back correctly. The computer could have helped here by making sure each bar was the correct length. Occasionally, I experienced problems with playback, especially after editing. You can't access the note data directly so you can't correct any problems. Despite this, playback does work well most of the time.
You can save the score as a Midi file and if you really want to play it back via Midi after some twiddling, this would seem to be the thing to do although you will need a dedicated sequencer.
The proof of a scorewriter is in its printout. Ultrascript supports most Epson compatibles, the HP Laserjet, Deskjet, IBM Graphics and Proprinter. You can print to a PostScript file, from UltraScript or from Memory. A PostScript file can be printed at a later date and should be -readable by machines offering high quality PostScript output.
You can design a title page and insert headers and footers, select the paper size, the scale and orientation of the output.
There are three print resolutions. These are set in the UltraScript program so if you want to do a draft print and then a quality print, it's as well to save the score as a file.
Even the draft print is good, and the highest quality is absolutely excellent, even on a 9-pin dot matrix.
I must confess to a few problems with printing. Mainly, the program seemed reluctant to print the very edges of the score as framed in the onscreen window. This is easily corrected but shouldn't happen.
Also, the HP Laserjet emulation printout would occasionally throw in spurious characters, which are easily rubbed out, although I'm quite prepared to believe the story that all emulations are not equal. I couldn't blame the program or the Epson printer I was using.

The manual is clear and well laid-out and, in spite of the criticisms, Encore does a good job. Some of the criticisms could be applied to all scorewriters and I still fail to understand why such programs adopt a DTP approach rather than a musical one.
If we give the program the notes, lyrics, symbols and so on, it should lay out and format the score automatically. The user really should not need to get involved with spacing problems.
Niggles apart, operation is easy and the printout quite professional. Encore is well worth checking out although do make sure it will handle the type of scores you want to produce without too much user intervention.

Atari ST User October 1991.
