Finale, Sibelius, LilyPond, etc.

[Paul A. Unger <unger...>]

Hi,

I'd like to add my 2 cents to the discussion of music software. I use "Harmony 
Assistant" of the French software house Myriad ( http://www.myriad-online.com ) 
that includes Virtual Singer, i.e. a human voice synthesizer. Moreover, the 
program has a very large sound bank for CD-quality results. 

You can compose your music, print it on paper or graphic file, and save it in a 
number of different formats (including MIDI1, MIDI2 and MP3).  As a music 
notation program, you can enter your songs even in the Gregorian notation if 
you so desire. The software creates automatically the tablatures needed for 
fretted string instrument (guitar, bass, banjo, etc.), for harmonica (diatonic 
and chromatic) and for diatonic accordion. As a music composition program, you 
can make use of user-defined sounds. The program is capable of harmonizing 
automatically your tunes; or - if you wish to - it is possible to mix your 
music with digital audio tracks.  

What is most impressive, though, is the fact that your computer can now sing 
your songs (with many different voices). The output can be saved in wav files 
for later recording on home-made CDs. No need for expensive studio recordings 
if you intend to create your CDs for teaching purposes (that is if you do not 
have the pretension of creating an "artistic" product :~] ). The price of 
Harmony Assistant + Virtual Singer + the extended sound bank is approx $100.

You  might wish to visit my home page at 
http://www.geocities.com/paul_a_unger/index.html and check the results I 
obtained with this software. (FYI, I just realized that the computer "voice" 
can be further improved if you use a good sound editing software -e.g. Cool 
Edit Pro). 

Zeyt mir gezunt un shtark!
Paul A. Unger