I'm No Luddite, But…

Have your scores reviewed by other users. Comment on old and new published scores and on publishers.
Knut
Posts: 867
Joined: 05 Oct 2015, 18:07
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by Knut »

DatOrganistTho wrote:I don't think the dust has to settle too much more to figure that one out. One only need to look at the technology and the time that has passed. The ability to typeset music digitally has not be around more than 50 years. In the end, people preferred to typeset a book on the Gutenberg press because it was comparably quick and efficient and cheap. However, the quality of said publications were very low, initially, until more advances in legibility and theory of layout came to fruition. We already have legibility of typeface, layout, and many advances we borrow from book typesetting to help us out. Now we just need to find a way to automate and produce high quality scores quickly for the high-end products to gain momentum again.

That might be a few more years, no? Not sure how long that would take (if we could only get LILYPOND to be fully funded....;) )
I'm not sure I understand your point,

but while fully automated high-quality music engraving would of course be the be all and end all (because there would no longer be any reason not to produce at the highest quality level), I don't think this will happen for quite a while. Sure, we will probably get to an acceptable level for more traditional scores in a few years, but the only way I can see for computers to reach a quality level comparable to manual engraving, would be with the advent of artificial intelligence, which technological development is nowhere near yet.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about technology reaching some kind of end game, but rather for the general terms and conditions of business to settle into a new era. Music publishing is a niche to begin with, and high quality scores will likely stay a sub-niche (not sure if that is a word) for the foreseeable future. I am nevertheless optimistic regarding an increased quality level of published music, even without technological advances, simply because quality is a basic competitive factor that new business might be able to take advantage of.
MJCube
Posts: 130
Joined: 15 Dec 2015, 13:32
Location: NYC

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by MJCube »

I believe there will always be aspects of spacing and layout that can be improved for human consumption by a human designer, over the results of any possible algorithm. This goes for typesetting as well, though that is obviously simpler. I believe the reason for this is that the works we are copying by digital means are still human ideas, with forms that appeal to us precisely because they cannot be captured by math or science.
Knut
Posts: 867
Joined: 05 Oct 2015, 18:07
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by Knut »

MJCube wrote:I believe there will always be aspects of spacing and layout that can be improved for human consumption by a human designer, over the results of any possible algorithm. This goes for typesetting as well, though that is obviously simpler. I believe the reason for this is that the works we are copying by digital means are still human ideas, with forms that appeal to us precisely because they cannot be captured by math or science.
+1
Peter West
Posts: 129
Joined: 05 Oct 2015, 18:26
Location: Cornwall, England
Contact:

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by Peter West »

I totally agree.

Music engraving is an art in its own right. Finale and Sibelius are only tools. One might say a computer programme is an intelligent tool, but it's choices are algorithms that are only as good as the ability of the programmer(s) to understand the problem, and to create a formula that solves the problems. In reality software will only produce a default of varying accuracy from which we must make a final copy. How well the algorithm works will hopefully minimise the adjustments we have to make, but there will always be adjustments.
Finale 2008/9/10/11/12/14, Sibelius 6/7.5, In Design CC 2015, Illustrator CS4
DatOrganistTho
Posts: 192
Joined: 19 Jan 2016, 17:30

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by DatOrganistTho »

Knut wrote:
DatOrganistTho wrote:I don't think the dust has to settle too much more to figure that one out. One only need to look at the technology and the time that has passed. The ability to typeset music digitally has not be around more than 50 years. In the end, people preferred to typeset a book on the Gutenberg press because it was comparably quick and efficient and cheap. However, the quality of said publications were very low, initially, until more advances in legibility and theory of layout came to fruition. We already have legibility of typeface, layout, and many advances we borrow from book typesetting to help us out. Now we just need to find a way to automate and produce high quality scores quickly for the high-end products to gain momentum again.

That might be a few more years, no? Not sure how long that would take (if we could only get LILYPOND to be fully funded....;) )
I'm not sure I understand your point,

but while fully automated high-quality music engraving would of course be the be all and end all (because there would no longer be any reason not to produce at the highest quality level), I don't think this will happen for quite a while. Sure, we will probably get to an acceptable level for more traditional scores in a few years, but the only way I can see for computers to reach a quality level comparable to manual engraving, would be with the advent of artificial intelligence, which technological development is nowhere near yet.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about technology reaching some kind of end game, but rather for the general terms and conditions of business to settle into a new era. Music publishing is a niche to begin with, and high quality scores will likely stay a sub-niche (not sure if that is a word) for the foreseeable future. I am nevertheless optimistic regarding an increased quality level of published music, even without technological advances, simply because quality is a basic competitive factor that new business might be able to take advantage of.
I agree in principle with what you are saying. What I was trying to say was simply that I don't think we have to wait that long to see where we can already accomplish the very said thing we all want. AI would make an incredible difference (this is sort of what LilyPond already does, IMO), but what we aim for is ubiquity of quality. You pointed out it is a sub-niche, and I believe that as well (so long as the end-goal of the business is to produce a profit).
LilyPond Lover
Composer and Transcriber
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DatOrganistTho
Posts: 192
Joined: 19 Jan 2016, 17:30

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by DatOrganistTho »

Peter West wrote:I totally agree.

Music engraving is an art in its own right. Finale and Sibelius are only tools. One might say a computer programme is an intelligent tool, but it's choices are algorithms that are only as good as the ability of the programmer(s) to understand the problem, and to create a formula that solves the problems. In reality software will only produce a default of varying accuracy from which we must make a final copy. How well the algorithm works will hopefully minimise the adjustments we have to make, but there will always be adjustments.
+1
LilyPond Lover
Composer and Transcriber
Teacher and Performer
cGilmore
Posts: 33
Joined: 31 Jan 2016, 08:36
Location: USA

Re: I'm No Luddite, But…

Post by cGilmore »

There's a recent blog article in the web design world that talks about how big companies are opting to move most of their web work in house as oppose to hiring out to agencies and freelance—it's more efficient and cost-effective, apparently.

I don't know anything really about the music publishing world. It appears that engraving work is done by people outside of the publishing houses. Is this correct? If so, would there be a similar benefit to having an in house staff for "serious" work and farm out all the "quick & easy" work?
MJCube wrote:This is interesting to me. In a text environment for music entry (such as Lilypond) I’m starting to imagine there could be a validation algorithm such as we have for HTML and CSS, to ensure that entries are well-formed. But, getting down to the details of it, would it be impossible to determine the boundaries of what’s allowed?
This sounds like a great idea! Or maybe even something like a linter? Publishers could have their own LYLint?
Enthusiastic engraving hobbiest
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