The SCORE music printing system is intended to facilitate the creation of virtually any page of standard music notation with a final quality equal to that of true engraving. Most of the shapes used in music printing are found in the SCORE drawing library. Any unusual musical symbols may be added to the library.

"SCORE has gained wide acceptance in the commercial printing of both classical and popular music on account of four features:

		Its comprehensive approach to both conventional and unconventional notation.
		Its extensibility
		Its precise control of symbol placement on the page
		The professional appearance of its output"

From Beyond MIDI, The Handbook of Musical Codes
Eleanor Selfridge-Field et al., MIT Press

The SCORE program had its origins in research done by Leland C. Smith, Professor of Music, at the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, starting in 1967. Over about a six year period, most of work was done at the off-campus lab site which was located very near to the famous San Andreas earthquake fault line. The earliest form of SCORE was created for the purpose of entering complex musical data into the MUSIC-5 digital sound generating system. The group involved in the digital music project, John Chowning, Leland Smith and David Poole, went on to found the Stanford Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics -- CCRMA.

When, in 1971, vector graphics terminals were made available, it became apparent that the parametric approach to describing musical data could successfully be adapted to conventional music hard-copy output. The first output was rather primitive. A 100 dpi pen plotter (CalComp) was used to produce large pages, about 30" x 38", which were then photo-reduced to conventional 8.5" x 11" paper size. In the mid-1970's a Xerox electrostatic plotter was introduced which produced output at 200 dpi on standard letter-size paper. This device was used until the Apple Laserwriter (300 dpi) and the PostScript system appeared in the 1980's. Up to 1985 all the development of SCORE was done on the PDP-10 (Digital Equipment Corporation) main-frame computers at Stanford and at the IRCAM division of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 1985-86 SCORE was ported to the Tandy 2000 (a machine that was quite ahead of its time) running MS-DOS. The main body of the program was written in Microsoft FORTRAN, with all the mouse and graphics elements written in Intel assembly language. These venerable languages, still to this day, provide a good basis for program development. Work is now under way to convert SCORE to the WINDOWS environment, using a C++/32-bit FORTRAN mixed-language programming basis.

By 1990, the Schott company in Germany was the first major publisher to use SCORE. They provided proof sheets of their music engraving tool set to serve as models for SCORE's symbol library. Shortly thereafter G. Schirmer and Hal Leonard in the U.S.A. began publishing output from SCORE. Many music publishers were rather conservative in those days, so the idea of using the computer to print music was greeted with a good deal of skepticism. However this did not last long as the economic and quality advantages rapidly became apparent. Today, virtually every music publisher in the world produces only computer generated output.

Version 4.01 of SCORE contains by far the most advanced automatic guitar and lute tablature system ever to appear in any notation software, as well as many other significant new features. Because of its high quality output and great flexibility, most of the world's leading music publishers have now used SCORE for editions which range from children's music to intricate Jimi Hendrix guitar books to complete Wagner and Verdi operas -- and even to Braille editions for the blind. Output from SCORE, by means of PostScript .EPS files, may be incorporated into all the major text publishing programs.

The ideal system for running SCORE consists of a Pentium or 486DX computer with as little as 4 to 8 megabytes of memory. SCORE runs in the MS-DOS mode under Windows 95/98/XP or directly in MS-DOS. A 600/1200 dpi PostScript laser printer is required for quality output. (Printing of SCORE output can also be done on most ink-jet printers and the lowest priced laser printers by means of a Windows 95/98 shareware program called Ghostscript. This program may be downloaded from the internet.) SCORE's current MIDI connections require a MPU401 board or a compatible 16-bit ISA sound board. SCORE can run on a Macintosh computer with a DOS simulator - but very slowly; it is not recommended. An adequate 486/Pentium PC system may be had in many areas for only a couple of hundred dollars or less. SCORE's performance under a LINUX system is unknown.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New in SCOR4 . . . .

Comprehensive SCORE directories can hold up to 1000 SCORE file names for each project, just point and click to retrieve files.

Over 2000 menu boxes facilitate
    most editing operations. Quick online help for all boxes. In
    many cases a single click will set several parameters at once.

Copy, Move, Alter and Delete
    areas can be delimited with mouse-drawn boxes -- no numbers to type.

CUT and PASTE capabilities with UNDO menu box.

Conditional editing feature
    uses IF...THEN... structure to selectively
    change parameters, delete items or CUT areas.

Slider editing
    allows for quick visual editing of slur curvatures, item size
    factors, position offsets, etc. -- any parameter may be changed
    in small increments by simply sliding the mouse across the screen.

Enhanced playback system
    will play up to eight voices of counterpoint on each staff. Each
    staff can be transposed up or down to any level.
    Tempo changes can be applied while sound is playing.

And more . . .

Some Supplementary Programs

FinalScore --- from San Andreas Press,.

The FinalScore program has been created to convert selected musical data into a format that can be processed by the SCORE Music Publishing System.

This program was written at the request of several music publishers and professional note-setters who urgently desired the capability of transporting music data from a variety of sources into SCORE's parametric format. The use of FinalScore gives music professionals easy access to the unequaled editing flexibility and clearly superior printing provided by SCORE -- even though the music was originally encoded with another program.

The first version of FinalScore converts PostScript .EPS files produced
by the Finale program directly into SCORE's binary or ascii file format.

New Notations --- MIDISCOR

PLAYBACK TRANSCRIPTION MODULE FOR SCORE NOTATION SOFTWARE

MIDISCOR is the program which translates your SCORE files into audio playback format compatible with most sequencers. Whereas SCORE itself allows only 4-part playback on one file of music at a time, MIDISCOR combines your files together to produce continuous playback of an entire piece. And what's more, it interprets the notation with regard to dynamics and articulations.

MIDISCOR provides in a single integrated environment all the facilities you will need to create performance files of even your most complicated pieces.

**- reads scores with up to 64 staves, which can be split into any number of sub-system files.

**- length of performance limited only by your sequencer's note capacity.

**- up to 12 polyphonic parts on one stave.

**- interprets dynamics and articulations, which are fully adjustable from the MIDISCOR library.

**- creates MIDI file format 1 files for compatibility with sequencers on most computers.

**- creates MIDISCOR parameter listing files for easy editing outside sequencers.

**- full facilities for changing drives and directories, listing files and displaying file contents.

**- automatic and manual filelist facility to enable MIDISCOR to read both logically named file selections and random selections.

**- compatible with all SCORE files.

Available from San Andreas Press for $200.00 (US).
(Shipping charges must be added.)

Purchase both MIDISCORWRITE & MIDISCOR for a special price of $360.00.

New Notations ---- MIDISCORWRITE

MIDI to SCORE transcription program

New Notations present MIDISCORWRITE, MIDI to SCORE transcription program.

There is now a speedy accurate and easy-to-use program that converts standard MIDI files to SCORE, the world's leading music notation system. Articulations, dynamics and other performance details are interpreted according to user-defined (or default) library settings. A sophisticated quantization algorhythm ensures that even the most complex rhythmic structures are correctly notated.

Two modes of operation are available - 'Speedy Mode' (an automatic process ideal for testing the file or getting a rough transcription with a few seconds) and 'Step Mode' (a definable bar-to-bar approach allowing for the finer details to be correctly transcribed, such as complex beaming, phrasing, etc.) Files prepared with MSWRITE can be imported directly into SCORE. Sit back while the music magically constructs itself on your screen fully laid out and justified. Only a minimum knowledge of SCORE is required, as MSWRITE does much of the work for you.

And in case you don't like what you see, MSWRITE allows you to read the transcribed data back into the transcriber so that more editing can be done. MSWRITE allows transcription from MIDI files of up to 64 tracks onto up to 32 staves with a different size for each, a different clef, key signature and transposition, and allows multiple tracks to be set to the same staff
with different note stem direction for each. Titles, instrument names, tempo indications and bar numbers can all be inserted into MSWRITE transcription files; and the edit screen allows you to manipulate the data in various ways, for instance setting a different quantize for each bar, changing clef mid-track, enharmonic transposition. Bar\system\page layout can be entirely
controlled from within the program - and if that's not enough, you can even text-edit the SCORE ascii code.

MIDISCORWRITE is the final link in the chain for composers using MIDI composing techniques and requiring the quality of notation that only SCORE can provide.

Available from San Andreas Press for $200.00 (US).
(Shipping charges must be added. Prices subject to change.)

Purchase both MIDISCORWRITE & MIDISCOR for a special price of $360.00.

************************* SCORE and the INTERNET **************************

Here are some details on the SCORE INTERNET FORUM set up at Acadia University.
Everyone is welcome to join this forum where information on details of the SCORE program are exchanged. Often there are also messages on general problems in music publishing. There are no charges for this service.

The SCORE FORUM is an E-Mail based system. In order to subscribe to the forum send the following E-Mail message to:

     MAJORDOMO@ACADIAU.CA

Your message should include the following line only:

     Subscribe SCORE <your name>

After a day or two you will be able to access all forum messages and send replies, etc. from your E-Mail software.

To receive a list of available commands send E-Mail to MAJORDOMO@ACADIAU.CA with the following line as the message:

     HELP

To post messages to the forum send E-Mail to:

    SCORE@ACADIAU.CA

Your message will go to all SCORE subscribers.