Notion in French ?

[Zblogny]

Hello,

I'm running Notion demo, and I find it is far more ergonomic than any other score editor I've tried.
But before purchasing the full version, I would like to know if there is any way to "frenchize" it, at least to translate staff names in French.
Thanks,
Z.

[Surfwhammy]

Hello,

I'm running Notion demo, and I find it is far more ergonomic than any other score editor I've tried.
But before purchasing the full version, I would like to know if there is any way to "frenchize" it, at least to translate staff names in French.
Thanks,
Z.

[NOTE: I use Notion 3 (full version) on the Mac (OS X 10.6.5 ["Snow Leopard"]), so this information only is verified for Mac users . . . ]

(1) You can edit and change the Part Name and Abbreviation for a staff, as well as determine which of these is displayed as the staff name . . .

(2) It does not appear that Notion 3 supports French at the application level, since I set the language for the Mac to "French" but the various menu items and so forth in Notion 3 continued to be in English once I closed and restarted Notion 3 . . .

[NOTE: Providing basic native foreign language support is not so difficult on the Mac, and it is done at the software engineering level in Xcode with various types of lists and classes or whatever (Info.plist, .lproj directories, NSBundle class, CFBundleRef, and so forth). It requires a bit more programming work (including testing), so there are costs associated with internationalizing an application, but at least sometime over the past 100 years French was the defacto standard international language for foreign interactions, although one might suppose that English might have replaced French for this purpose, if only because the emphasis on learning languages has changed, often to the point that the people of some countries are illiterate in their native tongues, which certainly is the case at the dawn of the early-21st century in our great nation (United States) . . . ]

COMMENTS

As noted, I have no idea how Notion 3 handles French in the WIndows universe, but in the Apple universe at least you can change the names that are displayed for staffs (or if you prefer "staves") . . .

It is relatively easy to create Notion 3 project files, and when you do this you can use your own names rather than the default names for the various instruments and their respective staffs. Then when you want to start a new project, you can open one of the existing "template" projects and then do a "Save As" to create a new Notion 3 project file for your new score . . .

And perhaps sometime in the not so distant future there might be a way to create a database or library of musical phrases that can be used easily when one is working on a specific Notion 3 score, which is a suggestion I submitted a while ago after discovering that a lot of the things I do in DISCO and Heavy Metal songs fit into the category of "standard phrases", hence would be very nice to have available in a pop-up query engine type of feature, where for example if I need a few measures of rapid double-kick drums, instead of having to enter it manually with the note palette, I could just select it from a pop-up list of application-defined or user-defined phrases and then do a simply copy and paste action, at which point my ability to annoy the people of this planet with silly DISCO and Heavy Metal songs about ladies underpants will increase geometrically . . .

[NOTE: This is the YouTube music video for my first song about ladies underpants, "(I Want) Angela Gossow's Underpants (Ya-Ya-Ya)", which was done before I discovered Notion 3, so I actually had to play real instruments, but now that I am becoming somewhat proficient in Notion 3 I can do computer-based VSTi stuff and real instruments, which among other things moves the drumkit and percussion stuff to a stellar level with respect to double-kick drumming . . . ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecAFV-6rQ7Q

[NOTE: All the instruments in this song about Lady Gaga are done with Notion 3, and the drumkit is a lot better . . . ]

http://www.surfwhammys.com/Im-Going-Goo-Goo-Over-Ga-Ga-11-28-2010-2-DP7.mp3

[NOTE: This is the "basic rhythm section" done in Notion 3 for yet another fabulous song about ladies underpants, which to be specific is my Miley Cyrus underpants song, and it is an extravaganza of rapid double-kick drumming, which is a lot easier than taking a few months to teach myself how to do it on the Really Bigger Drumkit™ using a pair of Dualist D4 Single-Foot Double-Pedal units . . . ]

http://www.surfwhammys.com/Feel-Me-12-17-2010-N3.mp3

And considering the fact that the French probably speak English better than the English (or at least most Americans), my vote is for a future version of Notion 3 to have the ability to work with a database or library of musical phrases rather than to start providing international language support . . .

In fact, I think that this might create a new product line for Notion Music, similar to VSTi sample libraries, but instead of being a library of sampled instruments, it would be libraries of musical phrases, which would be all the more stellar if composers can create their own libraries and perhaps sell them through a Notion Music "App Store" as add-ons or whatever . . .

More specifically, the user-interface would work in a way similar to the way fonts work, where there would be a pop-up or perhaps a separate window like the Notion 3 Mixer that can be used to browse and hear musical phrases, as well as to select a musical phrase for copying and pasting into the currently opened Notion 3 score, which certainly would make my work a lot easier and faster, although I have devised a way to do it by "cloning" Notion 3 project files, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

[Zblogny]

Thanks for that exhaustive and documented answer !

In the meantime I realized that I can easily change the staves names in score setup.
Anyway, my main use of Notion being composing rather than printing, the lack of french language should'nt be an obstacle for me. And I know just enough English to understand the menus and read the user guide...
So I fired up my credit card

BTW My music sounds a little bit different than yours...

http://tinyurl.com/chansons-gd

[Surfwhammy]

Thanks for that exhaustive and documented answer !

In the meantime I realized that I can easily change the staves names in score setup.
Anyway, my main use of Notion being composing rather than printing, the lack of french language should'nt be an obstacle for me. And I know just enough English to understand the menus and read the user guide...
So I fired up my credit card

BTW My music sounds a little bit different than yours...

http://tinyurl.com/chansons-gd

Excellent!

There are several ways to change the names, where another way is to use a hotkey combination . . .

I am listening to your songs, and I like "Une voile", "L'apothicaire hypothéqué", and "Le tango déglingué", which are the first three I selected for listening . . .

The style of these three songs and singing reminds me of "La Mer" (Kevin Kline) and "Via Con Me" (Paolo Conte) from the motion picture "French Kiss", especially "Le tango déglingué", although I have no idea about the lyrics . . .

I had two years of French in college, but mostly all I accomplished was embarrassing the professor and myself a few times with double-entredres, since I was not so skilled in distinguishing among similar sounding words when she spoke them very quickly . . .

Some of my nieces and nephews speak fluent French, and one of my nephews taught English for a year in France, but I think the only way I will learn French is to spend a bit of time in France, which I might do sometime in the future . . .

Notion 3 is excellent, and there are a lot of different orchestra and instrument libraries that work with it . . .

At present I use the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) libraries that come with Notion 3, Miroslav Philharmonik, and most of the libraries that come with Sample Tank 2.5 (IK Multimedia), as well as some of the add-on libraries for Sample Tank XT (IK Multimedia), since they have a lot of synthesizers and earlier this year IK Multimedia had a "buy 1 get 10 free" sale on the add-on libraries, so I got a bunch of them without having any idea what to do with them, which eventually led to the DISCO and Heavy Metal songs, since the synthesizers are very nice for these genres . . .

But I also do songs in other genres, where this is the sketch for a Classical song about swirling snow, which at present is a few strings, woodwinds, and brass . . .

http://www.surfwhammys.com/Swirly-12-7-2010-N3.mp3

In some respects, I know a lot about music theory and composition, but mostly I play "by ear", so the Notion 3 user interface works very nicely for me, since I can hear the notes and make adjustments "by ear" to get everything to sound the way I want it to sound . . .

Doing it with pencil and paper would not work for me, since I need to hear the notes . . .

But with Notion 3 I can hear the notes, and I use a combination of "by ear" and music theory to adjust everything, which works very nicely and is practical for me to do, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!