Notion 3 and Digital Performer

[Gone To Lunch]

I'm thinking about buying Notion3 but have a few questions

Does it work with Digital Performer 7.23 on a G5 ppc Mac with OS X 10.5.8 ?

In DP I use VSL for orchestra, MachFive 2 for bass and guitars, and addictive drums for drums; If I use the VSL pre-sets in Notion, can I customise it to include my instruments from other libraries ?

Will the drum scoring relate to libraries other than the one supplied, in my case addictive drums ?

thanks

[Surfwhammy]

I'm thinking about buying Notion3 but have a few questions

Does it work with Digital Performer 7.23 on a G5 ppc Mac with OS X 10.5.8 ?

In DP I use VSL for orchestra, MachFive 2 for bass and guitars, and addictive drums for drums; If I use the VSL pre-sets in Notion, can I customise it to include my instruments from other libraries ?

Will the drum scoring relate to libraries other than the one supplied, in my case addictive drums ?

thanks

According to the system requirements listed at the Notion Music website, Notion 3 will work with a G5 PPC Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher . . .

Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") was the last version of Mac OS X that provides PPC support, so you should be fine with Mac OS X 10.5.8 . . .

Notion Music recommends an Intel-based Mac, but I think it will work reasonably well on a G5 Power Mac . . .

I ran Digital Performer on a 24" iMac G5 (iSight) machine, and it was reasonably peppy, but once I got AmpliTube (IK Multimedia) and started using a lot of "heavy" VST plug-ins for effects, I realized that it was too much for the iMac G5 to handle, so I got a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (Intel-based) . . .

I have not run Notion 3 on the 24" iMac G5 (iSight) machine, but I see no reason for it not working. Depending on the instruments you are using, it might be a bit slow, and I have no idea whether ReWire works in the 24" iMac G5 (iSight) machine . . .

There is a demo version of Notion 3, so the best strategy is to give it a test, and if it works to your satisfaction, then there you are, for sure . . .

Notion 3 Demo (Notion Music)

For sure!

P. S. Notion 3 works with VSTi instruments, so for example you can use all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, which is what I use, and there is a free version of SampleTank that has a lot of nice instruments. It is not necessary to preprocess or wrap VSTi instruments with anything from VSL or whatever, since you can use them directly . . .

The difference is that when you use SampleTank with Notion 3, there is no predefined mapping, so instead of selecting an instrument from the predefined Notion 3 instrument mappings, you select the instrument from the SampleTank standalone user interface, which launches when you create a staff and assign SampleTank to the staff during the score setup step . . .

Once you have SampleTank assigned to the staff, you also can click on the name of the instrument in the Notion 3 Mixer to launch the SampleTank standalone user interface, at which time you can switch it to another SampleTank preset or instrument, which is a very nice feature of Notion 3, where for example you can start by specifying a Hammond B-3 organ but later switch it to an ARP or Moog synthesizer preset via the SampleTank standalone user interface, which is nice for experimenting with different types of keyboards, drumkits, and so forth . . .

As an example, this is one of the songs I am developing for my pretend musical group (The Surf Whammys), and the instruments are done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in Notion 3, where the Notion 3 generated audio is recorded as soundbites in Digital Performer 7.24 via ReWire on the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: The drumkit sound samples are from SampleTank, but the Latin percussion instruments are from various VSTi sound libraries, and I also use some of the Latin percussion instruments from the Notion 3 bundled sounds and Miroslav Philharmonik (IK Multimedia). The drums are "played" with standard music notation, and it is not difficult to do once you experiment with it for a while, which you can do easily with Notion 3, since you hear the sounds when you are working in the music notation editor, which is great if you primarily are a "play by ear" musician, which is the way I do it, although I also am reasonably proficient in music notation and music theory, at least in the sense of understanding it conceptually. I can sight-sing treble clef, which is the extent of my current abilities to do anything by looking at sheet music, where there is no playing real lead guitar from sheet music, which I suppose is a bit strange, but being able to compose music notation for instruments is easy for me to do, while being able to play a real instrument by reading music notation is not a current skill . . . ]



"Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (8MB, 300-kbps [VBR], approximately 3 minutes and 38 seconds)

Fabulous!