Notion Protégé demo
Filmmaking Software Review for Narrative Film Production
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Review by Robert Elliott
VirtuosoWorks' Notion Protégé - demo version
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Protégé's uses for film students
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Rating
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Program Information
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How to begin with Protégé
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Rough edges
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The tutorial
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The tutorial score at the beginning
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The tutorial score when finished
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The musical instruments in Notion Protégé
When you start a new project or modify an existing project, you can add musical instruments. In this case, I selected "Strings". This page appears which shows you the choices of strings. Four of your choices are the four basic string sections of the orchestra. The next four choices are the solo instruments for the same sections. The sound files for the solo stings are not included but you still can compose music with solo instruments. When you compose music for solo strings (such as a solo violin or solo cello), you hear the sound of piano instead. Also, you can purchase extra sound packages from VirtuosoWorks (now called Notion Music). It is not clear if the solo violin instruments are included with the full version of Notion ($599). |
Some of the included instruments
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If an instrument is missing
This is the message if you select an instrument which does not exist in Protégé. This means you can still compose music for this instrument but you cannot hear the instrument when you play your composition in Notion Protégé. Instead, you hear a piano. |
Some of the missing instruments
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Protégé vs. GarageBand
GarageBand and Notion Protégé both offer musical notation. However, there is a huge difference. GarageBand works best using a piano roll. The piano roll can be viewed as notation but most of the control features work on the piano roll, not notation. You can enter music with the notation tools but the notation tools are extremely limited in GarageBand. Notion Protégé give you much more control over the sound you get but this requires a lot more work. The results with Protégé is much more professional but requires you to learn musical notation.
GarageBand has many sounds. By using a different velocity, you get about three different sounds for each note of each instrument. It is theoretically possible to have 128 different violin sounds for each note. But with Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra, you normally get only three different violin sounds per note. (As an example, with a guitar, the loudest sound for each note is a slap of the string.) For a violin, each note can have three sounds:
With GarageBand, you must use different tracks to get different articulation. As an example, you must have one track for normal violin sounds and another separate track for the pizacatto violin sounds. At first this seems unbelievably awkward but eventually you find ways to compose music efficiently with this limitation.
In contrast, when you use Protégé and you only need a single instrument to get all the different sounds such as pizacatto violin sounds and the other variations of the violin sound created by adding articulation symbols to the score. Therefore, if you know musical notation, Notion Protégé is much easier to get more realistic sounds than with GarageBand and Jam Pack:Symphony Orchestra. |
Protégé rules of musical notation
Musical notation is not standard. There are no 100% guaranteed rules of notation. Each program is different. That is why Notion Protégé needs a manual. This is very important. In the screen shots below, the first slur is accepted but the second slur is not. Without a manual, I do not know why.
Here is an example of something which is a bit odd. If I put three whole notes on my score, they will sound like this: If I put a slur between the first two notes, I get this: And if I add staccato markings to the first two notes, I get something which probably should never be: which sounds like this: Therefore, it would be useful to know what Notion Protégé is doing. That is why a manual is needed for Protégé. | |
Which program is this?
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Recommendation
There are a huge number of new notation programs becoming available on the market for Macintosh and Windows and even for Linux. This is great news for people who want to learn musical notation. But to be useful for filmmakers (who are not professional musicians) to do film scoring of motion pictures, the notation program must work with the sounds of a symphonic orchestra. This is essential!!! Currently, Notion Protégé is the only inexpensive notation program which the sounds of a symphony orchestra. Notion Protégé has a free 30-day, fully working demo disk which will be sent to you for free (in the USA). Therefore, currently Notion Protégé is the only notation program which meets the needs of filmmakers.
I highly recommend this program for anyone interested in learning more about musical notation and film scoring. There currently is no better way for filmmakers to get started using notation to create film scores that they can use in their motion pictures. Since the demo for Notion Protégé is free, you cannot go wrong! Robert Elliott 14 January 2007 (UTC) |