Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 October 13

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October 13

Musical score on keyboard and PC

I was playing a Yamaha dgx-670, I pressed the "score" button, and was displeased to see there's not an option to have the digital display's staff show the keys you're hitting. Is there a keyboard with that feature? But more immediately, what's a well-regarded PC or browser app to make a score? Failing that, to print totally custom blank score sheets? Temerarius (talk) 00:48, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I often hear LilyPond mentioned.  Card Zero  (talk) 00:56, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I've had the (proprietary and now ancient) Sibelius v1.4 for many years, but later versions seem fairly unwieldy. Compared to the professional Sibelius with its full GUI, the text-based Lilypond by itself is fairly slow and tedious, but Frescobaldi (software) provides a front end (Win, MacOS, Linux), which I haven't tried yet. See also List of scorewriters and Comparison of scorewriters. For basic stuff I used to use Cakewalk Express 3.01, (NB Windows 3.1, 8-character file names etc.) It's still available here. If you want step-time or real-time MIDI input, to show on screen what what you're playing, free-ish MuseScore seems to fit the bill but I've never tried it. Most of these programs have a fairly steep learning curve involved. The more music theory you know, the better. MinorProphet (talk) 09:10, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I've always used Mozart the music processor. ColinFine (talk) 16:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Pasternak imprisoned?

A question has been raised at Talk:Hamlet on screen whether a source is correct in asserting that Pasternak and Smoktunovski had been imprisoned by Stalin. See what is currently the last topic on that talk page, but also the one above it, from over a decade before. It seems probable anon is right but, while I accept that sources don't need to be in the English language, I personally cannot verify anything written in another language. Can anyone here help to resolve that? If it proves wrong I expect the right solution is to simply remove the offending sentence rather than replacing it. AndyJones (talk) 11:05, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I've answered there, having checked the Google books copy of the source. It doesn't say he was imprisoned, rather that "both the translator of the text, Boris Pasternak, and the actor playing Hamlet, Innokenti Smoktunovski, had bitter experience of Stalin's regime" DuncanHill (talk) 11:21, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

See also Doctor Zhivago for more info for his "experiences". It was his mistress Olga Ivinskaya who had been in the Gulag under Stalin. MinorProphet (talk) 12:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)