PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Surprise: Encore may be back

Some of the 650 songs rarely, if ever, get played.

We got together in 1985 and decided to play the adult/retirement market here in South Florida. It's a big, steady market and until COVID we were never out of work.

But at that time, the majority of the audience wanted to hear Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller era songs. We rarely play those anymore.

But those people died off and what were once younger people entered the adult/retirement audience. So we learned early rock songs, and as the years went on, classic rock, to whatever the current audience asks for.

About as old as we get now is Elvis Presley era songs, about as new as we get is Adele era songs.

We mix in some Country from Ernest Tubb to Zac Brown and play a lot of Baby Boomer Classics from the Beatles onward.

On our beach-side gig we get to mix in some Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffet, Arrow, and other Caribbean songs.

We learn new songs all the time. Whatever gets requested often, if we can cover it, we work it up.

Our songlist: https://www.nortonmusic.com/cats/songlist.html

I've omitted a dozen or two songs that we would rather not be asked for, because they are in medleys and if someone looks at the lists and requests one that is in the middle of a medley, we down't want to disappoint them.

I like playing a variety of genres. I have to put my head in the different places to be authentic, and that keeps things interesting.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Encore 5 user ~
Miss many features that others are requesting, but mainly I'm very tired of Encore's crashes and lack of auto backup of files (causing work to be lost).
My quandary is, to address this I had planned to buy Overture (written by Don Williams), but now I wonder if I should wait until Encore 6 (also by Williams) is released instead?
Any insights?

Welcome to the forum!

I think we need to wait until Encore 6 is released to be able to comment on this good question. I looked at Overture a few years ago but did not find it as user friendly as Encore; however, that was a very superficial look.

As a decades-long user of Encore until 2020, and a decades-long beta tester for them, I suffered a lot of pain with those crashes. I composed for a symphony orchestra concert using Encore 5, and in the process learned swear words I didn't even know before.

This made me laugh out loud!

I’m glad someone got to laugh.

Only laughing at the swear words you didn't even know, not the trouble you had doing the work, of course! That is never a laughing matter.

Oh, I know. Thanks!

Since I switched to Notion by Presonus, not a single crash or loss of data in two and a half years.

I use Encore for 'head charts' and it suits that purpose just fine. I'm still using the last Passport version.

Don Williams, the author of Encore and Master Tracks Pro came up to listen to our duo, and we talked for a bit. He said the job to updated the code on Encore and MTPro is bigger than he anticipated, as there were a lot of revisions GVox made that he didn't think were good.

So patience is the key here.

I'm waiting for an update of Master Tracks Pro, which he do after Encore, so I figure I'm in for a very long wait.

Notes ♫

That’s helpful, Bob. “Late fall” is nearly gone. As a beta tester for several decades, I saw exactly what was done to Encore. We testers were not happy. One subset of the group (that I did not join) became so fed up, they created their own unofficial version. It was better.

OK, 'Late Fall' is definitely gone. No change, except their Forum is getting more anxious posts. It's amazing how many of us have old scores in Encore we would like to use. I have had some limited success firing up Encore just long enough to Export a score using Music XML.

I hope there is some progress soon.

Notes, any update from your neighbor?

When Don came out to see us, he said the code was messed up pretty badly. So being impatient isn't going to help. Of course, that won't stop me from being impatient.


Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Thanks, Bob. I can vouch for the code being messed up pretty badly!

Hi Matt and others :-)

I'm somewhat new to posting replies, but here goes ...

I was happy to read your posts, Matt, about Don Williams possibly resurrecting Encore. Since the mid-90's, I used Encore for the Mac to compose and meticulously notate over 550 songs, including a 2 hour choir cantata on the "Old Testament" book of Isaiah.

To be able to continue using Encore, I've had to keep one of my Macs running with the old OS. But here's the marvel … I've found that when running Encore using MOJAVE OS, the program is FAR MORE stable than it was with MANY of the operating systems before that. I still make TONS and TONS of backups of songs I'm working on while editing them, since crashes still happen — particularly if I'm not just writing with a melody staff, but with a piano staff as well — but I'm amazed at how many of my old scores continue to open well (and edit well) with this current setup.

Incidentally, just to let you know: when I click on "About Encore", it lists the version I'm using as 5.0.6.1303M, which I was told was the most recent version. And immediately below that, the "About Encore" window lists the version as 5.0.7. That's a bit strange, I know, considering the more detailed version-identification above the "5.0.7" lists it as "5.0.6 …"

In any case, I thought I would pass this information along. My life is super busy with other matters, thus, as I continue to write music, I am still using Encore rather than learning a new program. But that's also because I want to still be able to edit and improve earlier compositions.

By the way, I've also been working hard, going through ALL my Encore compositions, generating PDF's and primitive XML files from each of them just in case I must one day fully bail from Encore. Should that day ever come, and I suspect it will, can you guys offer suggestions re: the best way to convert my PDF scores to a quality XML file? (I created the PDF scores using Encore's print function on the Mac.) Typically, my scores contain not only a melody line, chord symbols, lyrics, and a notated piano introduction, but also many "text" boxes as well. Thus, the better the PDF to XML converter the better. As you know, the XML files exported by Encore are exceedingly basic, not even retaining lyrics or chord symbols.

Thanks! And all the best to all of you! It would be such a blessing if Don W. was given strength and wisdom to "resurrect" our favorite app!

:-) Mark

P.S. This may be old news to you, but here's a tip just in case: I've found that when an Encore score crashes, I must (1) go back to a prior version since the version that just crashed got even more corrupted by the crash, and (2) I sometimes find that if I select several lines of my score in a suspected problem area and "cut" all of that area's note and etc data, then rebuild the section from scratch, it clears the problem and the score no longer crashes. I also find that some scores begin to crash when I move a staff up or down and then do a save. When that happens, I just go back to an earlier version prior to me moving the staff.

Hi Mark. Welcome to the forum.

Where to start?

I learned Encore on a Mac but for nearly 30 years I used it daily on a Windows machine. I was a beta tester for most of those years. I gave up on Encore in 2020.

Most of my crashes were from moving text.

The discrepancy in version numbers for the Mac is well known. You might enjoy reading the comments on the new Encore site forum. Mike Halloran is a member here and there, and he knows about the versions.

The Encore forum had one and only one post in over twelve months from Admin. A few weeks ago, Admin said this Thanksgiving is the new target release date.

I use PDF to Music Pro if it’s a Finale printout, and it sometimes works on published scores. For most printouts I use Scan Score Pro.

Yes, it may actually come back with November, 2023 as a target. I am in touch with Don and we've discussed what will and won't be included but I have not seen any of the work in progress. The Admin is Don.

I normally use Finale these days. Notion has not kept up though Fender has announced they're working on it. I am not a fan of Dorico's workflow and consider MuseScore as useless as always. Layout in Overture is time consuming—might as well be Finale—and Sibelius... yikes! Even my wife is using Finale for her work, fortunately, she has 24/7 tech support

Nothing equals Encore for the "down and dirty" lead sheets and church work that makes up over half my notation work. The 5.0.4 Windows version is too buggy and, though the 5.0.7 Mac version is remarkably stable over Mojave, it's unable to run over 64 bit MacOS (Catalina and later) and the slurs, when printed look cartoonishly bad (on screen, they're good—go figure). I keep an old Mac around just to run it.

Anyway, the Passport Music site is here. Encore, MasterTracks Passport Music and the Forum is where Andre and I answer questions. We are both volunteers, however and neither of us are affiliated with Passport Music or Don Williams.

Just curious what is useless about MuseScore. I know nothing about writing scores, and am a competent pianist (I can read music, but I realize there's more skill in designing and writing this stuff than in merely reading it) but not a competent score writer.

Some people find MuseScore just fine for their needs, and it’s free. It’s always being improved by a lot of folks, and I think they did a great job with the font released with the latest update.

The best choice of notation software depends on your budget and what you want to do, and for those of us who use computer notation programs professionally, the workflow we prefer and the programs we learned on.

The Encore site just changed the expected release time from "Thanksgiving 2023" to "Winter 2023".

And there is, for the first time, some detail about what's coming.

Go here, and be sure to click on "Load More" at the bottom:
https://passportmusic.com/development/

- Just bumping this thread to report that nothing new has happened yet.

The website still states that Encore 6 will be released in Winter 2023. Whichever hemisphere you are in, that's over.

The 'development' info that was so promising has not been updated since fall 2022.

We can still hope.