Music and Technology, II
I had asked Jeanne Marie when she first emailed me her long bardic chronicle of The Sibelius Upgrade if I could use it as a blog entry* and she said yes, and that furthermore if it roused any comments on the vagaries of musical software she’d be most interested to read them.** That was last January, and I put it in my Stuff for the Blog file, yaay, a whole entry for some night when I’m too brain dead to cope. And then haven’t used it because I tend to figure, every evening, that tomorrow night will be worse. On a scale of brain death I think I’m no worse than about seven out of ten tonight*** but I have my piano lesson tomorrow at noon† and, well, I told you yesterday about the perils and misadventures with Just a Little Piece, and the awful truth is that the Mozart duet is escaping my best efforts to put a bag over its head and drag it off to present triumphantly to the king/queen/reigning monarch of rhapsody or similar.†† So I’m going to go do something piano-lesson-oriented with the rest of the evening, and I leave you with . . .
Just before Christmas, I received an Offer Too Good To Refuse: an upgrade to Sibelius 5.0 (I’ve been using 2.0 for years now) for only $65!! Yay!! So, I plunked down the money, and had them send me the stuff.
I then emailed our Computer Guru, asking his humble permission to install said upgrade. His reply was cryptic and oracular, as usual, and did not, in my reading of it, constitute permission. I emailed again, offering craven explanations of myself, and the Usual Sacrifices. No reply.
Fast forward to today, when I emailed not only the Computer Guru to again ask humble permission, but also the Business Manager. Business Manager promptly phoned and wanted to know what’s the hold-up, so I explained the Cryptic Reply followed by Silence. I got another phone call in 15 minutes, from apologetic Computer Guru, granting permission (Accepting the Sacrifices). Yay!!
So, I popped in the upgrade disk. Nothing Happened.
Hmmmm…
I popped it out and popped it in again. Nothing continued to Happen.
Tried this three times (three being my magic number, you see), and Nothing Happened. At all.
So, I popped the disk into the alternate disk drive. This time, I was at least able to humbly ask the computer for permission to see what was on the disk. It told me that the disk was EMPTY and offered to write something on it for me.
*deleted grumblings*
I surfed over to the Sibelius website, in order to find a phone number, and then I called them. I was asked (by a computer) if I had a registration that was older than 90 days, I replied truthfully, and it told me to call a different long distance number, so that I could pay for the call. I grumbled, hung up, called back, and Lied Shamefully about my registration timeline, and was immediately patched through to a Nice Young Man.
The Nice Young Man told me that I couldn’t see anything on my installation disk because it was in actuality a DVD, not a CD-Rom.
A DVD?!?! WHAT!?!?! WHY!?!?! Whose brilliant idea..!!?!?!???!
A long explanation later, he told me that the solution was to go online and download the program there (unless I wanted to go find a DVD player and a spare usb port…well, NO, I don’t!). So, he patiently guided me through the website, and I proceeded to download the program.
The download took 55 minutes. (!!!)
I did not stay on the phone with the Nice Young Man for 55 minutes, just took his instructions (just double click on it and the installer will take over), and went to judge a chili contest.††
When I got back, I double-clicked, and waited for the installer to take over. The installer asked me if I wanted to install the program, I told it yes, and it began Extracting…it got to 44% Extracted, and simply stopped. No warning. No “I Am About to Explode” message. No further instructions. No demonic laughter. It just stopped.
I tried it again. The Same Thing Happened. A third time. Same result.
*deleted grumblings*
Back to the phone, back through the maze and another use of the Shameful Lie, and I got a message – “we are sorry, no one is available to take your call.” Apparently, all personnel are in a meeting in California the rest of the day.
*deleted grumblings*
Back to the website, where the phone message had promised me prompt service to any technical problems. The reply email graciously told me this:
“We will try our best to answer your email within 2-3 working days but in periods when we receive a high level of queries it may take longer to reply to you. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
At this point, I have only one teeth-clenched comment: FRELLING UPGRADES!!!!!!!!!
Three weeks passed with no further bulletins and at last I wrote . . .
SO WHAT HAPPENED?!?!? Have you got your upgrade? Does it EXIST? Did it INSTALL? Can you USE IT? Does it make any blinking iota of difference? Er, wait, any blinking POSITIVE iota of difference? I want to know how the story ENDS!!!
So, The Rest of the Story -
A day or so after my email to Sibelius Tech Support, I received an email reply to my despairing plea. Tech Support Guy (let’s call him Bob) asked me to call him. Once more unto the breach, I Shamefully Lied to get through the Voice Mail Thicket, and then asked for Bob, as instructed. Bob and I tried various methods to convince the program to upgrade, and were unsuccessful. He decided that the download must have been corrupted somehow, and told me to Delete It And Start Over. I deleted like a mad woman, and prepared to re-download. He guided me through the Valley of the Cyber-Shadow that is Sibelius’ website, and I re-downloaded the thing. Again, it took 55 minutes!
Before I said good-bye to my erstwhile Tech Support man, I asked Bob about a very curious inconsistency in the Helpful Instruction Manual that had been supplied with the original DVD they sent me. In one place, it said that if you were upgrading from Sibelius 2 (which I was), you should uninstall that original program BEFORE you install the new one. Literally two sentences later, it said that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you uninstall the original program, that Very Bad Things would happen… So, I asked Bob to clarify. He grumbled a bit about tech writers and programmers, and then told me I didn’t need to uninstall the original program, it would be fine, the new program would over-write the old one. So I thanked him gravely, and bid adieu to Bob.
Some 55 minutes later, I returned to my computer, and discovered the download blinking at me hopefully. I double-clicked, and asked it to install itself, and it began Extracting…with fingernails in mouth, I waited and watched the “% of files Extracted” get higher, and higher… 35%…40%…42%…45%!! Hooray! We had cleared the magic number! We are upgrading!
At 55%, it offered up a dialog box, and then collapsed in a quivering heap.
*deleted grumblings*
I called back, really annoyed now, and ended up speaking to a different Tech Support man, let’s call him Gandalf. Gandalf heard the whole story, amidst sniffling and cursing. When I mentioned the “to uninstall or not to uninstall” the old program question, he was himself annoyed, and wanted the name of the idiot who had told me to leave the old program alone. Apparently, I DID have to uninstall the old program, if I ever wanted to upgrade. I was very nervous about this, you understand! I have 6 years worth of work invested in Sibelius 2, and I wanted multiple reassurances that I wouldn’t lose all those files if I uninstalled the program. He was willing to swear to me on any Noble Tome I liked that I would still have all my files, but that I absolutely HAD to uninstall the old Sibelius program if I wanted to upgrade. Then, Gandalf hung up, hefting a baseball bat and looking for Bob.
Gulping nervously, I uninstalled Sibelius 2, and for good measure, I uninstalled anything that even looked like Sibelius 2 – anything with the Sibelius name on it, all of it went into the recycle bin! When the purge was completed, I resolutely double-clicked on the Sibelius 5.2.5 icon, and held my breath…
I eventually had to breathe, because it extracted all the way to 100%!! It began installing itself, asking me cogent questions like “OK, where should I put this thing?” Yay!
*cue Halleluiah chorus*
My very first test of the upgraded program came barely a day later, and it passed with flying colors. The upgrade is very easy to use and understand, even though it’s much more advanced than the old program – does everything I ask very quickly, and really is a better program overall. So, despite the Trials and Tribulations of installation, I am glad I upgraded.
*cue Sunset and Triumphant Strings*
The End!
* * *
* Just so you’ll know, I wouldn’t dream of posting a long essayish or storyish something without asking first.^ I reserve some right to post excerpts with and without attribution as the fancy takes me.
^ Of course with attribution. I’m trying to think if there’d be any good reason to post a piece of someone’s writing, you know, paragraphs of it, without attribution–I being professionally a trifle obsessive about this–and the answer is, probably, but I don’t think I run that kind of blog.
** I have just spent way too much time trying to find a comment someone made on the forum recently, that she was about to start doing some–arranging?–that would involve Deep Engagement with a Music Software Programme–Finale, I think–and was expecting to post various plaints and protests about the process. I thought I remembered both who it was and where it was . . . wrong on both counts. Sigh. But, whoever you are, so, how’s it going?
*** I’ve written entries from a scale reading of 9.5, but it’s not a lot of fun.
† Which is almost too awful to contemplate, but Oisin has organs to play tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock is the standard time for my lesson and I usually spend from one o’clock to approximately 2:57 rather frantically running myself in: I can have played something flawlessly the night before–indeed this happened last week^–and have merely skipped jollily through it once before my lesson, as for example the duet last week, so I could spend the time on A Study in Arrrgh . . . and I arrive on Oisin’s doorstep and it’s like, Mozart? Have I heard of this person? –You mean this is a piano? I almost decided to cancel my lesson as a means to remove unnecessary humiliation from my week but . . . no. There are limits. But if you hear screams from Hampshire at around 12:05 pm local time tomorrow, you’ll know why.
^ Okay, nearly flawlessly
†† This sounds like a recital situation. Shuuuuuudder.
††† A chili contest. Well, of course. She also raises prize-winning delphiniums and was on the reserve list for the Women’s Championship Tournament with her polo ponies Terror, Apocalypse, Hotspur, and Bunny.
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