Not to be outdone by Sibelius, MakeMusic announced Finale 2010. Actually, lets reword that. Failing to incorporate any of the ideas presented in Sibelius 5, and failing to come up with anything new and interesting, MakeMusic announced Finale 2010. Ok, so, what is new for the $99.95 pre-order price? Not much at all. They finally [Continue]

If you read the archives here, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with MakeMusic/SmartMusic (same company). Their products have a lot of potential, but I think the corporate environment there is messed up. The current issue I have with MakeMusic is my SmartMusic renewal. About 2 years ago, you needed to have an [Continue]

I came across this today. Minneapolis – November 24, 2008 – MakeMusic Inc. (Nasdaq: MMUS), a world leader in music notation and education software, today announced that John Paulson has resigned from his positions as co-chief executive officer and director. Mr. Paulson will serve as a consultant for the company for a transitional period. The [Continue]

MakeMusic released SmartMusic 11 on Thursday. After nearly 3 hours of downloading at a whopping 10k/sec, I got it. Installed it. And…….well, it looks the same. No interface changes. Can’t really tell what they did to it. Certainly not worth a 11 release. Maybe a 10.2 or something. They really need to change the interface, [Continue]

MakeMusic announced today that they are going to be charging for Finale Notepad 2009, which for almost 8 years has been a free product. “In the next few weeks we plan to release Finale NotePad 2009 with even more features, including an all new Expression Tool and the ability to import/export MusicXML files. It will [Continue]

Continuing it’s yearly practice, MakeMusic announced Finale 2009. Basically, they are not raising the bar at all, again, with this. For $99, you finally get: Engraver Slurs fixed (which really should have been fixed 5 years ago) a Baritone Sax in the included Garritan sounds (plus, vintage electric piano, electric guitar, electric bass, [Continue]

Yup, like gas and everything else, SmartMusic’s price is going up. Starting July 24, 2008, the price of SmartMusic student subscriptions will increase from $25/year to $30/year. It is still REALLY REALLY cheap considering all the songs you get. You still have to deal with it’s backwards and really lame interface though. [Continue]

I use Finale for notation. True, I did buy Sibelius when they were offering that sweet upgrade price. But, honestly, I haven’t used it. I haven’t had the time to learn it. I’d rather spend it learning, oh, Logic Studio, or ProTools. I like to complain about Finale, cause I use it daily. I want [Continue]

MakeMusic finally released SmartMusic 10.2 today. Highlights of the new features: Support of Mac OS X Leopard Microphone Check Wizard ensures proper microphone levels for recording and assessment Easier-to-Use – many aspects of SmartMusic have been simplified and made more intuitive, including the installer, login process, activation, and update [Continue]

This was announced today: Leaders in their respective fields, Garritan, MakeMusic, Steinberg and Yamaha have formed a partnership that will provide integrated solutions to the music education market in the United States. Announced at Winter NAMM 2008, the Music Education Software and Hardware (MESH) initiative brings together hardware, software, [Continue]

There has been a LOT of discussion on the Finale List (which is NOT managed by the company) about the disappointment with Finale 2008. I decided to pass on 2008. To stir things up, Sibelius is offering a 50% off trade-up program. It is sad to see so many veterans of Finale, people who have [Continue]

One of my favorite whipping boys is SmartMusic. This program could be so great, and yet, MakeMusic seems not to want to put that little extra polish on it. Case in point, the latest “update” to SmartMusic is a large download, some 95 Megabytes. Took some time to download. Here is what is listed as [Continue]

MakeMusic came out with a new version of Finale. 2008. Looking at the lackluster feature list, I’m am passing on the update. Basically, the only items that sound remotely interesting are the Cut/Copy/Paste Improvements, and ScoreMerger (taking a bunch of files and putting them together). All the other stuff, the Record/Import Audio, More [Continue]

MakeMusic, after much hype, delay, and then more hype, has finally released SmartMusic 10 in April. This is really what the program should have been from the get go. There are a lot of great Concert Band, and String Orchestra music on the screen selections. There are a few Jazz Band ones as well. The [Continue]

For months, MakeMusic has been saying SmartMusic 10 is coming. The amount of hype they have been making is akin to Microsoft and it’s “new” Vista operating system. MakeMusic hasn’t even updated the current version of SmartMusic to handle files generated by Finale 2007 which was released way back in August. To create files, [Continue]