Tag: notation

End of Finale, Start of….?

September 3, 2024September 3, 2024 ericdano 1 Comment

If you haven’t heard, the LONG TIME notation software (which I use), Finale, is going to be sunset. I think it is a terrible business decision. It would have been like Apple deciding to stop doing the Mac when it was in it’s iPod phase. Or it’s iPhone phase. Finale has been a stable, reliable platform to do music on. I have 24 years invested in this program. Thousands of Finale Files. I think MakeMusic’s pivot to “MakeMusic Cloud” is myopic.

There has been talk of perhaps one of the other software packages being able to open FinaleFiles natively. That would be nice. The current “solution” of exporting stuff out from Finale into MusicXML format is less than ideal.

So, what notation packages are remaining then? There is Sibelius. I’ve NEVER gotten into the Sibelius workflow. Ever. I have bought it a couple of times, and just never liked it.

There is the free Musescore. Honestly, it has come a LONG WAY. But it still has a long way to go. While simple leadsheets it can tackle, anything more looks like it would be rough.

So that leaves us with Dorico, the software started by ex-Sibelius developers after Avid gutted the original team. I tried it, and it has a lot of Sibelius like things about it. BUT……it does seem more Finale like than the other options. How it does linked parts is sorta how I think Finale would have eventually done it……if they ever got around to it.

Finale was really frustrating as it would introduce a feature……but it would have issues. They would wait a release or two, and then “fix it” and tout it as a new feature.

Anyhow, I tried, and I exported the “Zinn Practice regimen” to it. Looks pretty good. I need to get more of my “style” set up in it, but generally, it’s not bad.

Zinn Practice Regimen 2024 (913.0 KiB, 3 hits)
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Indispensable Finale Tools

March 18, 2013 ericdano No Comments

I have been a LONG time user of Finale. Since…..geeze, Finale 2 something (I think I have the floppy disks it came on for my Mac Quadra 660AV). Since there seems to be a new influx of life into MakeMusic, it is time to revisit why it is such an awesome program compared to the competition. I mean, there are reasons like the endless flexibility the program allows you in inputing your music, tweaking the output, etc. No, what really sets it apart are the plugins.

The first plugin that is absolutely necessary for anyone who uses Finale is TGTools. I use this daily. It has so many useful features. It is well worth the price I paid for it.

The second set of plugins are from Jari Williamsson that are available on the FinaleTips.nu site. His latest plugin, JW Accidentals, is amazing. Have needed something like this for a long time.

So check them out. Finale is going places……Sibelius? No so much…..

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Launch Equity Acquires MakeMusic

March 13, 2013March 13, 2013 ericdano No Comments

Launch Equity Acquires MakeMusic:

Today, MakeMusic announced that Launch Equity will purchase the company. You can read MakeMusic’s press release here. Launch Equity proposed the buyout last July (July 15, 2012), with the intent of taking the company private and then investing money into the company for a new CEO as well as updating software (particularly Finale’s base code).

(Via Technology in Music Education)

This is great news considering Avid is falling off a cliff and the development team of Sibelius was sacked and have started a new project with Steinberg.

However, this did crop up. Seems everyone isn’t happy about this.

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Sibelius Refugees Building New Notation Program

February 24, 2013 ericdano No Comments

The computer notation market is dominated by two players, MakeMusic’s Finale and Avid’s Sibelius. Avid didn’t always own Sibelius, having bought it in 2006. Sibelius started WAY back on Acorn Computers. And Avid, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to gut the core team who have worked on Sibelius for many many years and users were not happy about this. In my opinion, this is pretty much the death blow of any further development of the software. I think Avid will eventually just roll the whole program into ProTools at some point, to help it’s cash cow do better in the Consumer/Prosumer market against programs like Logic, Ableton, Reaper, Cubase……to name just a few.

Anyhow, the team that was developing Sibelius and that was sacked by Avid have been hired by Steinberg and tasked to create a new notation program. No actual betas or screen shots. A lot of lofty ideas though. Steinberg is a Yamaha subsidiary, meaning that funding probably isn’t an issue, and we will, at some point, see a notation product by them.

Am I excited? Not really….unless this new notation program contains an essential feature. The ability to open and properly convert Finale and Sibelius files into the program. Not the crappy MusicXML stuff. If they want me to use the program, then I need to be able to open my old files with no issues. Or they need to at least have a batch converter.

I don’t expect to see anything from this effort for at least a year. Hopefully, in my case, MakeMusic won’t go out of business in that interval.

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Sibelius 6

May 19, 2009 ericdano No Comments

Sibelius 6 has just been announced. I’m not seeing much that makes me go “whoa” like when they put in Parts and Score linking. The noteworthy features I saw are:

Magnetic Layout
Version Comments
ReWire support
Store (though don’t they need to police it for copyright infringement?)

They also seem to have snagged some of Finale’s “features” like Sing in Music, Slurs, chords, putting dynamics in based on how hard you played. Go check it out.

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Finale 2007

November 30, 2006December 5, 2007 ericdano No Comments

MakeMusic released Finale 2007 a while ago. August I believe. I’ve been using it since then, and I think I can finally review it properly.

There are not a lot great new features in Finale 2007 compared to 2006. The big feature, in fact, really the only feature that is huge, is the linked parts. Though, on MakeMusic’s preview page they harp “features” such as “Authorization Improvements“, and “Improved pickups, vertical collision remover“. There are a couple of other new things I get to. Let’s dismiss the authorization thing. That is as lame as the Copyright symbol they billed as a feature in 2006. The vertical collision remover sorta works, but not really. I can’t really see any difference in the pickups as I really didn’t do much with complex pickup measure.

So, lets dive into the reasons why you’d want to upgrade to 2007…..

RIP Jazz Font

December 15, 2005October 6, 2007 ericdano No Comments

Since it first came out, I was an advocate for the Jazz Font. I still have the 3.5″ floppy that I bought to use with Finale 3 something. The disc has 1995 written on it. Anyhow, now I see it all over the place. The Jazz text font people use with other fonts. Yikes! And the music produced using the Jazz font is hit and miss. Sometimes it looks good, sometimes not (except like Warner Bros professional scores, those look great). And then there is a variation called Swing Font from the same author, and we won’t go into that goofy looking Sibelius “jazz” font….all these “hand written” fonts don’t look hand written to me anymore. I hate coming into a rehearsal and having to deal with a bad font and poor formatting. I had a rehearsal about 2 weeks ago where someone brought in a Sibelius chart that could have been 2 pages in Finale, but was 4 in that goofy Sibelius jazz font. Looked like crap.

Having been exposed to a “better way”, I’m am leaving the world of the Jazz Font. Too many people use it, and, honestly, it isn’t as cool or as good looking as it once was.

I’ve rewritten my venerable “Zinn Practice Regimen” for sax using Bill Duncan’s Finale Productivity stuff. Amazing. There is no comparison. This new version is easier to read, looks better. Hell, it’s better than some books I have bought. Mr. Duncan is currently working on some Jazz Articulations to include in his package. Scoops, falls, bends and whatnot. Looking forward to it!

It’s been a good run Jazz Font, but, alas, time for you to be retired.

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