Posted by Graham Smith on December 06, 2001 at 20:26:19:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: finale 2002 posted by Austin H. on December 06, 2001 at 19:37:15:
Silbelius does, however, have the keyboard and arrow mode of entering, and the manual encourages using that instead of the mouse. In fact, it mentions at one point the idea that the Sibelius folks designed it to run sort of like a musical word processor. I've got Sib. 1.4 (now outmoded by the arrival of version 2, which I am not likely to buy until I can justify the expen$e of the upgrade), and I've been trying to spend some time getting "fluent." It's easy to use, judging from the manual, but it does take practice to learn to use the thing, like everything else, I suppose. I did turn out a little music with it almost immediately out of the box when I first got it about two years ago, but I really haven't had time to become proficient, and that's unfortunate.
A couple of hours would probably suffice, but practice, to me, still would have to be used to keep it straight in my mind.
I first tried doing sheet music using Cubase Score, which does it -- sorta -- but obviously is a MIDI program that happens to have a scoring function, and it is far less easy to use than Sibelius, since putting out an ensemble requires knowing how to use templates, etc. (This is a 1996 version of Score, but the way, which was new when I bought it five years ago. Things may have changed a little since then.)
I have never used Finale's current version, although I did look at a demo a few years ago when things were far less easy to use, and listened to an acquaintance of mine who was trying to use Finale say unkind things.
Lots of good changes since then, I'm sure.