Re: Notation Software


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Posted by Matt Brown on January 23, 2001 at 21:35:40:

In Reply to: Notation Software posted by Mark Wiseman on January 23, 2001 at 21:13:24:

I'm a Finale user, and upgraded to Finale2001 a few months ago. I love it, and find it very easy to use. One of it's new features is the integration of MIDISCAN, which allows you to scan music directly into Finale (with some limitations, of course). Ease of use comes with the time you put into using it - it takes some serious hours before one feels at home with it, but I believe it's worth the effort. The final product is equal in quality to any high quality published music on the market. FYI, if you're familiar with James Grant's music for tuba, he uses Finale (Maestro font) and his stuff looks like a million bucks.
You might want to check out Sibelius as well. Although I've never used it, I've talked with others who have and they all seem to think that it is a bit more "user friendly" than Finale. To my eye, the quality of the final product is virtually the same with either program. If you go to the Sibelius website, they have a downloadable version that you can try before forking over the money and buying it.
Neither program is cheap.
I do have one "complaint" about Finale: While each new version of Finale is able to read files from older versions, the reverse is NOT true. In other words, you can open a Finale 3.5.2 document in Finale2001, but you cannot open a Finale2001 document in Finale 3.5.2 (in fact you can only open a Finale2001 document in Finale2001). If you plan on importing or exporting files to/from others, and they don't have the same version as you, you might run into some problems. Other than that, no complaints. Tech support has been great.
Hope that this helps. Here's the web addresses:

Finale: www.codamusic.com

Sibelius: www.sibelius.com

Good luck!

Matt Brown


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