At 02:18 PM 4/16/02 -0500, John Howell wrote: >what we need and what almost everyone in music needs is a >program that produces professional looking copy right out of the box in an >intuitive manner that anyone can quickly learn. No tweaking. No default >file fiddling around. [...]
John, If music were that simple, I'd agree with you. But every program I audition has the same problem: It makes assumptions about how music should be entered and edited, how it should look, and who its user base is. In fact, any application does that. So applications that can handle any field effectively are going to be as complex as their field. That said, Finale does work out of the box. Use the tutorials and you're working in minutes. That's true of Sibelius, that's true of Graphire. But they all work so differently ... Graphire's output is probably the best you'll ever see, but it's maddening to use it if you know Finale or if you're a composer who edits frequently. It's apparently a joy for film arrangers, though, with piles of handwritten scraps sent to them that have to be done quickly. Without trivializing your complaint, I'll say that any powerful application has these issues. 95%, probably 99%, of MS Word users do little more than set font sizes and styles, and use templates for anything else (or go to workshops or even classes). Even so, when I really need good work, I go to the phenomenally opaque and tempermental Pagemaker. Likewise, I find Photoshop's Mac-like interface difficul to use, and much prefer Paint Shop Pro for web work and the bulk of my other graphics. But for print-quality subtle work, I have to use Photoshop. Would I recommend Finale today, among all the competition? Probably, yes. That's because my own music has so many special requirements that only Finale and Score can do them all (I've never used Score, but another person input a few sections for me that no other software could handle, even Finale ... but it has (had?) no Midi for making demos). I know that here in Vermont, the schools are buying Sibelius because the teachers simply do not want to spend the time on learning Finale's range of features. I tried to get Coda to help support our Ought-One Festival, but they ended up not doing it ... I probably could have saved their (small, admittedly) Vermont clientele by doing demos. So where I live, the schools agree with you. The only problem with adopting any program is that you train users to that interface and invest in that data structure. And if the program (1) can't handle your future needs as they grow more sophisticated, (2) requires a 'psychological' and historical investment that can't be recouped by transfer to another program, and (3) is no longer supported by a vanished business with no stable history (our schools didn't learn from their previous investment in Music Time), then it makes the choice of a younger company or newer software a risky affair. I wouldn't touch Igor with its near-nonexistent financing. And, to be fair, I have a 10-year investment in scores prepared in Finale. Despite the tremendous learning required by Finale, Pagemaker, Quark, Photoshop, Sonar, Cubase, and even MSWord, those companies have been around and are pretty stable, have vital support from a wide user base, and can likely handle most tasks demanded of them. Tough choice. Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
