OK, if the subject is the ease of use of Finale I've got to weigh in.
I just finished (I hope I hope) a project where I transcribed a bunch (29) of jazz solos. Entering the music into Finale is (for me) easy and convenient. I like it I like it. But. I just finished an editing cycle, incorporating corrections from the musician I transcribed. I easily made all of the corrections during a two hour session on the phone with the guy. Then I undertook the final tweaking of spacing, Extract Parts (for the Bb, Eb, C, and bass clef transpositions), and print, for the 4*29 = 116 sheets of music. That took me 18 hours. This is in spite of the fact that I use an excellent macro system (WinBatch) and employ all the shortcuts I can find. That's my general experience with Finale. It has great capabilities, and is fine for entering music. But the final editing, extraction, and printing is horrible, just horrible. I have the impression that for the last 5 years or so, Finale has concentrated on adding marginal new features, and on reducing my 2 hour task to 1.85 hours, while they ignore the 18 hour chore. I contrast this Finale experience with any word processor: after I enter a text document, I can simply "Print", and get an acceptable copy. If I do the same with Finale, without the final tweaking and editing, I get a wretched unreadable copy, full of collisions and freaky spacing. Sorry for the length of this rant, but it was fueled by a seemingly needless 18 hour session. Phil Shaw - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://okshaw.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
