On Mar 3, 2005, at 3:19 PM, Simon Troup wrote:
Just the whole thing of why clients want access to the Finale files, what clients do with them, are engravers happy about giving them away, shouldn't engravers be doing any corrections and being paid for it, don't editors just mess things up if they play with the files ...
I can easily imagine that certain users would make a hash of Finale files, but that's their problem, not mine. If I hand over a Finale file, it's when I'm done with the job. If they screw it up, they can hire me again to fix it, or they can live with their mess.
But in reality, I've never had that problem. I've got only two clients to whom I regularly give Finale files. One is a publisher who knows Finale well. Although he doesn't do regular work as an engraver, he certainly understands the business. He does occasionally make some tweaks on the files, and I'm fine with that because he knows what he's doing. We never have any issues with version compatibility, because any contract is always clear about what version we're working in for any piece.
The other is a computer-phobic composer who wants nothing to do with engraving. That's why she hires me. The only reason she asks for the Finale files is because if I ever disappear she wants to be able to have something to offer to the next engraver if she wants to make revisions to a piece. She's a little paranoid about this, because she lost contact with the engraver before me, and she had to have some pieces re-engraved. (Truth is, they probably would have been re-engraved anyway. It looked to me like they were done in Score....)
I have no worries about her messing up the Finale files. I know that she'll never touch them willingly. If she hires someone else to edit them, that's the next guy's problem. She and I have an excellent working relationship, and I know I'm always her first choice. One time she needed a song in a hurry while I was incommunicado on a long trip. She found someone else to do the song, and he did a sloppy job of it. Later she paid me to fix it up. She offered me a Finale file, but it was such a mess it was easier for me to just retype it from scratch. It was only about five pages, so reimposing all my regular layout and settings over would have been nearly as much work, and much more frustrating. If the piece were longer, I probably still would have started with my own template, but done some sort of cut and paste. I really don't want to mess with someone else's Finale file unless I know it's tidy. Too many possible surprises.
mdl
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