At 08:34 AM 7/10/05 -0400, dhbailey wrote: >It does make me wonder where Finale are getting their educational market >input from, since Sibelius seems to be winning the battle hands-down! >My city just built a new high school and rebuilt the old high school, so >now we have two 4-year high schools, and each school got a lot of new >equipment, including computers in the music department. >The notation software on those computers? Sibelius.
The same happened here in Vermont. And the reason was absolutely clear: Sibelius (3, the last demo I have) comes up looking like music in no time, and responding to actions anywhere on the screen, no matter how unreasonable it might seem. You can play with it, put notes anywhere, and it invites fooling around. Finale doesn't invite playing around even now, and was thoroughly impossible when the switch to Sibelius was made. Sibelius is run in elementary schools, and is the successor to various other integrated music/notation packages here (Music Lab? Was that the name?). Go back to the transition a few years ago, and Finale was totally opaque for sixth graders. You couldn't teach music with Finale, but you could with Sibelius. Teachers could scrabble together worksheets in no time, but not in Finale. (And step-up packages won't gain the step-up, based on past experience.) Run even new versions of Sibelius and Finale side-by-side. Which one can you start plunking at and have it put music on the screen? Sibelius. Even with a template set to come up immediately, Finale wants you to be too informed first, almost like way back in the line editor days. Admittedly, Finale has gotten much better about being immediate, though it still insists (for example) that notes go into the measure in order, even in Simple entry. No playing around! Get to work! The thinking behind Finale is historical. Programs that have fallen by the wayside have not been able to rise above their history, and the same is happening with Finale. Graphire could have cleaned Finale's clock in both look and speed, and Sibelius would never have appeared -- but it was overpriced, used a dongle for protection, and didn't support Midi input/output. All three changed, but not until it was too late for Graphire. Now it's history. MakeMusic just might not have the resources to do a complete rethink of Finale, or even if they did, not have a sense of agreement on how to accomplish it. Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
