On 10 Jul 2005 at 15:37, Lon Price wrote: > On Jul 10, 2005, at 2:48 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough > > differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large > > size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no > > sense to me at all). > > > > I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got > > it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up > > with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to > > get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to > > adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things > > right on the first try. > > > > But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference > > between the two. > > Here's one very simplistic example: Say you have a piano part that's > basically "two-beat"--that is, LH on 1 and 3, and RH on 2 and 4. You > enter the LH notes first: note-rest-note-rest. Now the RH: In > Finale, if you want notes on beats two and four, you have to enter > rest-note-rest-note. In Sibelius you can just point the cursor to > beat 2 and enter a note, then do the same for beat 4--no need to > enter rests on beats 1 and 3--they are added automatically. In other > words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), > while Finale doesn't.
To me, that's a drawback, rather than an advantage! Of course, I wouldn't use the mouse to enter music, in any case, but if I were, I'd want it to be as accurate as possible. How does Sibelius decide the granularity of the mid-measure note? What if I want a half note followed by an 8th rest followed by a dotted quarter? Can Sibelius do that with me clicking on the 2nd half of beat 3? If it can, then my bet is that an awful lot of people are going to end up with non-intended 8th rests in the middle of their measure, since in my experience, most users are very poor in terms of mouse accuracy. But, again, I don't see this so much as an advantage one way or the other in terms of ease of entering music -- it's just two different choices about a default behavior. Either way is going to get you entering music pretty quickly (or, as quickly as mouse clicking is ever going to get), and I don't see much difference in terms of ease of learning in getting notes on the page. Now, for getting notes *off* the page, that's a different story -- the Sibelius results come out better by default in terms of proper choice of layout sizes for staves/systems. Finale's do not. I did download the current version of Finale notepad and tried it out. It is somewhat better at this, but still makes the systems much too large. It does do a better job of spacing horizontally, though (I couldn't seem to get automatic note spacing turned back on in my copy of Finale). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
