Jim,
Here is my personal answer.
On Nov 3, 2005, at 2:20 PM, Williams, Jim wrote:
Friends...
A while back someone posted about the "hidden corners" of Finale,
which led me to pose a question about your forays into those areas.
The responses were interesting and enlightening.
The recent posts about certain "features" lead me, then, to the
following questions:
1. WHAT "ADD-ONS" DO YOU USE?
a.The Band-in-a-Box Harmonizer?
Never
b.The rhyming dictionary?
No, but maybe it might help someone sometimes.
c.The marching percussion?
No
d.The exercises/exercise wizard?
No
e.GPO?
Yes, and will use this more when the library of sounds that I need
arrives (the Jazz Library). Finale performance problems can be
minimized by turning off GPO until playback is needed, but I haven't
been able to figure out how to hear what I am entering on my
soundless midi keyboard unless GPO is on, so I am cornered here. (I
use a fixed channel midi thru, so I hear only piano sounds when
entering music. I tried smart midi thru, but found it distracting.
Sometimes the entry window would be left in one instrument while I
was playing things for another instrument - just playing sounds and
thinking, and I'd have to switch the window to the correct instrument
or to the piano staff. That got to be enough of a drag that I
settled on fixed midi. What I can't figure out is how to get that
piano sound out of the keyboard without having GPO on or switching
back to smartsynth.)
f.Finale Performance Assessment?
Never
g.Scanning?
Tried it long ago - paid $300 for Smart Score. It sucked as far as I
was concerned. Tom Johnson at MM promises me a free upgrade to the
latest full version of Smart Score every year, when I see him at a
convention, but it has yet to show up. I haven't bugged him about it
because I think it will not work well enough to be practical for me
anyway.
h.Creation of Smart Music accompaniments?
No, and I think there's some wrong thinking about an accompaniment
that is led by a solo line. There is interaction in what I consider
correct musical communication of rubatos and tempo changes. Good
accompaniments don't "follow" a lead, they accompany it. I haven't
tried this, but there are many ways I suspect it is a dumb tool, and
maybe encourages poor performances by allowing an accompaniment to
remain in synch with a stumbling solo.
i.Composer's Assistant?
No, but maybe it might have some use as a starting point for some
development of an idea.
j.FinaleScript?
Tried it and found Automator in Tiger to work more easily for batch
printing. I did have one Finale script that worked for a while - to
change fonts, but it sopped working and seemed more trouble to re-
build or repair than to do the necessary work by hand.
k.MIBAC Rhythm Section Generator?
You know, it's not terrible, and considering that it's a machine
that's doing this stuff, it's kind of remarkable. But it's not good
either, and I certainly don't need it. I am way too particular about
what I want to hear to accept a generic version of an accompaniment.
l.Anything like these that I might have overlooked?
I don't use the shape designer, but I know it's useful/necessary to
some and don't consider it a frill.
Hyperscribe - I can't see how it can work more reliably/faster
overall than step time entry. Maybe highly skilled keyboard people
can use this. I cannot.
2. How often do you use them?
GPO almost all the time now. I can hear things in my head, but it
really does help me. Maybe I am admitting a shortcoming in my own
internal music imagery, but I catch things with it simply because
some things in dense textures become clearer when I listen to them
with different timbres, even the timbres I don't want (clarinets or
english horns for saxes, classical brass for jazz brass and no mutes,
and an incredibly dumb sounding "classical" bass pizzicato for jazz
bass. I am eagerly awaiting my copy of the Jazz band library. The
sounds are ready. It's integration with Finale that is holding up
the works.
3. Was any of them a "deal-maker" for your purchase of Finale?
No - how the music printed was the first reason for buying Finale
version 1 and remains the reason I use it, though I have no reason to
dislike the integration of GPO playback and disagree with those who
think that it's the downfall of the music prep attributes of the
program. It may be a distraction for some, but it helps me, and even
if that exposes a fault in an ideal image of myself as a composer,
it's a true description of my working method, and I accept it. I
check things with it all the time. To make it perfectly clear: I
believe I understand the difference between computer playback driven
by notation software and real music and don't confuse the two. It's
still a helpful step on the way to better communication through
notation for me.
4. How do you rate the quality of those features you use or tried
to use?
See above.
I'll start.
*I already owned GPO, so that point is moot.
Well, that is true of me, but Gary is a neighbor (on an island I see
from my window), and I benefitted from that and the fact that I
recorded jazz bass samples for him. Still, I'd have been glad to get
the GPO "lite" that comes with 2006. It's such an improvement over
what Andy Homzy calls "the little kazoo band" we used to have to
hear, and it requires little fussing. What fussing it allows is
pretty transparent in how it works.
*I tried the Auto-Harmonizer twice and was thoroughly underwhelmed--
not ready for prime-time.
Well, yeah. This really cannot work well for anyone who has heard
good music. There are simply too many variables to program into a
machine to fool me for a minute with this. I try to think about
coming up with the formulas I learned through studying Bill Evans'
harmony in a way that they could be applied to new material in a kind
of foolproof mathematical way, but there are always enough "special
circumstance" details that only the kind of application of the
formulas along with a substantial does of intuitive experience works,
and that's a long way down the road of "artificial intelligence" as
far as I can understand. I know how to do it (that kind of harmony,
I mean), but can't break it down simply enough that I think you could
teach it to a machine in any useful way. Some things are better done
by people, thank goodness. Harmony is one of them - even parallel
line thickening.
*I tried scanning a couple things--worked ok for some simple stuff,
but not otherwise worth the time or effort
*I wanted to try some FinaleScript, but LAST I LOOKED (which was a
while ago) it was a "teach yourself"
project for which I simply lacked time. It's supposed to be a time
saver, but I lacked the time to invest in mastering it. Is that
different in 2006?
Haven't looked, but I doubt it.
Chuck
<winmail.dat>
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Chuck Israels
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phone (360) 671-3402
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