On Nov 13, 2006, at 12:30 PM, Hamilton Greg wrote:
I recently had a client ask for the Finale files for many of his chamber works I had prepared. It's typically not my policy to release the original files. I'm wondering what other professional copyist/engravers are doing when faced with the same dilemma?
I'm only sharing my own experience since that's what you asked for. I understand that others do things differently, and those ways are fine, too.
Personally, I have no problem handing out my files. I have a relatively small clientele, and two examples are prominent:
(1) A composer I've worked with for many years always asks for the Finale files because she wants to still have something to work from should she lose contact with me. Prior to me, she had another engraver she used regularly and he had moved away without leaving a forwarding address. She says she'll always prefer to hire me first, and we've worked together enough that I know that's true. I also know that she has zero interest in doing anything with the files herself. (Her computer savvy is near zero.)
One time when I was unavailable for a job needed on a short deadline she found someone else. She used his work for the performance -- it was good enough to play from, but not particularly well done -- and then a few months later when I was available she hired me to redo it. She had requested the other guy's Finale files, too, and she now offered those to me to "fix". After a quick look I concluded it would be more trouble than it's worth and I could get the job done faster by redoing everything fresh (though it did speed things up to have such a clean source copy, compared to her usual pencil scribblings).
Unless you're talking about making simple minor fixes, I wonder how much there really is to be gained using someone else's template. It seems to me that any good engraver is going to want to do his own work regardless, and a bad engraver is probably still going to make ugly work no matter whose template he gets his hands on.
(2) The publisher for whom I did a great deal of work is a special case. He is an online publisher for whom open source is part of the product. The Finale files are actually available for sale, and in some cases it was part of the job to have the Finale file coded in a certain way besides just the specifications of how the printed output will look. (All of this was made perfectly clear in the contract, of course.) The work on that template isn't 100% mine, since in a few respects we developed it together, but it certainly draws heavily on my own work and experience.
I'm not sure how much that affects my attitude about giving files to others. It's impossible for me to be concerned about the idea of some other client stealing my knowledge and experience when pretty much every trick I've ever learned is right there for sale on the Internet. I have enough idiosyncratic ways of working that I very much doubt anyone else would want to copy my methods exactly. But if someone wants to pay $10 to Recordare to examine our template, have at it. For that matter, I can't think of anything I know that I wouldn't freely share on this list if asked.
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