At 4:32 PM -0600 8/26/07, Noel Stoutenburg wrote:
Further, I noted that Sibelius is marketing to "General Music teachers" in public schools. I don't know how titles work in MD (or in most places, actually) but when I read the title "General Music Teacher", I think of a grades 1-3 or 1-4, where music education is mostly singing, with the occasional percussion or perhaps a few weeks of instruction on recorder. SmartMusic is mostly an instrumental product, and therefore mostly marketed to teachers later, I suspect Sibelius is marketing to general Music teachers because they are at a substantial disadvantage with music teachers of the later years who teach instruments. I also wonder how many general music teachers are really going to use Sibelius? I know several, and based upon what I know of Sibelius, while the ones I know would rave about how cool it is, it is not a product that they would ever buy or use, as it is far more horsepower than they can use
Noel, with respect, I think you're comparing apples and hamburgers. You're thinking only about the notation programs, but a very brief visit to the Sibelius.com website will show you that they have been VERY busy developing educational suites specifically aimed at general music classes in the elementary and middle schools, and these materials are specifically designed to help general music teachers teach what they SHOULD be teaching and probably WANT to be teaching, but in fact are NOT teaching. I'm not promoting the products because I'm not familiar with them, but they go far beyond simple notation or whatever it is that SmartMusic is supposed to do.
They are doing, in fact, what Apple was canny enough to do back in the '80s, when they deliberately targeted the educational market with the original Apple II and its successors while IBM concentrated on their business customers. They are creating product specifically for the educational market, and putting a lot of resources into selling that product.
I didn't search the website thoroughly enough to say whether there are "Sibelius lite" products like the Finale products, but I seem to recall that there are. The feeling I get, though, is that MakeMusic is concentrating on marketing limited versions of the full program, while Sibelius are expanding into new areas where they see great future potential, WITHOUT disturbing development of the notation program itself.
And all general music teachers are not as incompetent as you seem to believe, especially those with advanced Kodály and Orff training and certification. There are some bad ones, of course, but there are a lot of very good ones as well, and I hope that our own graduates are among them.
I would note, too, that in the several music lists in which I participate in, that since the first of the year I've noticed about twice as many users commenting that they are switching away Sibelius to Finale than mentioned they were switching from Finale to Sibelius.
On the several lists I'm active on, I find that rather than people making either statement, they are more likely to be asking for advice on which notation product to get, and the honest answers usually say something like, it depends on what your needs are, but Sibelius is much easier to work with. If there's any consensus at the moment, that seems to be it.
What does anyone know about the European program called something like "Harmony Assistant"? Someone on another list has been singing its praises and saying it's much more widely used than either Finale or Sibelius. Makes me wonder whether it only runs on a specific OS, like Sibelius in the beginning with the Acorn.
John -- John R. Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
