I just had a conversation with my copyist/engraver friend in Vancouver
about this. He has had to use Sibelius for some jobs over the past
year, so he is now familiar with it as well as being a Finale expert.
His description of Sibelius' qualities is interesting. He has gone
from being frustrated with it to finding it full of things that are
more easily done than in Finale - page layout, for one, is easier,
attached items show up not only with attachment lines a la Finale 2009
but also with distances from the staff visibly marked, keyboard
shortcuts are set up as toggle switches when that is a useful
behavior, and all kinds of things can be entered at once without
switching tools - even more than Finale's Simple Entry (if I
understand him correctly) . BUT, time value selection precedes pitch
(and that's the only way it can work in Sibelius), and that is a deal
breaker for me. When Finale catches up (as it seems to have done
pretty well in Simple Entry) AND provides the same functionality
either in Speedy, or in Simple with a pitch before duration option, we
may have the best of both worlds. Greg has become fluent in data
entry in Sibelius, but he is copying existing manuscripts, so the
"thought process" order doesn't matter. He can enter the duration
first with no hitch in his thinking. For me, as a composer/arranger,
that doesn't work, so I don't get the conventional wisdom that
Sibleius is for composers and Finale is for copyists.
Long live Speedy (with improvements, we hope) or an option in Simple
that makes it work for all of us Speedy habitués.
Chuck
On Aug 1, 2008, at 4:54 PM, Matthew Hindson fastmail acct wrote:
OK, not aiming to revisit old wounds - but I thought I would share
one aspect of my recent experience of teaching a class of mainly-
Finale-newbies to the application.
For the note-entry method, I showed them how to use Speedy, and what
the keystrokes meant and did. In 5 minutes they were entering a
Haydn string quartet movement, and at a surprisingly quick rate.
This was without a MIDI keyboard.
I hope that MakeMusic still realises that Speedy is a really
excellent tool for note entry that is (in my opinion) considerably
more straightforward than using Simple without a MIDI keyboard.
Speedy seems a better balance of simplicity and power. Because
there are fewer options as compared to Simple, there are fewer
keystrokes to come to grips with as a beginner - but the options
that are there are easy to use and powerful enough to enter all
pitches and rhythms you want.
Plus Speedy is great because it provides the user with the option to
select pitch then enter rhythm for note entry.
Mind you, it would be good to able to change clef from within Speedy
I suppose. Maybe press ? and a list of clefs pops up. This would
be relevant to the tool because it relates to pitch.
Anyway, in the end I just hope that Finale doesn't consider removing
or crippling Speedy. It really is an excellent and easy-to-use tool.
Matthew
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Chuck Israels
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