Ray Horton wrote:
On my side - I keep one eye open for good reasons to start the Sib learning curve. So far, I haven't seen them. Could still happen, but not so far.
I hadn't seen a reason to start the sib learning curve when I initially purchased the program and installed it and found that it was very alien to me, being a die-hard Finale user at the time. Then one day I had an "aha!" moment when I realized that I hadn't given Sibelius a real try, viewing everything I tried to do in Sibelius through a finale-user filter. That "aha!" moment came when I told myself to simply sit down with Sibelius as if it were a brand new program that I had no previous knowledge about, do the tutorials, read the manual, start with very simple projects and gradually increase their complexity as I got more comfortable with the program and not promise any results to anybody until I felt comfortable with the program. That's the same advice I have given over the years to new Finale users on this list and on the finale group at yahoogroups, when they would complain about how complex the learning curve for Finale is.
And once I started learning Sibelius using that approach I found that it truly is a better program for lots of things, just as Finale remains the better program for lots of things.
And when I find one or the other program seeming to be the better program for doing something, I try the same thing in the other program to see if it's just that I misunderstood the necessary procedure. Sometimes that's it, and sometimes my initial impression of something really being easier in one program than the other remains unchanged.
But now I am more versatile as an engraver and have two tools with which to work when clients request one or the other. Not that I'm buried in engraving work or anything, but I did just take on a project for $1000 which the client has requested I work in Sibelius. And given the nature of the project that would have been the program I would have started it in anyway, so it makes life so much easier.
But if all anybody on this list does is their own work, there's no need to investigate Sibelius as long as you can do what you want in Finale. It's only when one runs into the possibility of doing work for clients which originates in either program that one needs to be proficient in both.
-- David H. Bailey [email protected] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
