The nice comment from David prompts me to weigh in for a moment. Much of my output in Finale is good — and close to serious engraving standards. That’s partly because I have the luxury of being able to work slowly, and partly because I work mostly in a idiom with which I am familiar. I have learned the tricks that make written idiomatic jazz music look good and be easy to read. When I do choral arrangements, the results are OK, but not quite as elegant. None of this would be practical (probably possible, but not practical) without a couple of Tobias’s plugins and several of Jari’s.
I am in agreement about shortcomings that I had hoped would have been addressed by now. Cautionary accidentals is hopelessly broken, so I do that by hand. Adjusting space between systems in scores when there are vertical clashes is still a time consuming process best done by hand, and when I get picky about accidentals on notes with ledger lines, adjusting them horizontally so they don’t touch the lines is painful. Those are the things that come quickly to mind. Greg Hamilton produces beautiful work in Finale (and prefers it to Sibelius in which he also does excellent work), and I’m sure there are others whose work I have had no reason to see. I have used Finale from almost day one (certainly version 1.0) and while I have found learning how to make it submit to my will, acquiring an instinct for controlling computer programs, and eventually being able to edit older works, fairly easy (I'm an inveterate tinkerer with my now work — rarely entirely finished), every time I use another program I find the learning curve steep (even in Pages there are things I think should be easy that are obscure to me). So I stick with Finale and will be likely to continue using it until something remarkably better arrives that makes learning a new program at my age seem worth the trouble. I really on information about other programs coming from this list to help with such a decision. Chuck Chuck Israels [email protected] (360) 201-3434 8831 SE 12th Ave. Portland OR 97202 <chuckisraelsjazz.com> _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: [email protected]
