Re: [Finale] Sibelius usable for excerpt and test examples?
Hi Rocky Road, I should point out that I'm not very familiar with Sibelius 4 (I've downloaded the demo), but I have used Sibelius 3 at the school I work at for producing educational materials. * Hide time signatures and key signatures Yes. * Hide rests Yes. * Measures which allow any number of notes in them (such as a notated scale of eight whole notes without needing to make a 32/4 time sig). Yes, though Sibelius will rigidly enforce the current time signature while you're inputting, so you do have to use a dialog box to tell Sibelius to create a bigger bar. * Move individual noteheads in a measure (eg: to make space at the end of a measure) Yes, it's really easy: just select a note or bar line and drag it, or use a keyboard shortcut. * Exporting of a selection to TIFF or EPS Yes. In my experience at least, EPS export works absolutely fine on Sibelius, but I've never been able to get it to work on Mac. TIFF is also fine. One of the advertised new features of Sibelius 4 is to copy and paste graphics directly from Sibelius to other programs. This seems to work really well from what I've seen in the demo. You select the bar or bars you want to export, choose Edit, Select, Select Graphic, then do Ctrl-C to put it on the clipboard, switch to your other application and do Ctrl-V to paste. It looks a bit blocky from the demo, but the sparse docs with the demo list limiting graphics export to low-resolution as one of the limitations of the demo. Best, -WR ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius version 4 has dynamic score/parts linking!
Rocky Road wrote: Do they allow two locations like Finale do from the one purchase? I have Finale on my laptop for mobile work and on a desktop computer for office work. Yes, they do. And unlike Finale, you can also use an unregister function to automatically unregister one copy with their servers, and then install it on a different machine, so it's easy to move your two copies of Sibelius between any number of machines. I've seen some complaints that this doesn't always work, but my school has a copy of Sibelius 3, and I have moved it between a computer at work, a computer at my home and a laptop I borrowed for a trip last year (had to be able to reprint some parts in case the kids lost them!) without any problems. To be honest I think Sibelius's reputation for having a draconian copy protection scheme is unjustified, particularly since Finale 2004 introduced almost exactly the same system, except that with Finale you still can't de-authorize one of your computers without getting in touch with the folks at Coda to reinstall on another computer. Best, -WR ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
On 10 Jul 2005, at 12:22 AM, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: First, while Sibelius offered a competitive discount to Finale owners, to my knowledge, C/N/M has never offered Sibelius users a competitive discount. I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken: http://www.finalemusic.com/store/specialoffers.aspx Now, owners of most notation programs can trade in their master disk and get Finale for only $199! The following programs apply: Encore, Rhapsody, Overture, Cubase Score, Sibelius, Score, Mosaic, MusicPrinter Plus, Musicator, Nightingale, Notion and FreeStyle. Sequencing software such as Cakewalk, Performer, Logic, Cubase, MasterTracks Pro and Vision do not qualify. Download the Finale Competitive Trade-up Order Form Mail the form, your Master Disk from a qualifying program and send to MakeMusic! This is exactly the same price Sibelius offers to Finale users. I believe Coda introduced this offer shortly after Sib introduced their own competitive cross-grade price. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
However, from reading your post it seems there is a small but important difference: with Finale you have to hand in your Sibelius master disk. As far as I understood the Sibelius offer does not require this, it just requires proof of ownership. Perhaps I am wrong? Johannes Darcy James Argue schrieb: On 10 Jul 2005, at 12:22 AM, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: First, while Sibelius offered a competitive discount to Finale owners, to my knowledge, C/N/M has never offered Sibelius users a competitive discount. I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken: http://www.finalemusic.com/store/specialoffers.aspx Now, owners of most notation programs can trade in their master disk and get Finale for only $199! The following programs apply: Encore, Rhapsody, Overture, Cubase Score, Sibelius, Score, Mosaic, MusicPrinter Plus, Musicator, Nightingale, Notion and FreeStyle. Sequencing software such as Cakewalk, Performer, Logic, Cubase, MasterTracks Pro and Vision do not qualify. Download the Finale Competitive Trade-up Order Form Mail the form, your Master Disk from a qualifying program and send to MakeMusic! This is exactly the same price Sibelius offers to Finale users. I believe Coda introduced this offer shortly after Sib introduced their own competitive cross-grade price. - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
John Howell wrote: At 9:28 AM -0500 7/9/05, Robert Patterson wrote: Isn't the fundamental problem here that the pie is not getting bigger? Sibelius had the luxury of learning from Finale's mistakes. Its original features list was a litany of Finale's (then) shortcomings. Apparently its entire reason for existing and strategy for growth was to be the answer to Finale's problems. I can't tell you how many Sib users who have told me flat-out this was their reason for using Sibelius: notably Sib's posterchild, John Rutter. I ask this quite honestly because I don't know the answer. Was there actually a situation of competition with Finale in the UK when Sibelius was being developed? Or was it simply a case of parallel development? As I recall, Sibelius was originally developed for a computer platform only used in the UK--Acorn?--and thus had no possible market in the U.S., while Finale had no version that could compete on that platform. You may be completely correct if you're talking about what they did when they were preparing their Windoze and Mac versions, bringing them directly into competition with Finale, but it doesn't seem that the original impetus to develop the program was direct competition. You're accurate in your depiction, John. But the Acorn market was way too small a market for the company to grow with and they needed to get into the Windows and Mac markets, which is why they made the switch. There are still complaints on the Sibelius list from long-time Sibelius users, who were using the Acorn version concerning some things which were possible on that version but aren't possible yet on the Win/Mac version of Sibelius. But it was obvious from the first Win/Mac version of Sibelius that they were aiming at the disgruntled Finale user or those who had stayed away in droves due to the hard learning curve of the early versions of Finale. The Finn brothers actively marketed version 1 of Sibelius for Win/Mac to such a user base. And it worked, it worked very well and forced Finale to play catchup. Other than Staff Styles, I can't think of any recent major upgrade to Finale that hasn't seemed to be a response to Sibelius features. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Robert Patterson wrote: [snip] I don't agree about a big showdown. Both programs will more likely stumble and muddle along in their respective directions. Honestly, I can't believe so many grown adults are so worked up over software marketing hype (which sfaict is the only thing anyone has seen about these linked parts). [snip] The linked parts aren't just marketing hype -- they're actually working in the demo version. You can even enter your own score and use the linked parts, it's not some hocus-pocus of marketing hype, the way that demos of things like MicNotator were (has anybody ever gotten that to work efficiently and accurately?) -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Robert Patterson wrote: [snip] There was that ultra-expensive Synclavier system that some were working on in Dartmouth in the early eighties. This certainly predated Finale, and it may have been a precursor to Sib. But I don't think it bore much resemblance to the Mac/Win program that came out in the 90s. The folks who developped the Synclavier system, if I remember correctly, are the same folks who developped Graphire Music Press. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 01:52 PM 7/10/05 +1000, Rocky Road wrote: You might be a different Dennis but I'm sure there was a Dennis on this forum swearing he'd never upgrade software that used Challenge-Response copy protection. Isn't Sibelius CP even more Draconian? He was a different Dennis. I'm that Dennis. And here's what I wrote on July 5 in response to David Fenton: Yes, David, you've caught me in a distasteful ethical compromise, and it embarrasses me even now. I mentioned this on the list back on May 5. I had capitulated back in April, when Finale 2005 was required by a client. The client paid for it, so it was kind of a backroom deal. I still resent it and feel slimy about it, and do work first in 2003 so I always have a recoverable copy. But I have been bought. (The other) Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
Richard Yates wrote: [snip] All of this reinforces my other comment about the poor documentation with the demo. There is no way to fairly evaluate Sibelius' capabilities with regard to Finale's. I have written to Sibelius and will report what I hear. [snbip] One thing about Sibelius, they are extremely paranoid concerning piracy (I realize any software vendor has to be cautious about it) and so they won't sell a manual to anybody who isn't a registered user, and they don't provide very good documentation for their demo, lest somebody use it to get further along with a pirated version of the program. While I can understand this, I also realize that it makes it much more difficult for prospective new customers to make adequate judgements based solely on their downloadable demo version. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Cadencing in the next movement...
Taris Flashpaw wrote: Hi all I've run into a bit of a quandary with the finale to a work I'm currently trying to finish (which has been ongoing for about five years). The fourth movement (of five) is a lovely passacaglia and the bass line (on which the whole movement is based) only ever cadences when another repetition follows it (it ends with a V7 and starts with a i chord), so naturally, come the end of the movement, the cadence is nowhere to be found. My intentions are to have an attacca into the fifth movement and have the final i chord of the passacaglia kick off the finale (of course, modulating to the new key). Here's my problem. The passacaglia is in D minor and the Finale is in B minor. What key signature should I use for the start of the Finale? Should I use D minor to easier show the modulations, or should I notate the whole thing in B minor (the modulation will only take a few bars, so by bar 10, it will be in B minor). I see it as kind of pointless to use a key signature for only ten bars and then change it... What would you recommend? I would make the key signature B minor for the finale, right from the start. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius usable for excerpt and test examples?
Rocky Road - in Oz wrote: Can Sibelius * Hide time signatures and key signatures * Hide rests Yes. Right click on the note, choose hide from the context menu. * Measures which allow any number of notes in them (such as a notated scale of eight whole notes without needing to make a 32/4 time sig). Not exactly but once you've hidden the time sig, why would it matter? * Move individual noteheads in a measure (eg: to make space at the end of a measure) Yes. Just drag the note. You will have to outthink the auto formatting but it can be done. You might also consider inputting a note or rest and then hidding it to leave space in a bar. * Exporting of a selection to TIFF or EPS Yes. In v.4 you can now export as a graphic directly to the clipboard and paste into any document that supports graphic pasting via standard windows methods. I am not familiar with Mac but know that similar capability exists. Does Sibelius have this flexibility for measures that are a bit odd in their timing or positioning? Yes. You can easily drag the left end of a stave to any indented position wanted. Dragging the right edge is not so well documented but if you point to the middle line, a little box (handle?) appears which you can then drag to right indentation you want. You can also choose hidden as a staff attribute for any portion of a stave. Right click away any blank part of the page. Near the bottom of the context menu you will find change staff type. Select hidden. Point to where you want to start the hidden stave and click. A selection rectangle appears. You can drag it to any position where you want to hide the stave. Repeating the process but selecting a normal stave will give you a pair of bookends that you may drag in either direction to choose precisely what parts of the stave you want hidden and what you want to be seen. It's much easier to do than to explain. It is worth pointing out that Sibelius 4 also includes a worksheet creator with about 1700 resources that can be used either with a wizard or independently to create worksheets. It's very through and flexible. Richard Smith www.rgsmithmusic.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
Rocky Road wrote: [snip] not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the marketing flow. Even if Finale lift their game they will need to win over the Retailers and Trade Show marketers. It does make me wonder where Finale are getting their educational market input from, since Sibelius seems to be winning the battle hands-down! My city just built a new high school and rebuilt the old high school, so now we have two 4-year high schools, and each school got a lot of new equipment, including computers in the music department. The notation software on those computers? Sibelius. My question to MakeMusic is: WHY?! How could you let that happen? Continue paying attention to SmartMusic, if you want to, but don't give the notation market away to Sibelius, as it appears you are doing. The inclusion of GPO (a subset, they admit, which will probably force many of us to spring for the additional soundsets, once we realize the limitations of the sounds included) may well overpower the computers of those educational installations which do use Finale, to say nothing of the casual users who may not be computer-savvy. Just look at all the problems discussed by GPO users on this list, which I consider to be populated mostly by people who are very computer-literate and who STILL have had problems getting things to work correctly. Trying to get a school computer installation to increase their RAM so that they can utilize the GPO sounds (this seems to be the number-one suggestion when new GPO users aired their problems and complaints) is not as simple as going down to the local CompUSA and buying more ram. Even in the US, Sibelius has found a way to twist retailers' arms to get their product front and center (spiffs, buybacks, bonuses, deeper discounts, whatever). Just visit www.jwpepper.com and look at their e-print capabilities. The only software product mentioned on their homepage is the Scorch viewer (Sibelius' free viewer) which serves as the basis of their e-print program. Whatever happened to Finale's capabilities in this direction? All it takes is for a potential new user to work with jwpepper's e-print services, download the Scorch viewer, realize it's a Sibelius product and decide to go with the full Sibelius product since it did such a great job with the e-print stuff. Why isn't Finale working in this direction? From the jwpepper home page click on the Music Technology link in the left-hand column, and you are presented with a listing of 4 products, two of them Sibelius products, Finale and a classroom training product from Alfred Publications. Why is Sibelius listed FIRST? What did they do to gain that product placement? Why did Finale let that happen? Why doesn't MakeMusic come up with a counteroffer which would place Finale first? SmartMusic isn't even mentioned on this first page! Click on the Accompaniment Software link in the left column from the Music Technology main page, and the first product again is NOT a MakeMusic product, it's Band-in-a-Box (I agree it should be first, it's a terrific product!) Where is MakeMusic's marketing department in all this? Probably too busy sitting in the company's development team meetings, dictating what they think their marketplace wants. Everybody knows that product placement is a major factor in gaining market share, yet MakeMusic seems incapable of gaining product placement which will increase its sales. Visit www.zzounds.com and click on the ComputerMusic tab and scroll down to the Other Software line, where they list notation software. The only 2 products shown are Sibelius products. It turns out those are the only notation products they sell. Why? Visit www.musiciansfriend.com and enter Software in the search and as you click NEXT to go through the pages listing their software, you get to Sibelius products before getting to Finale products, although they DO market Finale products. But anybody who is just investigating what is out there may well stop at the Sibelius products. Why are they listed ahead of Finale products? I can go on and on, but it only frustrates me more and more. Where is MakeMusic's marketing department and what are they doing? -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
? sure it will.I'm working on a job right now for a violin cello duo. In a few places the composer asks for double stop open strings to be indicated by fingering - a parallel case to your need for two open guitar strings. Invoke the fingering text style, enter a 0 for open, hit Enter/return and enter another 0. What do you mean by 'Invoke the fingering text style'? After entering an articulation, if I hit the shortcut again the first one just disappears rather than making a second one. Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
Rocky Road wrote: Not to mention EPS export, broken for years and years, and probably never to be fixed. I must say I'm very tempted to switch, at least for some projects. It's also quite amazing that many of us got more attention from Sibelius than from MM. Dennis You might be a different Dennis but I'm sure there was a Dennis on this forum swearing he'd never upgrade software that used Challenge-Response copy protection. Isn't Sibelius CP even more Draconian? (Does it allow more than one copy?) Sibelius copy protection is the same sort as Finale's (even if not the same actual software code) -- Sibelius now allows 2 installations (so you can have it on your desktop and your notebook computers) and it's the same sort of system where you install the software and it links up with the Sibelius mothership and gets an authorization code which allows it to function. And when I needed to get back one of my authorized installs due to a hard-disk problem they were very helpful and quick to resolve my problem. Finale's people were equally helpful and quick. But it's not more draconian than Finale's system. Version 1 is what you may be remembering, and that relied on a floppy disk to transfer saving/printing capability from one computer to another. They abandoned that, thankfully! -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius version 4 has dynamic score/parts linking!
Rocky Road wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: Er, doesn't Sibelius have a little copy protection/activation code problem that ought to prevent you from switching, given that you won't upgrade past Finale 2003? Yep, they've got the same call-response sort of activation scheme that Finale has. Sibelius was very helpful when I needed to get back one of my 2 installs due to a hard-disk change, as was Finale. Do they allow two locations like Finale do from the one purchase? I have Finale on my laptop for mobile work and on a desktop computer for office work. Yes, Sibelius allows that sort of 2-installs. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
Could this be a demo limit?? . I have no trouble dragging fingerings L-R , either with the mouse or with the arrows. These fingerings are set up as articulations because it seemed that shortcuts could not be assigned to text expressions. If that is not true, how do you do it? Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius version 4 has dynamic score/parts linking!
Will Roberts wrote: [snip] To be honest I think Sibelius's reputation for having a draconian copy protection scheme is unjustified, particularly since Finale 2004 introduced almost exactly the same system, except that with Finale you still can't de-authorize one of your computers without getting in touch with the folks at Coda to reinstall on another computer. This reputation shows how important it is for any company to establish the proper reputation from the start, or it will stay with the program long after it has stopped being deserved. Version 1 of Sibelius required the movement of authorization from one computer to another by means of a 3.5 floppy disk, and if anything happened to that floppy disk while it contained the authorization code, you were out of luck until you could contact Sibelius to try to rectify things. That was very Draconian! And was changed for version 2 and remains as easy as Finale's since they are essentially the same today. But Sibelius' reputation for having an awful copy protection scheme lingers even as they have announced version 4. Same goes for Finale -- it can't shake the reputation among non-users as being extremely hard to learn and convoluted to use. That hasn't been true since Finale97 (8 years!) yet it is STILL the perception of people who may have tried version 1 or 2 or 3 or knew people who tried those versions. Sibelius seems to have been able to overcome its item of bad repute far better than Finale has been able to overcome its bad reputation. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Johannes Gebauer wrote: However, from reading your post it seems there is a small but important difference: with Finale you have to hand in your Sibelius master disk. As far as I understood the Sibelius offer does not require this, it just requires proof of ownership. Perhaps I am wrong? All I had to do for my cross-grade to Sibelius was send in the original first page of my Finale manual, not the installation CD. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
All of the above is true. For your needs I would clone a shortcut-activated text expression and set it up to center horizontally on the notehead, with the option to precisely place it vertically where the mouse is clicked (rather than a default position, which is always measured from the notehead. But I was trying to use articulations because they were the only symbols that I could get to with shortcuts (through keypad (F11 articulations)). Shortcuts are limited to two levels of menus and even then do not include all items on a menu. For instance, to place a fingering requires 'Create - Text - Other Staff Text - Guitar fingering' and then the key for the particular letter or number. The shortcuts list has 'Create' but then there is no 'Text' option for the second step of the shortcut. How do you make a shortcut to specific text expressions? Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
Rocky Road wrote: My school here in Sydney, Australia uses Finale, but this is because I like it and I introduced it here when we brought computers into the music department some years back (being head of music has its privileges :-) Indeed it does! There has to be some sort of tradeoff... :) ). However, all around us, it seems to be all Sibelius. Most Music Technology and Music Education stores sell both, but only seem to push SIbelius. The nearest Music Education store regularly promotes Sibelius in their literature and technology training days (and the other Sibelius - linked products like Auralia). They are quite happy to sell you Finale products, but you usually have to ask specifically. Finale is close to dead I think the secondary-school educational market here in Australia, Notepad notwithstanding. Sibelius has won the battle there: and I can tell this from marking/judging student compositions from around the place. Partly this is because the Australian distributors of Finale have employed a part-time Sibelius advocate/tech support who is outstanding. [snip] I am probably going to have to buy a copy of Sibelius soon, just so that our school can cater for students who already have this package at home and are more used to it. If a student from our school goes to a shop without talking to me first, they always seem to be directed to Sibelius. I have done the same thing at Sydney Uni - the majority of students I deal with use Sibelius, until they do our Music Publishing course which is based upon Finale. I too get the why don't you teach Sibelius instead comments on a regular basis. From talking to the students, a sizeable proportion of them use cracked versions of Sibelius, which, being more powerful than Finale Notepad, yields them better results. While Finale Notepad is free, so are cracked versions of Sibelius. It is great to be able to tell students to download Finale Notepad though. For a lot of them, it's all they need anyway. And those who have bought the AUS$299 education priced Finale certainly seem to be happy enough. You (and I) might stick to Finale, but I don't think you are the typical education user (you make your own fonts for goodness sake!). The average B.Mus/B.Ed from UNSW or Sydney or Newcastle or the Crematorium are still not greatly technology savvy (or interested) and will go with the marketing flow. Well, that's right, but for the time being, the Music and Music Ed students at Sydney Uni (and Melbourne Uni as well) will be using Finale for their coursework. So there's still going to be a few bastions around the place for a little while longer. Cheers Matthew -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.11/44 - Release Date: 8/07/2005 ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
It seems the documentation with the demo may not be adequate for the exacting work some of the members of this list do. If you are really interested in giving Sibelius a good test, join the SibeliusList at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sibelius-list/ There are some real heavy hitters on that list including some of the people very closely involved with Sibelius' development. They are very helpful. Thanks for the suggestion. I will do that. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Noel Stoutenburg wrote: I have not explored in any detail, the Sibelius software patents, and if there are any that relate to items like dynamic parts linking, or house styles I have no inside knowledge, but I think it is highly unlikely MM will be hesitant to implement dynamic parts linking due to patents. The prior art already existed in Mosaic, and anyway it is an idea that has been around longer than any of them, in spreadsheets for example. (Multiple views of the same data.) I am also skeptical that any meaningful patent prevents Finale from implementing house styles. Without knowing anything about Sib's structure, I nevertheless feel confident in asserting they are probably utterly different. I suspect house styles were designed in for Sibelius whereas for Finale I know they were not. Finale's best answer to house styles will likely be some expanded form of control over its libraries along (perhaps) with soft-assignment of attributes. (The only such soft assignment feature now is the music font in FinMac, which appears at the top of the font list. FinWin does not have this feature.) The barriers to both D.P. and H.S. are almost certainly technical and financial rather than legal. -- Robert Patterson http://RobertGPatterson.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 08:34 AM 7/10/05 -0400, dhbailey wrote: It does make me wonder where Finale are getting their educational market input from, since Sibelius seems to be winning the battle hands-down! My city just built a new high school and rebuilt the old high school, so now we have two 4-year high schools, and each school got a lot of new equipment, including computers in the music department. The notation software on those computers? Sibelius. The same happened here in Vermont. And the reason was absolutely clear: Sibelius (3, the last demo I have) comes up looking like music in no time, and responding to actions anywhere on the screen, no matter how unreasonable it might seem. You can play with it, put notes anywhere, and it invites fooling around. Finale doesn't invite playing around even now, and was thoroughly impossible when the switch to Sibelius was made. Sibelius is run in elementary schools, and is the successor to various other integrated music/notation packages here (Music Lab? Was that the name?). Go back to the transition a few years ago, and Finale was totally opaque for sixth graders. You couldn't teach music with Finale, but you could with Sibelius. Teachers could scrabble together worksheets in no time, but not in Finale. (And step-up packages won't gain the step-up, based on past experience.) Run even new versions of Sibelius and Finale side-by-side. Which one can you start plunking at and have it put music on the screen? Sibelius. Even with a template set to come up immediately, Finale wants you to be too informed first, almost like way back in the line editor days. Admittedly, Finale has gotten much better about being immediate, though it still insists (for example) that notes go into the measure in order, even in Simple entry. No playing around! Get to work! The thinking behind Finale is historical. Programs that have fallen by the wayside have not been able to rise above their history, and the same is happening with Finale. Graphire could have cleaned Finale's clock in both look and speed, and Sibelius would never have appeared -- but it was overpriced, used a dongle for protection, and didn't support Midi input/output. All three changed, but not until it was too late for Graphire. Now it's history. MakeMusic just might not have the resources to do a complete rethink of Finale, or even if they did, not have a sense of agreement on how to accomplish it. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
dhbailey schrieb: Johannes Gebauer wrote: However, from reading your post it seems there is a small but important difference: with Finale you have to hand in your Sibelius master disk. As far as I understood the Sibelius offer does not require this, it just requires proof of ownership. Perhaps I am wrong? All I had to do for my cross-grade to Sibelius was send in the original first page of my Finale manual, not the installation CD. That confirms what I am saying, no? Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 1:27 PM +1000 7/10/05, Rocky Road wrote: My school here in Sydney, Australia uses Finale, but this is because I like it and I introduced it here when we brought computers into the music department some years back (being head of music has its privileges :-) ). However, all around us, it seems to be all Sibelius. Most Music Technology and Music Education stores sell both, but only seem to push SIbelius. The nearest Music Education store regularly promotes Sibelius in their literature and technology training days (and the other Sibelius - linked products like Auralia). They are quite happy to sell you Finale products, but you usually have to ask specifically. Let's not forget that this is also a matter of platform competition. Our (college) music department is 100% Mac, and always has been. We used to have a computer-assisted learning lab. Now, and for a number of years, incoming Freshmen are required to have Macs, encouraged to have iBooks that they can take to class, and required to have a certain suite of programs. (The Art Department also requires Macs, but most departments on campus including the entire College of Engineering and College of Business require Windows machines.) MakeMusic lost us as steady and reliable customers the year our incoming students had Macs with OS X, and Finale for OS X did not exist. This had absolutely nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with a complete missreading of the market and a complete failure to provide a product that was needed but not available. The history of our department, if anyone cares: We first adopted Professional Composer in about 1990, dreadful as it was. When MOTU replaced it with Mosaic we adopted that in about 1993 or 1994; steep learning curve for me, not a techno-geek in any way, but still the program I'm most comfortable with. Changed to Finale because it was the industry standard (now THAT was marketing hype!) in about 1998, and most students came to hate it except for the few who put the time into really learning it; they were also not techno-geeks, and simply couldn't figure out how to make it do what they needed. Were forced to drop Finale and adopted Sibelius the year Macs started shipping with OS X (2002??); much more positive student acceptance. When I say adopted, I mean that the school provided legal copies for all faculty members and required all music majors to purchase legal copies. Our department head (yes, there are definitely privileges!) is watching the market and would switch to a freeware or shareware program that can do what's needed in a second, if one ever comes along, to save our students and our department money. So far, it hasn't happened. And yes, playback is very, very important to students, although I have never used it myself. John -- John Susie 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
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
John Howell wrote: MakeMusic lost us as steady and reliable customers the year our incoming students had Macs with OS X, and Finale for OS X did not exist. This had absolutely nothing to do with marketing, and everything to do with a complete missreading of the market and a complete failure to provide a product that was needed but not available. Think about this for a moment. The native-OSX version of Finale should have been Finale 2003. That was an upgrade year weak on features like this one. Ever since the decision that year not to go OSX-native, MM has been behind the 8 ball on the Mac side. Yet given the light features list it should have been a no-brainer. That said, I still think Steve Jobs cut the knees out from under his developers by cutting off OS9 booting one year too soon. And it is a continuing pattern... -- Robert Patterson http://RobertGPatterson.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Hey! What's wrong with Creston's 12/12?
Am 08.07.2005 um 08:57 schrieb Andrew Stiller: the still-small set of musicians who can play a quintuplet accurately in the first place. You can't be serious. Chopin requires them! I understand the point he's trying to make. Accurate execution of a quintuplet is rather tricky. Chopin may require them, but performers rarely play five notes of equal length. But performers rarely play five notes of equal length in 5/4. Heck, we rarely play four notes of equal length in 4/4. A simple check using hyperscribe will show any of us that. The point, however, I don't think is absolutely accurate execution of any rhythmic pattern. I think the point is what we hear. If we can distinguish the written rhythm simply by hearing it. (Or at least understand the concept of the rhythm, even if another might notate it differently). -- girls have cooties ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
I am probably going to have to buy a copy of Sibelius soon, just so that our school can cater for students who already have this package at home and are more used to it. If a student from our school goes to a shop without talking to me first, they always seem to be directed to Sibelius. I have done the same thing at Sydney Uni - the majority of students I deal with use Sibelius, until they do our Music Publishing course which is based upon Finale. I too get the why don't you teach Sibelius instead comments on a regular basis. From talking to the students, a sizeable proportion of them use cracked versions of Sibelius, which, being more powerful than Finale Notepad, yields them better results. While Finale Notepad is free, so are cracked versions of Sibelius. Sadly, I have heard that a nearby State School teacher gives out cracked Sibelius to all his music elective students. Not something I'm about to do so I will stick with Finale Free. It is great to be able to tell students to download Finale Notepad though. For a lot of them, it's all they need anyway. Yes. Some of our students do HSC compositions on Fin Notepad Free and only bring it into Finale right at the end for some prettying up. And those who have bought the AUS$299 education priced Finale certainly seem to be happy enough. Three or four students here bought the full Finale last year, all because they had used the Free version first. And the $299 price is also for Tertiary and Schools - Sibelius charges AUD$499 for schools. -- Rocky Road - (David Stonestreet) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
Robert Patterson schrieb: That said, I still think Steve Jobs cut the knees out from under his developers by cutting off OS9 booting one year too soon. And it is a continuing pattern... That may be the case, but Sibelius managed anyway, and by the looks of it will manage the move to Intel, too. That may well have to do with the fact that it is a) a younger application, and b) was made platform independent much earlier in it's development. However, as far as I am concerned, I don't care about all these excuses. Fact is Finale wasn't there when Sibelius was there, and I fear the same is going to happen again. Being a little more serious than I have been the last few days, I really do not want to give up Finale. There are a number of things where I almost certainly won't become very friendly with Sibelius. But MM really has to create _enthusiasm_ big time for Finale with 2k7 or I am absolutely convinced they will fail miserably in the course of 2k8 when the next Sibelius update is due. Unfortunately I believe that the yearly upgrade cycle cannot be broken until 2k7 comes out with a vastly improved feature set, simply because Sibelius 4 is here now, and Finale 2k6 is a pitiful upgrade in comparison. If MM manages to bring out a fantastic 2k7 I think there is hope. They may, however, still be under immense pressure to beat Sibelius 5. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Cadencing in the next movement...
Taris Flashpaw wrote: Hi all I've run into a bit of a quandary with the finale to a work I'm currently trying to finish (which has been ongoing for about five years). The fourth movement (of five) is a lovely passacaglia and the bass line (on which the whole movement is based) only ever cadences when another repetition follows it (it ends with a V7 and starts with a i chord), so naturally, come the end of the movement, the cadence is nowhere to be found. My intentions are to have an attacca into the fifth movement and have the final i chord of the passacaglia kick off the finale (of course, modulating to the new key). Here's my problem. The passacaglia is in D minor and the Finale is in B minor. What key signature should I use for the start of the Finale? Should I use D minor to easier show the modulations, or should I notate the whole thing in B minor (the modulation will only take a few bars, so by bar 10, it will be in B minor). I see it as kind of pointless to use a key signature for only ten bars and then change it... What would you recommend? I would make the key signature B minor for the finale, right from the start. -- David H. Bailey I would to. You'll just have an harmonic progression leading to B minor at bar ten. Giovanni Andreani ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
At 05:41 AM 7/10/2005, you wrote: These fingerings are set up as articulations because it seemed that shortcuts could not be assigned to text expressions. If that is not true, how do you do it? Hi Richard - The way to set up kbd shortcuts for text styles is as follows: File Preferences Menus and Shortcuts You must first name a new set of features/shortcuts (this enables you to restore defaults easily by going back to standard ) by clicking on the drop down menu at the top and selecting add feature , then: Menu or Category Text Styles Feature Fingering (or Gtr Fing) Keyboard Shortcut Add You are warned if your choice is already used by another operation, and you have the choice to override or choose a different one. As above you can restore any that you replace by going back to the :standard feature set. By exploring this menu you will see that there is a huge amount of flexibility in how you set Sib up for shortcuts Hope that clarifies it Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Ferney who? was: Creston
On Jul 9, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Owain Sutton wrote: In many cases the new 'deciaml' metronome marking is reached by an accel/rall from the old tempo - how would you notate that? Look, either there is a proportion or there isn't. If there is, you can put it in a tempo marking (e.g.: 8:7 faster), and if there isn't, you can't put it in a time sig. Throwing in rits. or accels. makes no difference. Why do they make no difference? All that I'm talking about is a transitition from one tempo, to another 9/8ths faster. What is the problem with that? OK, lets do this in baby steps. If I have an accelerando followed by a new tempo, then there are only four possibilities: 1) The accelerando leads smoothly up to the new tempo, in which case the instructions should be accelal...9:8 faster (I suspect this is the case you had in mind.) 2) The accelerando overshoots the new tempo, at which point, therefore, a sudden tempo drop must occur. If the accel. begins in measure 139, say, then the instructions are accel... a tempo, 9:8 faster than m.139--or some similar wording. 3) The accel. undershoots the new tempo: poco accel... ancora più mosso (9:8 faster than m. 139) or the like. 4) The proportion applies to the speed at the end of the accel, not to the speed before it began: accel... subito 9:8 faster. Analagous instructions would be applied for ritardandi, so a proportion can therefore always be written as a tempo indication. The presence of an accel. or rit. makes no difference to that fact. Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
By exploring this menu you will see that there is a huge amount of flexibility in how you set Sib up for shortcuts Thanks again but this does seem to be going in circles. - The shortcut you describe does not go to a specific predefined bit of text. It only opens a text cursor into which you then have to type the characters that you want. - Such text expressions (as contrasted with articulations) do not allow predefined precise positioning relative to the notehead. So, one fingering number always requires: 1. click the notehead, 2. press the shortcut key, 3. type the character, 4. always grab and drag the character with the mouse. With Finale I just: 1. press the metatool key while clicking the note, 2. occasionally drag or nudge the character. Last, it does not seem that respacing will correct collisions of notes and these fingering numbers. If there really is no way except by manually positioning notes then Sibelius is dozens of times slower. What am I still missing? Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Ferney who? was: Creston
Andrew Stiller wrote: On Jul 9, 2005, at 2:10 PM, Owain Sutton wrote: In many cases the new 'deciaml' metronome marking is reached by an accel/rall from the old tempo - how would you notate that? Look, either there is a proportion or there isn't. If there is, you can put it in a tempo marking (e.g.: 8:7 faster), and if there isn't, you can't put it in a time sig. Throwing in rits. or accels. makes no difference. Why do they make no difference? All that I'm talking about is a transitition from one tempo, to another 9/8ths faster. What is the problem with that? OK, lets do this in baby steps. If I have an accelerando followed by a new tempo, then there are only four possibilities: 1) The accelerando leads smoothly up to the new tempo, in which case the instructions should be accelal...9:8 faster (I suspect this is the case you had in mind.) Yes, this is the one I had in mind. But this way of indicating it is still potentially misleading, as it could be interpreted as 'accel.subito 9:8 faster'. Giving the calculated metronome marking, including decimals if necessary, removes any potential error. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
To my comment, First, while Sibelius offered a competitive discount to Finale owners, to my knowledge, C/N/M has never offered Sibelius users a competitive discount. Darcy James Argue wrote: I'm afraid you are sorely mistaken: to which I can only note, that it's not the first time I've experienced the mistaken feeling. ns ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
At 09:53 AM 7/10/2005, you wrote: Thanks again but this does seem to be going in circles. - The shortcut you describe does not go to a specific predefined bit of text. It only opens a text cursor into which you then have to type the characters that you want. Well, of course - you're not always going to want them same fingering are you? I would never want to have to change a default fingering, I would always want to enter my own. - Such text expressions (as contrasted with articulations) do not allow predefined precise positioning relative to the notehead. So, one fingering number always requires: 1. click the notehead, 2. press the shortcut key, 3. type the character, 4. always grab and drag the character with the mouse. No, not always. You decide what the spacing is that you want to be the default. If that is intelligently chosen by the user, it should be an occasionally drag or nudge as below. With Finale I just: 1. press the metatool key while clicking the note, 2. occasionally drag or nudge the character. Last, it does not seem that respacing will correct collisions of notes and these fingering numbers. If there really is no way except by manually positioning notes then Sibelius is dozens of times slower. What am I still missing? I don't see dozens of times slower at all. You've combined 1 + 2 in the Sib example above into 1 in the Finale example - I don't see a big difference there, click and type shortcut is very fast. Does the Metatool key always give you the same fingering? How do you specify different fingerings? It seems to me Sib step 3 has to be in the Finale example somewhere. As for text positioning, there is the plug-in Reset text position which will do a whole passage in one pass.I don't know, you may still like the Finale MO better, but I don't think there's quite as much difference as you state. Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
This would necessitate typing the number each time (though you could set up all the numbers in a word menu and assign shortcuts, but why bother). Okay I made a 'word menu' with shortcuts to the individual items but can find no way to use it. The name of the word menu I made appears in no other menus anywhere. The shortcuts seem to do nothing, that is after clicking on a note nothing happens when the shortcut key is pressed. The words are in the word menu under Preferences but I see no way to associate them with a text style or to access the list to create something in the score. I was able to see that the built-in word menu 'name Roman numerals' appears under Create - Text - Other Staff Text - Roman Numerals, and that after manually going through those menus a shortcut defined in the word menu places the symbol that you want. But 1. this is not a shortcut from the top level and 2. my custom word menu doesn't show up anyway. Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
On 10 Jul 2005, at 13:53, dhbailey wrote: Why not let the Finale developers spend a bit more time on each upgrade (as it was in the older days) and give us a more substantial upgrade? They could charge a bit more (like Sibelius does) for each of their non-regular upgrades, to provide essentially the same income flow, just spaced out differently and providing upgrades which are more appealing to a larger number of Finale users. That sounds like an excellent idea. For each upgrade the developers have to take large portions of the program apart and put them back together again, having integrated the new features. I think a lot of the development time is spent just making the old features work again. For a small development team working on a program as complicated as Finale, an update a year is just not efficient. Put very roughly: with a yearly cycle, the developers might be spending about 6 months on the taking apart and putting back together phases and 6 months on developing the new features. With a two year-cycle, they might still be spending about 6 months on the taking apart and putting back together phases but they'd have 18 months for developing the new features. There's another thing to consider: many users prefer not to purchase the upgrade every year anyway: they will wait another year or two until the latest version really seems to represent a substantial improvement on the one they're using. My bet is that MakeMusic would gain in the long run by not releasing a Finale 2007 next year and bringing out a real must-have update a year or so later. Michael Cook ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, All the best, Lawrence "þaes ofereode - þisses swa maeg"http://lawrenceyates.co.ukDulcian Wind Quintet: http://dulcianwind.co.uk ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, All the best, You've joined it, this message came through it. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
- The shortcut you describe does not go to a specific predefined bit of text. It only opens a text cursor into which you then have to type the characters that you want. Well, of course - you're not always going to want them same fingering are you? I would never want to have to change a default fingering, I would always want to enter my own. I want different shortcut keys for specific fingering numbers. I do appreciate your trying to help with this Ken but you really do not seem to be following what I am trying to do very closely. Perhaps you are not familiar with Finale. - Such text expressions (as contrasted with articulations) do not allow predefined precise positioning relative to the notehead. So, one fingering number always requires: 1. click the notehead, 2. press the shortcut key, 3. type the character, 4. always grab and drag the character with the mouse. No, not always. You decide what the spacing is that you want to be the default. If that is intelligently chosen by the user, it should be an occasionally drag or nudge as below. The options in Staff Styles allow only left, right and center for horizontal positioning and which staffs for vertical positioning. I see no way of positioning text precisely with reference to the notehead. With Finale I just: 1. press the metatool key while clicking the note, 2. occasionally drag or nudge the character. Last, it does not seem that respacing will correct collisions of notes and these fingering numbers. If there really is no way except by manually positioning notes then Sibelius is dozens of times slower. What am I still missing? I don't see dozens of times slower at all. If I have to manually adjust the position of most notes before the ones with fingering numbers than it will be dozens of times slower. You've combined 1 + 2 in the Sib example above into 1 in the Finale example - I don't see a big difference there, click and type shortcut is very fast. It is two actions in sequence instead of two that are simultaneous. That makes it about half as fast. I also did not mention that, in Sibelius, in order to drag the text once entered you apparently have to click again to exit from the text cursor so there is yet another step. By comparison in Finale after the symbol is placed it is already selected for dragging or nudging. Does the Metatool key always give you the same fingering? How do you specify different fingerings? In Finale once the Articulation Tool is selected then my keyboard is programmed so that different keys produce different specific articulations. I have about 25 of them. One key = one symbol. It seems to me Sib step 3 has to be in the Finale example somewhere. No it is not. Each shortcut key places the symbol. As for text positioning, there is the plug-in Reset text position which will do a whole passage in one pass. Reset to what? Fingerings need to be associated positionally with notes. What does 'Reset text position' do? Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
RE: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 7:05 PM To: finale@shsu.edu Subject: Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question... Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, All the best, Lawrence þaes ofereode - þisses swa maeg http://lawrenceyates.co.uk Dulcian Wind Quintet: http://dulcianwind.co.uk ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
At 12:30 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote: I want different shortcut keys for specific fingering numbers. I do appreciate your trying to help with this Ken but you really do not seem to be following what I am trying to do very closely. Perhaps you are not familiar with Finale. Richard - You're right, I'm not very familiar with Finale. That's why I'm here on this list. I'm learning quite a bit. I see now that you want a one-step fingering shortcut, and it may not be possible with Sibelius. But I have fingering set up to be Alt-F and then a numeral, and I do find it to be very fast. Repositioning from the resulting row does have to be done with a plug-in, but I can live with that. Your mileage may vary. - Such text expressions (as contrasted with articulations) do not allow predefined precise positioning relative to the notehead. So, one fingering number always requires: 1. click the notehead, 2. press the shortcut key, 3. type the character, 4. always grab and drag the character with the mouse. No, not always. You decide what the spacing is that you want to be the default. If that is intelligently chosen by the user, it should be an occasionally drag or nudge as below. The options in Staff Styles allow only left, right and center for horizontal positioning and which staffs for vertical positioning. I see no way of positioning text precisely with reference to the notehead. Two places you can specify this: House Styles Default positions, and Plug Ins Text Reposition text. As has been already discussed I think the latter option is the best, as Default positions only references position relative to staff whereas you want notehead reference, as do I. With Finale I just: 1. press the metatool key while clicking the note, 2. occasionally drag or nudge the character. Last, it does not seem that respacing will correct collisions of notes and these fingering numbers. If there really is no way except by manually positioning notes then Sibelius is dozens of times slower. What am I still missing? I don't see dozens of times slower at all. If I have to manually adjust the position of most notes before the ones with fingering numbers than it will be dozens of times slower. You've combined 1 + 2 in the Sib example above into 1 in the Finale example - I don't see a big difference there, click and type shortcut is very fast. It is two actions in sequence instead of two that are simultaneous. That makes it about half as fast. I also did not mention that, in Sibelius, in order to drag the text once entered you apparently have to click again to exit from the text cursor so there is yet another step. By comparison in Finale after the symbol is placed it is already selected for dragging or nudging. It stays selected upon entry in Sib also. . Does the Metatool key always give you the same fingering? How do you specify different fingerings? In Finale once the Articulation Tool is selected then my keyboard is programmed so that different keys produce different specific articulations. I have about 25 of them. One key = one symbol. It seems to me Sib step 3 has to be in the Finale example somewhere. No it is not. Each shortcut key places the symbol. OK, gotcha. I don't think this is something Sib can do. As I said there is the extra step of specifying the numeral. As for text positioning, there is the plug-in Reset text position which will do a whole passage in one pass. Reset to what? Fingerings need to be associated positionally with notes. What does 'Reset text position' do? I'm sorry, I misstated it, the plug-in isn't Reset it's Reposition and it repositions them (from the default staff position) to a position *relative to the notehead* as you say, that you specify when you run the plug in. HTH Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Michael Cook schrieb: My bet is that MakeMusic would gain in the long run by not releasing a Finale 2007 next year and bringing out a real must-have update a year or so later. I would agree with you, except that I think MakeMusic cannot afford to let Fin2k6 stand against Sibelius 4 for two years with the danger of having to compete against Sibelius 5 with the next update. Sibelius 4 is going to make a huge impression, and MakeMusic has to work really hard in my opinion to catch up with 2k7. I have seen too many software wars end like this. One competitor comes out with that bit of edge over the other, and the other one reacts to slowly. Market gone. One more update, then abandoned software. Happens all the time. Now is not the time to put in a years rest. Next year maybe. But 2k6 is not enough of an update to last for two years. No way. On a much smaller scale I am currently seeing something similar happening with two competitors on the sync with PocketPC market. I bought this application in March. When Tiger came out it became incompatible. The update was promised for June. The competitor came out in May. The update has still not surfaced. Lots of people are jumping ship. I am going to buy the competitor next week unless they deliver. If I make that step I am gone, and will never look at that piece of software again. Lost customer. Bad publicity. No new customers. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
What? You mean another one? Johannes [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, All the best, Lawrence þaes ofereode - þisses swa maeg http://lawrenceyates.co.uk http://lawrenceyates.co.uk/ Dulcian Wind Quintet: http://dulcianwind.co.uk http://dulcianwind.co.uk/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
Ken Durling schrieb: You're right, I'm not very familiar with Finale. That's why I'm here on this list. I'm learning quite a bit. I see now that you want a one-step fingering shortcut, and it may not be possible with Sibelius. But I have fingering set up to be Alt-F and then a numeral, and I do find it to be very fast. Repositioning from the resulting row does have to be done with a plug-in, but I can live with that. Your mileage may vary. I don't want to start a war here, but this really seems to be an area where Finale is _far_ superior. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Guys, Lawrence was making a JOKE -- that with all the recent Siblelius talk, one might think this was a Sibelius list. (Kinda spoils the joke if you have to explain it.) - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY On 10 Jul 2005, at 4:06 PM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: What? You mean another one? Johannes [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, All the best, Lawrence þaes ofereode - þisses swa maeg http://lawrenceyates.co.uk http://lawrenceyates.co.uk/ Dulcian Wind Quintet: http://dulcianwind.co.uk http://dulcianwind.co.uk/ -- -- ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
Johannes - You may well be right and I'm fine with that. I'm not in a competition mode, and I wasn't trying to assert Sib's superiority - I'm just trying to represent Sibelius *accurately.* I appreciate there will be differences in many areas, and this may be one of them. I've always understood that Finale is superior for some things, Sibelius for others. However, to have an intelligent discussion I think we have to try and stay away from hyperbole like dozens of time slower, dreadful UI , vastly inferior (in either direction). etc etc. Many of you - yourself included - are offering well-considered, intelligent and reasonable criticisms, and I appreciate that a lot. ken At 01:13 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote: Ken Durling schrieb: You're right, I'm not very familiar with Finale. That's why I'm here on this list. I'm learning quite a bit. I see now that you want a one-step fingering shortcut, and it may not be possible with Sibelius. But I have fingering set up to be Alt-F and then a numeral, and I do find it to be very fast. Repositioning from the resulting row does have to be done with a plug-in, but I can live with that. Your mileage may vary. I don't want to start a war here, but this really seems to be an area where Finale is _far_ superior. Johannes ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
You may well be right and I'm fine with that. I'm not in a competition mode, and I wasn't trying to assert Sib's superiority - I'm just trying to represent Sibelius *accurately.* As am I. Remember I am trying to find a reason to switch. I really want accurate info if I am going spend money. However, to have an intelligent discussion I think we have to try and stay away from hyperbole like dozens of time slower Dozens of times slower is entirely accurate (or even understated) as I have explained. Finale can space bars so that there are no collisions with fingering numbers. Apparently Sibelius cannot. Tweaking the placement of all the necessary notes would take at least dozens of times longer than simply selecting the staff, selecting the MassMover Tool and pressing '4' as i can do in Finale. Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
On 9 Jul 2005 at 23:22, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: It occurs to me, too, that there is an aspect to some of these things that may affect certain items. I have not explored in any detail, the Sibelius software patents, and if there are any that relate to items like dynamic parts linking, or house styles, it may be that MakeMusic! may choose to ignore these items for the duration of the patent, rather than risk an expensive lawsuit in which they are charged with infringement. Er, is the Dynamic Parts featured patented, not just trademarked as a term? If so, it seems that it's a bad patent, given that there was prior art long before Sibeilus even existed. Where do you get the patent idea related to dynamic parts? -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius usable for excerpt and test examples?
On 10 Jul 2005 at 15:33, Rocky Road wrote: PS: The huge discussion of Sibelius 4 here is the first time I've seen this list have more hmmm interesting rather than not bad, but no dice posts. I don't remember the tenor of potential Sibelius acceptance ever being as strong here before. Seems to me that most of the hmm, interesting is coming from people who already had experience with Sibelius, and/or who are mostly just considering the dynamic parts, and not the program as a whole. When I delved into it, I quickly determined that I couldn't switch to Sibelius for a number of reasons, none of which had to do with the classic Finale-user criticisms of Sibelius (i.e., restricts formatting choices, or it can't do something Finale can do). -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
At 01:45 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote: Dozens of times slower is entirely accurate (or even understated) as I have explained. Finale can space bars so that there are no collisions with fingering numbers. Apparently Sibelius cannot. Tweaking the placement of all the necessary notes would take at least dozens of times longer than simply selecting the staff, selecting the MassMover Tool and pressing '4' as i can do in Finale. Well, I don't know why the Alt-Shift-arrow bar resize isn't working on your computer, Richard, but I assure you it's not a question of moving every note individually. Still, this might be an area in which Sib doesn't work well enough for you, in which case I'm at least glad to have helped discover that. But there are so many disparities between the way you describe Sib behaving, and the way it does for me that I have to wonder what's going on. ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius usable for excerpt and test examples?
I wonder if it doesn't have as much to do with the lousy Fin06 feature enhancement list as much as anything in particlar about Sib4. I for one am certainly disappointed by the Fin06 list. Rocky Road wrote: PS: The huge discussion of Sibelius 4 here is the first time I've seen this list have more hmmm interesting rather than not bad, but no dice posts. I don't remember the tenor of potential Sibelius acceptance ever being as strong here before. -- Robert Patterson http://RobertGPatterson.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On 10 Jul 2005 at 9:46, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: Run even new versions of Sibelius and Finale side-by-side. Which one can you start plunking at and have it put music on the screen? Sibelius. Even with a template set to come up immediately, Finale wants you to be too informed first, almost like way back in the line editor days. Admittedly, Finale has gotten much better about being immediate, though it still insists (for example) that notes go into the measure in order, even in Simple entry. No playing around! Get to work! I don't quite get this criticism. Using the Sibelius 4 demo and my copy of WinFin2K3, if I launch the new document wizard and use Finale in Simple Entry mode, it works almost precisely the same way as Sibelius. Now, I don't know what Finale's default setup is -- I believe out of the box it defaults to the document setup wizard. I do not know if it defaults to simple entry or not. If it doesn't, then it would be a little harder than Sibelius. But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things right on the first try. But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference between the two. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
dhbailey wrote: They've already reduced their development department for Finale so they could put more developers to work on MakeMusic. Can you please include some proof to this statement? Best regards, Jari Williamsson ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
--- dhbailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is wonderful for the continued growth and survival of MakeMusic, but it doesn't bode so well for Finale, I'm afraid. They've already reduced their development department for Finale so they could put more developers to work on MakeMusic. One thing that I am surprised at, though, is their continued upgrade-a-year scheduling for Finale, since they've got a great subscription model working well to guarantee an income flow for SmartMusic. Why not let the Finale developers spend a bit more time on each upgrade (as it was in the older days) and give us a more substantial upgrade? They could charge a bit more (like Sibelius does) for each of their non-regular upgrades, to provide essentially the same income flow, just spaced out differently and providing upgrades which are more appealing to a larger number of Finale users. I think they've actually increased the number of people on the Finale development staff. Regarding SmartMusic eventually supporting the development of Finale, I believe that's still the plan. Tyler Sell on Yahoo! Auctions no fees. Bid on great items. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
On Jul 10, 2005, at 4:06 PM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: What? You mean another one? Johannes [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, Sheesh, everyone! It was a JOKE! Maybe it was a dry British-type joke that only they and Canadians get, but it WAS a joke. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
On 10 Jul 2005 at 20:58, Michael Cook wrote: [re: non-annual upgrades of Finale:] There's another thing to consider: many users prefer not to purchase the upgrade every year anyway: they will wait another year or two until the latest version really seems to represent a substantial improvement on the one they're using. Yes, you're right. For occasional upgraders like me, with a higher price for the non-annual upgrade, they'd be getting more revenue from me. But I wouldn't necessarily regret that *if* the longer development time allowed them to make bigger changes to Finale. I'd pay more money for a couple of areas being completely redesigned/re-engineered to get rid of long-term problems plus a lot of small incremental improvements, vs. the current situation where I wait several years until the number of small incremental improvements accumulates to a point where it seems worth the upgrade price. If the longer development time allowed them to be more ambitious in the evolution of Finale, I'd be glad to pay more. How much more, well, that's a different story. Currently I've been paying $150 or so. Raising that to $200 is probably not going to be an issue. Anything more than that starts approaching the price I paid for the full educational discount back in 1991 ($250). I don't know what the current educational discount price for the full version is, but that's going to be an upper limit on the price for the non-annual upgrade. They may have backed themselves into a corner by overpricing the yearly upgrades, so that they have no way to actually maintain revenues on a non-annual upgrade cycle. Secondly, all you folks who've always advocated paying the yearly upgrade price have trained MakeMusic to stay on a yearly upgrade cycle, which it is pretty clear doesn't allow them the time to implement major improvements. If fewer people purchased the yearly upgrades out of the sense of duty that so many of you claim, then they would have less motivation to continue yearly upgrades. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On Jul 10, 2005, at 2:48 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things right on the first try. But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference between the two. Here's one very simplistic example: Say you have a piano part that's basically "two-beat"--that is, LH on 1 and 3, and RH on 2 and 4. You enter the LH notes first: note-rest-note-rest. Now the RH: In Finale, if you want notes on beats two and four, you have to enter rest-note-rest-note. In Sibelius you can just point the cursor to beat 2 and enter a note, then do the same for beat 4--no need to enter rests on beats 1 and 3--they are added automatically. In other words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), while Finale doesn't. Lon Price, Los Angeles [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hometown.aol.com/txstnr/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
On 10 Jul 2005 at 11:49, Ken Durling wrote: At 09:53 AM 7/10/2005, you wrote: Thanks again but this does seem to be going in circles. - The shortcut you describe does not go to a specific predefined bit of text. It only opens a text cursor into which you then have to type the characters that you want. Well, of course - you're not always going to want them same fingering are you? I would never want to have to change a default fingering, I would always want to enter my own. Finale allows the creation of a shortcut for each individual fingering. But I do think I wouldn't mind the step of typing the fingering number, were it not for the extra steps. - Such text expressions (as contrasted with articulations) do not allow predefined precise positioning relative to the notehead. So, one fingering number always requires: 1. click the notehead, 2. press the shortcut key, 3. type the character, 4. always grab and drag the character with the mouse. No, not always. You decide what the spacing is that you want to be the default. If that is intelligently chosen by the user, it should be an occasionally drag or nudge as below. With Finale I just: 1. press the metatool key while clicking the note, 2. occasionally drag or nudge the character. Last, it does not seem that respacing will correct collisions of notes and these fingering numbers. If there really is no way except by manually positioning notes then Sibelius is dozens of times slower. What am I still missing? I don't see dozens of times slower at all. You've combined 1 + 2 in the Sib example above into 1 in the Finale example - I don't see a big difference there, click and type shortcut is very fast. . . . Yes, there *is* a big difference. In Finale, you hold down your shortcut key to determine which fingering you want, then click on the note you want it applied to. This feels like one step to me, since nothing happens until the mouse click. In Sibelius, you have to select the note first, then get into text entry mode, then press a separate shortcut key (this is two steps), then type the character, then adjust the spacing. . . . Does the Metatool key always give you the same fingering? How do you specify different fingerings? . . . You can have approximately 36 metatools (alpha keys + numbers) for articulartions, and 36 for shape expressions, 36 for text expressions, each being completely independent. Thus, there are enough to define all 5 fingerings as metatools. The simplest way is to give them the numbers, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, so that you apply a fingering to a note by holding down # and clicking on the note. In most cases, if you've defined the articulation's automatic spacing well, you won't have to move the resulting fingering. But occasionally, you do, but this is made easy because Finale autoselects the handle for the articulation you just entered, so you can use the arrow keys to nudge it to the correct position. In Sibelius, you have to click outside the text item (to get it out of edit mode with the cursor), then click again on the item, then mouse drag or use the arrow keys. You see, I hope, that there are two areas in which Finale is faster: 1. the initial entry of the item, AND 2. the final positioning of it. For 1) it is one combination keyboard/mouse operation (i.e., clicking on a note with a key depressed simultaneously). On Sibelius, the selection of the note is independent from the keyboard shortcut, while in Finale, it's combined into one operation. For 2), because you're inserting a predefined articultion (instead of typing the text each time), there is no need in Finale to leave editing mode, so Finale can automatically select the item you've just entered, allowing you to nudge it (or drag it with the mouse, if you like, though it's usually much easier to nudge). Your step 4 actually should be 3 steps: 4a. click outside the expression to take you out of text edit mode. 4b. click on the item to select it again. 4c. use the mouse or the keyboard to position it. . . . It seems to me Sib step 3 has to be in the Finale example somewhere. . . . Yes, you do it once in defining the articulation. From then on, once you've assigned the metatool shortcut, you don't have to type it again. . . . As for text positioning, there is the plug-in Reset text position which will do a whole passage in one pass.I don't know, you may still like the Finale MO better, but I don't think there's quite as much difference as you state. Well, I strongly doubt that a reset text position is going to be very good at moving things to account for individual circumstances where you'd want to nudge a fingering slightly out of its original default position. The point is that in Finale you get default positioning in one keystroke/mouseclick, and then need only nudge if it needs adjustment. I can't see how reset text position is going
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 03:37 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote: In other words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), while Finale doesn't. This was new in v.3, and a relief it was! Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On 10 Jul 2005 at 15:37, Lon Price wrote: On Jul 10, 2005, at 2:48 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). I just tried setting up a piano quartet, and the Sibelius 4 demo got it exactly right, with 3 staves per page, whereas Finale came up with such huge staves that it can mange only 2 per page. So, yes, to get printout that looks decent in Finale, you've got to know how to adjust page layout, whereas Sibelius is smart enough to get things right on the first try. But in terms of getting music in, I don't see much difference between the two. Here's one very simplistic example: Say you have a piano part that's basically two-beat--that is, LH on 1 and 3, and RH on 2 and 4. You enter the LH notes first: note-rest-note-rest. Now the RH: In Finale, if you want notes on beats two and four, you have to enter rest-note-rest-note. In Sibelius you can just point the cursor to beat 2 and enter a note, then do the same for beat 4--no need to enter rests on beats 1 and 3--they are added automatically. In other words, Sibelius allows mid-measure note entry (in an empty measure), while Finale doesn't. To me, that's a drawback, rather than an advantage! Of course, I wouldn't use the mouse to enter music, in any case, but if I were, I'd want it to be as accurate as possible. How does Sibelius decide the granularity of the mid-measure note? What if I want a half note followed by an 8th rest followed by a dotted quarter? Can Sibelius do that with me clicking on the 2nd half of beat 3? If it can, then my bet is that an awful lot of people are going to end up with non-intended 8th rests in the middle of their measure, since in my experience, most users are very poor in terms of mouse accuracy. But, again, I don't see this so much as an advantage one way or the other in terms of ease of entering music -- it's just two different choices about a default behavior. Either way is going to get you entering music pretty quickly (or, as quickly as mouse clicking is ever going to get), and I don't see much difference in terms of ease of learning in getting notes on the page. Now, for getting notes *off* the page, that's a different story -- the Sibelius results come out better by default in terms of proper choice of layout sizes for staves/systems. Finale's do not. I did download the current version of Finale notepad and tried it out. It is somewhat better at this, but still makes the systems much too large. It does do a better job of spacing horizontally, though (I couldn't seem to get automatic note spacing turned back on in my copy of Finale). -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] GPO/MIDI question
List, I just bought GPO and the Finale upgrade to 2006 (and another gig of RAM!). But I have a rather simple question: With all of the talk about how processor/RAM intensive GPO is, I'd likely do most of my work routing MIDI through my MIDI keyboard (or maybe, sometimes, the Finale soundfonts). Later I'll switch the patches to GPO. But what if I want to do some editing or other simple work? Will I need to go through a whole rigamarole to reset patches? I'm thinking of the Instrument Window. It'd be nice if I could set the Instrument Window for my regular MIDI output, then another interface for GPO, then simply switch. Am I in luck? Or should I just sit on my hands and wait until FinMac 2006 comes out? Andrew Levin ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Missing arrows
Hello, greater wisdom, I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this (or discussed it already in this forum): Pull down the File menu, and the New command doesn't have the disclosure arrow next to it showing me my subchoices. The arrows are there for Mass Edit and Tools menus, though not for TGTools menu. The menus still behave as if the arrows are there, but it's a little disconcerting to not see them. My system is: MacFin 2005b Mac G5 2.0 GHz dualie Mac OS 10.4.1 Andrew Levin ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
At 05:48 PM 7/10/05 -0400, David W. Fenton wrote: I don't quite get this criticism. Using the Sibelius 4 demo and my copy of WinFin2K3, if I launch the new document wizard and use Finale in Simple Entry mode, it works almost precisely the same way as Sibelius. Once you're there, which is far from obvious. Keep in mind that Sibelius always was ready to go, but not Finale. I was trying to account for the acceptance of Sibelius several years ago here in Vermont. But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). The main difference once you're there is that in Sibelius you can put notes anywhere in the measure, and the score gets added to and reformatted on the spot. Finale forces you to start at the beginning of the measure. And, as you say, the formatting is not bad in Sibelius and bad in Finale. Again, remember -- I'm talking about our schools. In terms of immediate usability, Sibelius was way ahead of Finale a few years ago. Finale is closer now, but still unacceptable because at this point it would have to be much better than Sibelius for the schools to transition from Sibelius *to* Finale. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Missing arrows
On 10 Jul 2005, at 23:57, Andrew Levin wrote:Pull down the File menu, and the New command doesn't have the disclosure arrow next to it showing me my subchoices. The arrows are there for Mass Edit and Tools menus, though not for TGTools menu. The menus still behave as if the arrows are there, but it's a little disconcerting to not see them. My system is: MacFin 2005b Mac G5 2.0 GHz dualie Mac OS 10.4.1 My system is virtually the same as yours, but the arrows are there in TGTools. The arrow is missing, as you say, against New in the File menu. I haven't been disconcerted by its absence, indeed I hadn't noticed it.John___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
David W. Fenton wrote: Yes, there *is* a big difference. In Finale, you hold down your shortcut key to determine which fingering you want, then click on the note you want it applied to. This feels like one step to me, since nothing happens until the mouse click. In Sibelius, you have to select the note first, then get into text entry mode, then press a separate shortcut key (this is two steps), then type the character, then adjust the spacing. No: hit Esc to stop editing the text in Sibelius, and it remains selected so you can move it. Then hit Return or F2 to start editing it again, and hit Space to move on to the next note, type your fingering number, and so on. Best, -WR ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale in the Education Market (Was Dynamic Parts)
On 10 Jul 2005 at 19:17, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: At 05:48 PM 7/10/05 -0400, David W. Fenton wrote: I don't quite get this criticism. Using the Sibelius 4 demo and my copy of WinFin2K3, if I launch the new document wizard and use Finale in Simple Entry mode, it works almost precisely the same way as Sibelius. Once you're there, which is far from obvious. Keep in mind that Sibelius always was ready to go, but not Finale. I was trying to account for the acceptance of Sibelius several years ago here in Vermont. Well, the document setup wizard (which was copied from Sibelius, no?) has been around for about five years, hasn't it? But once you're in simple entry, I just don't seen enough differences to make a difference, except for the kindergarten large size of the page layout in Finale (something that has always made no sense to me at all). The main difference once you're there is that in Sibelius you can put notes anywhere in the measure, and the score gets added to and reformatted on the spot. Finale forces you to start at the beginning of the measure. Again, I see this as an advantage and not as a disadvantage! And, as you say, the formatting is not bad in Sibelius and bad in Finale. Again, remember -- I'm talking about our schools. In terms of immediate usability, Sibelius was way ahead of Finale a few years ago. Finale is closer now, but still unacceptable because at this point it would have to be much better than Sibelius for the schools to transition from Sibelius *to* Finale. I have always complained about the layout of the default files in Finale. The thing about Sibelius is that it seems to me to automatically adjust the sizing of the systems on the page based on what instruments you've chosen. This, it seems to me, is inherently possible because of the way staff/system layout is implemented, which allows it to be dynamic, whereas Finale's template-based approach and the method of storing and editing the sizing information makes it virtually impossible. This is also, it seems to me, why vertical spacing is something you have to futz around with in Finale, because of the way these things are implemented. I've said a million times, and for close to 10 years, that I think these basic problems are engineered into the file format of Finale and can only be fixed with a radical redesign. When page formatting was drastically overhauled a few years ago, it was basically all in the UI, and not in the way the data is stored, seems to me, and thus, there's not much further you can go with it. The result is that you end up with only a plugin-based response to it, rather than something that happens automatically. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4
On 11 Jul 2005 at 0:30, Will Roberts wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: Yes, there *is* a big difference. In Finale, you hold down your shortcut key to determine which fingering you want, then click on the note you want it applied to. This feels like one step to me, since nothing happens until the mouse click. In Sibelius, you have to select the note first, then get into text entry mode, then press a separate shortcut key (this is two steps), then type the character, then adjust the spacing. No: hit Esc to stop editing the text in Sibelius, and it remains selected so you can move it. Then hit Return or F2 to start editing it again, and hit Space to move on to the next note, type your fingering number, and so on. It's still more operations than in Finale, even if you eliminate some of the ones I indicated. With Finale, you don't have to hit ESC to get to the state where the item is movable. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
Jari Williamsson wrote: dhbailey wrote: They've already reduced their development department for Finale so they could put more developers to work on MakeMusic. Can you please include some proof to this statement? I can't recall the exact message from a few years ago in which it was stated by a MakeMusic employee who was resident on this list until he no longer worked for them. I can't provide proof, so if it pleases you I will withdraw the statement as so much blowing into the wind on my part. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Another thing Sibelius has
On Jul 9, 2005, at 2:14 AM, Lon Price wrote: 1. Virtually every slur has to be tweaked. If I change the music spacing I can pretty much count on slurs going haywire, being drawn at an ungodly height, for instance, and colliding with all manner of notational elements--ties, accidentals, expressions, etc. But even when I let Finale do the spacing, slurs still get drawn at ungodly heights. Transposing the music makes slurs go nuts too. Slurs are imperfect but they're not that bad. You should be able to get good results on 90%+ slurs with decent settings. I don't even know what out-of-the-box settings are like, since I always use my own. Maybe they suck. If so, MakeMusic could accomplish a lot without touching the program at all and just making some decent templates. If you don't want to think about slur settings, you ought to be able to copy them outright from someone else. Didn't somebody publish a basic Finale template somewhere? mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
I thought it was a great joke!! :-) Rick Neal Christopher Smith wrote: On Jul 10, 2005, at 4:06 PM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: What? You mean another one? Johannes [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: Does anyone have an address for a Finale mailing list? I have some questions I'd like to ask, Sheesh, everyone! It was a JOKE! Maybe it was a dry British-type joke that only they and Canadians get, but it WAS a joke. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale -- Rick Neal Teacher, Composer, Bassist, Guitarist [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Accidental Bug
[FinMac 2005b] There's a really annoying bug in Finale that's been there for years. When a note with an accidental is tied to the next bar and then tied again to another note in this same bar, the final note is given a redundant accidental. For example, in 4/4: whole note with accidental tied to half note tied to eighth note. I reported this to Finale some years ago and they acknowledged that it was a bug but have never fixed it. I'm so used to it that I automatically hit * in these situations to hide the unwanted accidental. Except when I forget. Sometimes they escape my proof- reading, and are I believe rather confusing for the players as well as being plain wrong. John ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Accidental Bug
On 11 Jul 2005, at 02:30, John Bell wrote:[FinMac 2005b]There's a really annoying bug in Finale that's been there for years. When a note with an accidental is tied to the next bar and then tied again to another note in this same bar, the final note is given a redundant accidental. For example, in 4/4: whole note with accidental tied to half note tied to eighth note.I reported this to Finale some years ago and they acknowledged that it was a bug but have never fixed it. I'm so used to it that I automatically hit * in these situations to hide the unwanted accidental. Except when I forget. Sometimes they escape my proof-reading, and are I believe rather confusing for the players as well as being plain wrong.Replying to myself: this bug doesn't always strike, but I have been unable to establish exactly what triggers it. Having experimented for the past five minutes, a surer way to elicit the bug seems to be:(in 4/4): half note rest, half note with accidental tied to half note, tied to quarter note.John___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Sibelius 4 demo
All this talk of Sibelius made me curious so I've been messing with the demo most of the day. Two questions: 1 - Can I position the Title text anywhere I want it to be? I can get it to move up and down. But, horizontally I can only make it be justified left, right or center. It cannot be moved left and right. 2 - In Finale you have quanitzation settings and can 're-transcribe' all or part of the music based on those settings after music has already been inputed (or imported via midi). Those settings include the ability to have or not have a 2nd voice. In Sibelius I can import midi files (or use the flexi thingy) and specify the quantization, more or less, but I cannot figure out any way to re-transcribe the music to new quantization settings or to merge Sibelius' voices into one, the voices being, I guess, anlagous to Finale's layers. I can't even find a quantization setting. I usually don't do much midi importing, but right now I have a need to do that and I find I use the 're-transcribe' Finale function a lot when dealing with midi files. I know Sibelius' marketing department has all the die-hard fans and notation software novices believing that Sibelius is more intuitive and easier, but I say that's nonsense. (This Sibelius vs. Finale reminds me of the older days of the Mac vs. IBM PC). As the saying goes, we are not impressed. (Yet). James Gilbert http://www.jamesgilbertmusic.com/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Accidental Bug
At 02:30 AM 7/11/05 +0100, John Bell wrote: There's a really annoying bug in Finale that's been there for years. And another one -- the bass-clef first-note speedy-entry bug. Type along from the computer keyboard and at random the first note of some measures will be way up high, as if it were displaying a treble clef. The bug's still there in 2005b. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Accidental Bug
On Jul 10, 2005, at 9:58 PM, John Bell wrote: On 11 Jul 2005, at 02:30, John Bell wrote: [FinMac 2005b] There's a really annoying bug in Finale that's been there for years. When a note with an accidental is tied to the next bar and then tied again to another note in this same bar, the final note is given a redundant accidental. For example, in 4/4: whole note with accidental tied to half note tied to eighth note. I reported this to Finale some years ago and they acknowledged that it was a bug but have never fixed it. I'm so used to it that I automatically hit * in these situations to hide the unwanted accidental. Except when I forget. Sometimes they escape my proof-reading, and are I believe rather confusing for the players as well as being plain wrong. Replying to myself: this bug doesn't always strike, but I have been unable to establish exactly what triggers it. Having experimented for the past five minutes, a surer way to elicit the bug seems to be: (in 4/4): half note rest, half note with accidental tied to half note, tied to quarter note. \ Wow! Same version of Finale, I can't believe I've never noticed this before! Yet sure enough, there it is. Very consistent, too. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Accidental Bug
On 11 Jul 2005, at 03:17, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:And another one -- the bass-clef first-note speedy-entry bug. Type along from the computer keyboard and at random the first note of some measures will be way up high, as if it were displaying a treble clef. The bug's still there in 2005b. Yes I've encountered that too, but it seems to rectify itself eventually without any intervention, whereas my bug doesn't.John___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4 demo
All this talk of Sibelius made me curious so I've been messing with the demo most of the day. Two questions: You're asking ME??? :-) Richard ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4 demo
James gilbert asked: In Sibelius: 1 - Can I position the Title text anywhere I want it to be? I can get it to move up and down. But, horizontally I can only make it be justified left, right or center. It cannot be moved left and right. You can edit the text style (under the House Styles menu). There are five possibilities. If this is not enough, you could build a new text style similar to Title but based on a text style that will move both horizontally or vertically. 2 - In Finale you have quanitzation settings and can 're-transcribe' all or part of the music based on those settings after music has already been inputed (or imported via midi). Those settings include the ability to have or not have a 2nd voice. In Sibelius I can import midi files (or use the flexi thingy) and specify the quantization, more or less, but I cannot figure out any way to re-transcribe the music to new quantization settings or to merge Sibelius' voices into one, the voices being, I guess, anlagous to Finale's layers. I can't even find a quantization setting. I usually don't do much midi importing, but right now I have a need to do that and I find I use the 're-transcribe' Finale function a lot when dealing with midi files. I'm not sure of re-transcribe but you could simply change the quantization and re-import the midi. That would probably be as fast as a re-transcribe function. As to combining voices, that would be pretty easy if the rhythms are the same. You can highlight a section and press alt-1 from the top number row (not the ten key), assuming you want them in voice 1. Midi import usually requires some clean up but there are a selection of plug ins that help with that also. As the saying goes, we are not impressed. (Yet). Keep looking, you just might like what you see. Then again you may always prefer Finale. Richard Smith www.rgsmithmusic.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] GPO/MIDI question
Andrew, MIDI Patch changes don't affect GPO -- the only important thing is the channel number. So provided you assign instrument channels in a logical order (like, say, score order), the only thing you have to do is change your output device from your MIDI keyboard to GPO Studio. (Also check or uncheck optimize for GPO in Human Plaback.) - Darcy - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY On 10 Jul 2005, at 6:53 PM, Andrew Levin wrote: List, I just bought GPO and the Finale upgrade to 2006 (and another gig of RAM!). But I have a rather simple question: With all of the talk about how processor/RAM intensive GPO is, I'd likely do most of my work routing MIDI through my MIDI keyboard (or maybe, sometimes, the Finale soundfonts). Later I'll switch the patches to GPO. But what if I want to do some editing or other simple work? Will I need to go through a whole rigamarole to reset patches? I'm thinking of the Instrument Window. It'd be nice if I could set the Instrument Window for my regular MIDI output, then another interface for GPO, then simply switch. Am I in luck? Or should I just sit on my hands and wait until FinMac 2006 comes out? Andrew Levin ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Sibelius 4 demo
At 07:03 PM 7/10/2005, you wrote: I know Sibelius' marketing department has all the die-hard fans and notation software novices believing that Sibelius is more intuitive and easier, but I say that's nonsense. ( I honestly think that really only applies to novice users. For those of us trying to do exacting work, I don't think there's much difference between the two programs. Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The ultimate Sibelius question...
After quoting a bit of my comments, including It occurs to me, too, that there is an aspect to some of these things that may affect certain items. I have not explored in any detail, the Sibelius software patents, and if there are any that relate to items like dynamic parts linking, or house styles, it may be that MakeMusic! may choose to ignore these items for the duration of the patent, rather than risk an expensive lawsuit in which they are charged with infringement. David Fenon wrote Er, is the Dynamic Parts featured patented, not just trademarked as a term? If so, it seems that it's a bad patent, given that there was prior art long before Sibeilus even existed. Where do you get the patent idea related to dynamic parts? I wrote my comments about software patents because I thought I rememberd a list of patents in Finale related materials. I cannot find it in the places I would expect to find it now, though, so perhaps the malaise I've been feeling stems from my sorely mistaken again. So, I'll concede that maybe there are not held either by Finale or Sibelius, and that this is a non issue for that reason. ns ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
