Re: [Finale] Finale 2007 review
dc wrote: Does anyone know if Sibelius supports Unicode fonts? Yes, it does. On Mac it also supports OpenType features such as automatic ligatures, which is pretty cool! Best, -WR ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] TAN: Tuplets in Sibelius
Hi Darcy, Am I doing something wrong? Is there a workaround? I mean, we all bitch about Finale, and we've all looked enviously at Sib's dynamic parts, etc, but this is a pretty egregious error with no obvious workaround. I'm not a Sibelius expert, but here's at least one way to do it: * input the first quarter note * do Create Tuplet, and type 4:3 into the box at the top of the dialog box * input the other 3 notes of the tuplet. Works fine for me in Sibelius 3. Best, -WR ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Dynamic Parts in Finale
Eric wrote: Yeah, the demo that Sibelius has, it looks like you can change notes, dynamics and page layouts. But what about all the other stuff? Text blocks? Different fonts? Slurs? articulations? Can you move these around? I got tired of reading all this stuff here today and not being able to join in, so I downloaded the demo to try it out. I opened up one of the examples they supply with the demo, and was quickly able to work out how this all works. After an hour's playing, here's what I know. It looks like, if you drag something in the score, it moves in the parts, but if you move it in the parts, it won't move in the score. So, say you have an expression marking by a horn note that collides with a low note in a concert score, when you look at the transposed part, you can drag that note up to be nearer the note (which is now a 5th higher) and it won't move in the score, plus it goes a different color to show you what's happened. Slurs and ties appear to be independent, too, e.g. you can drag a slur or flip the curve of a tie in the part and it won't affect the score, which is great for those transposed parts. Articulations (things like staccatos and marcatos) look like they have to be the same side of the note in the part as they are in the score, and it's the same with things like respelling the note: when I tried to respell a note in the part, it changed in the score, too. Text was a bit funky, but I worked it out. Looks like every kind of text can have a different size in the score in the parts, so you can have a bigger title in the score relative to the size of the staff than you would in the parts. Looks like you can also have a different default position of each kind of text in the score and parts if you want, so if you want expressions above the staff in the score but below in the part, you can do that (not sure why you'd want to, but you can!). I have to say that it looks really, really easy. The demo's crippled, as you might expect, but I tried clicking Print All Parts in the File menu, and it just spooled out the first page of each part, without me having to do anything. It's easy to switch between the part and the score (just choose it from the menu, or hit a key), and it's fast on my computer, too! I don't know how you guys feel about this, but my gut is that MakeMusic! will have to add this feature now, just to stay competitive with Sibelius. It must be galling for them to have Sibelius announce a new version about a week after they do, and for people on this listserve to spend more time talking about the new Sibelius than Finale 2k6! Best, -WR -- ___ NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once. http://datingsearch.lycos.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Dynamic Parts in Finale
Darcy wrote: In Sibelius -- at least on Mac -- you can't compare two parts side-by-side. You can only have the score window plus one dynamic part open at any one time. That's not true. You can resize the document windows and position them next to each other. I also went digging in the Prefs dialog and found an option in there to open each new part in a new window, so you can actually have as many parts open as you like simultaneously. And Sibelius does seem to have a New Window item in the Window menu, which does what you'd expect it to (and I notice that Word X 2004 has it too, for example). The more I play with this, the more I like it! Best, -Will -- ___ NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once. http://datingsearch.lycos.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Gaps before codas: a better way?
Good day fellow listers, I was just embarking on the normal way I make a gap in the middle of a system for a coda (which involves creating an extra bar, then using the hide staff style to hide it, then fixing up the bar numbering after the extra bar), when it occurred to me that perhaps I've been missing something really obvious about how to do this all along. Is there a slicker way of inserting a gap before a bar in the middle of a system than creating a bar that you hide with a staff style? If so, somebody please share it with me! Best, -WR -- ___ NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once. http://datingsearch.lycos.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The BIG Switch: FinMAC to SIBELIUS 3.1 OS X?
Noel Stoutenburg wrote: It occurs to me, too, that Sibelius, in order to obtain the competitive upgrade requires you to send them your MakeMusic! distribution disk. That's not how I read it. It says on Sibelius's web site: You must provide proof of ownership of Finale, Encore, or Mosaic by mailing the first and second pages of your table of contents in your user manual or send us your original program CD. So you can send a page or two from your manual, *or* the CD. By contrast, on MM's web site, it says this: Mail the form, your Master Disk from a qualifying program and send to MakeMusic! So to get a crossgrade to Finale, you *do* have to send the CD. You've got it all backwards, Noel! (And all this stuff about the ETF file format being great because it's published: unless you're an accomplished programmer, you're never going to be able to make sense of the ETF format. Have you looked at one latetly? Not exactly human-readable! And where exactly are the details of the format published? Can you point me to a web site where I can download the details of the format? If the information *is* freely-available, it's not well-publicised! A much better format for storing data from notation applications in an application-independent way would be something like MusicXML. Both Finale and Sibelius have export filters available for MusicXML as plug-ins, and because MusicXML *is* a published format and more or less human-readable to boot, I'd say it's much more suitable than ETF. I don't work for the MusicXML folks, by the way.) Best, -WR -- ___ NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once. http://datingsearch.lycos.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] The BIG Switch: FinMAC to SIBELIUS 3.1 OS X?
Noel wrote: and I would say in my defense that since I did not begin with Finale until 2k, I do not even have a user's manual from which to provide a first or second page. You didn't get a little tutorial book with your copy of Finale? My first version of Finale was 2002, and that certainly came with a little tutorial book. Have they even stopped shipping *that* nowadays?! (Aren't you entitled to at least *some* documentation for your 300 bucks?!) My problem with the MusicXML solution is a philosophical one. I want my software (whether word processors, spreadsheets, or in this case, notation programs) to have a native capability to store data in a file whose has a file formats are published; I don't want to go have to take recourse to a third party plug in to store my data in a public data format, however good it might be. That's fair enough, I suppose. Perhaps I'm just a pragmatist at heart and not easily swayed by philosophy, but it seems to me that if a third-party format is already supported by other applications (like MusicXML is), so that no especial effort has to be entered into in order to get access to my data (I know I'd much rather be able to use my data right away should something happen to Finale, rather than have to wait n months or years while some clever guy knocks up a program that can turn my ETF files into something I can actually, you know, work with again), and if it's sufficient to convey the data in such a way that no critical information is lost (like, I imagine, MusicXML is, at least for my purposes), then it's good enough. It just doesn't seem like a good argument to me. What good is an ETF file, published format or not, if there's no application that can open and/or edit them? (I know Sibelius can open ETF files, but I hear it doesn't always do a good job, particularly on files from newer versions of Finale.) Sibelius is a privately held firm, and while financial information might be available from some source (Dun and Bradstreet, or it's UK equivalent?) I found MakeMusic!'s financial information in a matter of seconds, and was unable to find any significnat financial information on Sibelius with the expenditure of a couple of orders of magnitude more time. That's true. I don't know how you'd go about finding out the state of Sibelius's finances. But I find it a bit amusing that you're comforted by knowing that the company that makes Finale has lost money every year for, like, the last 10 years straight ;^) Best, -Will -- ___ NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once. http://datingsearch.lycos.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Dumb question: how to get barline at the start of the staff for a lead sheet?
Hi fellow listers, For the first time I've been called upon to put together a fake book-style lead sheet for one of my students. One of the peculiarities of this format is that the barline at the left-hand end of the system uses a barline, to the left of where the clef would go, even though there's only one staff in the system. I don't *have* to get my Finale sheet looking just the same as the handwritten one I'm transposing, but I'm curious to know what trick I have to pull to get Finale to show me a barline at the left-hand end of the system. Anyone know? Best, -Will -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Dumb question: how to get barline at the start of thestaff for a lead sheet?
Eric wrote: Um, Document Options-Barlines-Left Barlines Display on Single Staves Wow, now I really *do* feel dumb. But seriously, I looked this up under barlines in the User Manual and I wasn't able to find it. Thanks! -Will -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: Reality check (Was Re: [Finale] Re: Tuplet bug in Fin2005 demo)
David Bailey wrote: So because nobody does it, we shouldn't expect it? That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that MakeMusic and Sibelius could both be worse. They could simply not acknowledge complaints made by their customers, just as huge corporations like Microsoft and Adobe do. You'd blast them for that, too. And isn't it better that MakeMusic acknowledge the problems their users are having than it would be if they ignored them? It seems to me that you're far too hung up on the particular phraseology of a response from a tech support person, probably dashed off in a real hurry when he or she has another hundred or more emails to deal with. I'm not misguided enough to suppose that I know everything that goes on inside a commercial organisation. I don't know why a particular bug might get fixed or might not get fixed, or what all the factors might be in the decision. But I do feel a lot better knowing that the bug is known about, and that the company acknowledge its existence. After all, the first step to a bug being fixed is a bug being found! Just because the software industry sucks in its response to consumer problems and complaints and refuses to acknowledge that it markets flawed producst, we shouldn't bother to complain? That's not what I'm saying, and you know it. What I mean is that we, as customers, should pick our battles. And ultimately the only way we can truly register our displeasure is to vote with our dollars: if we complain but still buy the product anyway, the company won't see it as a contribution to a please don't go out of business fund (after all, is this a business or a charity we're talking about here?). They'll see it as somebody liking the upgrade enough to put the money down for it. We're definitely sending mixed messages as consumers if we say, We don't like the way you do business, but we're going to pay you anyway! I pay money for my Finale upgrades because they contain features that I want, and that will save me time. I don't expect my software to be bug-free -- I'm far too realistic for that. But provided it's quicker for me to use Finale than it is to use a pencil and paper, and provided I'm not constantly fighting against bugs in the software, then hey, I'm happy. But perhaps I'm just not as passionate/crazy as you, David! Best, -WR -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Putting Finale in schools [was: Re: Finale Digest, Vol13,Issue 22]
David Bailey wrote: VHS is the best man? Esso was the best man? CDaudio is the best man? Good grief. There's no way to respond to this (except to say that, despite the fact I myself owned a Betamax video, the real reason VHS was the best man was that you could fit a whole movie onto a tape, something it took Sony years to put right on Betamax). Rarely does the truly best man win. Most often the wealthiest to start with wins, or the one who removes the competition by whatever means possible (usually not the result of a free marketplace) wins. But then, maybe that's what you mean by best man. There are dozens of counter-examples to this. Was Microsoft the wealthiest to start with, going up against IBM? You can argue it both ways until you're blue in the face. But what doesn't help anybody is baseless theorizing about conspiracies that may or may not exist. Fact is, MakeMusic and Sibelius *are* competing on a level playing field. Both companies have a lot to offer to educators. Both companies seem to be working quite hard to win the hearts and minds of teachers in high schools and universities. Good for them! And I don't see any evidence that either one is likely to wipe out the other any time soon. I also don't see any evidence that either one of them is engaging in particularly underhand tactics. But, hey, I don't know everything -- and maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. Anybody seen any black helicopters over Eden Prairie recently? ;^) Best, -WR -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Reality check (Was Re: [Finale] Re: Tuplet bug in Fin2005 demo)
David Bailey wrote: But they're just as bad at not fixing long-standing bugs that some users have been complaining about for a long time as well as introducing new bugs and saying we'll try to fix it in a future upgrade. So that rather than the two companies really goading each other into offering superior products to each other, instead they seem to be matching each other in corporate attitude. Quick reality check, before all this bitching and moaning makes us lose our perspective altogether: how many software companies have you dealt with who will actually directly acknowledge a bug to you, and tell you that they'll try to fix it in a future upgrade? And how many commercial software companies have you dealt with who will ship a patched version just to fix a single problem? Have you ever got an acknowledgement from a human being at Microsoft about a bug in Word, say? Or from a human being at Adobe about a bug in Acrobat Reader? Or from a human being at Macromedia about a bug in Shockwave? If so, I want email addresses and/or phone numbers! Now I'm not saying that we should all fall on our knees and worship either Coda or Sibelius for acknowledging that there are problems with their programs -- but in the land of software companies, it seems we could be a lot worse off. A while back I read a fascinating article about the kinds of things that go on in software companies when dealing with bugs. I looked it up for you and recommend http://headblender.com/joe/blog/archives/microsoft/001280.html Best, -WR -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Putting Finale in schools [was: Re: Finale Digest, Vol13, Issue 22]
David Bailey wrote: I wouldn't be surprised to find (although I can't prove this and it is purely conjecture) that Sibelius is offering better deals to school labs, and I also wouldn't be surprised to find that Sibelius is sending free copies to undecided music teachers who are in charge of school labs, just to win the contract. Sibelius is no more easy to use out of the box these days than Finale is. But Finale isn't pouring the resources (i.e. free copies of Finale and drastically reduced multi-licenses) into capturing the school market. Gotta love this kind of logic. I don't mean to pick on you, David, but in your first paragraph you say I can't prove this and it is purely conjecture, then go on in your second paragraph to say that MakeMusic aren't pouring the same resources into capturing the school market as Sibelius are -- having established that you don't even *know* that these resources exist! In fact in my experience MakeMusic *do* work quite hard to get Finale into schools. I sat in on a shoot-out in our district between Finale and Sibelius, with a rep from each of the two companies there. They even had some students sit in on the session, and at the end of it asked the students which program they would rather use; the majority said Sibelius. Also, it seems that Sibelius is actually more expensive than Finale in an educational setting (for example, a single academic copy is $299 for Finale, and $319 for Sibelius, at the retail price, though you can get both for less if you shop around). I don't know about the lab packs, but I'd be surprised if there was much difference in price. I also wasn't offered any free copies of Sibelius when I went to the shoot-out (I had to buy mine -- I have both Finale and Sibelius on my Mac). I also seem to remember somebody saying (on this list?) that MakeMusic were offering very deep discounts for lab packs -- so copies could end up priced as low as $10 a seat, or something crazy like that. Can't remember when I heard that, but that sounds to me like a pretty serious attitude to the education market. I know we all have a pretty low opinion of software companies, but I would imagine that both MakeMusic and Sibelius engage in precisely the same kinds of tactics when trying to increase their market share, whether it's in education or any other market sector. Welcome to the world of capitalism, everybody -- and may the best man win. Best, -WR -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Finale 2005
Hi Éric, It will first be announced on the 17th of August on their website, and who knows when it will be available. I'm curious to see their strategy for Mac users this time. According to posters on the Finale forum at finalemusic.com who've seen the new version at recent trade shows, Finale 2005 will be released simultaneously for Mac and Windows, and will even come on the same CD-ROM. It also apparently has improvements to tuplets (about time!) and better support for marching percussion. I'm waiting for more information, like everybody else! Best, -WR -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] EPS Sibelius vs. Finale (was: EPS at last bla bla....)
Kurt Gnos wrote: BUT: I found no function to export a selection, I could only export a page. Select the bars you want to export, then when you go to Save as Graphics, make sure the 'Selected systems' radio button is checked. I found no function to edit the size of a single page to separate the symstem(s) I wanted to export, I could only edit the margins of all pages, and not very confortably, either. You don't need to do this to export graphics, because you can just select the systems you want, but it's easy to create e.g. system breaks (select a barline and hit Enter on the keyboard) or page breaks (select a barline and hit Ctrl+Enter) as desired. You can also drag either end of the system to indent it, if necessary. I found no function to alter the size of a staff, or some bars, or single notes - is this not possible in Sibelius? Try the Layout - Document Setup dialog. So please, Coda, don't make me use Sibelius too much... I use both Finale 2k4 and Sibelius. Both programs are perfectly fine, but you do have to get used to the particular way they work. Sounds like you could do with spending a little bit more time with the Sibelius manual... Best, -WR -- ___ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10 ___ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
