Finale book

DocBop · #1 10-20-2007, 08:56 AM

I just got a copy of Finale and the tutorials don't cover very much, can anyone recommend a good book or other resource for getting up to speed with Finale?

Alvaro Martín Gómez A. · #2 10-20-2007, 09:53 PM

Well, aside from recommending you to visit the Finale forum, I can offer you my experience using the program if you have some specific questions.

Stereo Joe · #3 10-20-2007, 10:02 PM

Here:
http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/5/index.html

JimmyM · #4 10-21-2007, 12:13 AM

Here's how I learned it...I just plunged into it with the index always open in Acrobat. And for every function I needed to do, I went in the index and looked it up as I went along. Finale is a pain in the neck, but it's also really powerful, because I haven't found a function of music writing it can't do. It takes you forever to find functions sometimes, and I agree that it would be good to have a book, but since every little thing is its own separate function, you can make a lot of headway by searching each individual function in the index as you need it.

DocBop · #5 10-21-2007, 06:17 AM

JimmyM's approach is my norm just trying to get a bit more of a foundation. I was doing their tutorial and have picked up some stuff that is a time saver after using Finale Notepad for awhile.

Has anyone seen the book, Finale: An Easy Guide to Music Notation, 2nd ed. from Berklee Press is it a good intro? In past all Berklee books were good but these days their quality goes all over the place IMO.

Bassist4Life · #6 10-21-2007, 07:07 AM

I keep the help file open in the background. I started a drumset transcription yesterday and it took me most of the day. I never notated for drumset before. It took me a lotta' time to setup the midi playback and figure out the layers and stem directions. It was tedious to keep changing note heads for the snare drum and to keep hiding rests in the different voices. I kept thinking, "The must be an easier way".

You can learn all the functions and features in the world; but if you don't use them on a regular basis, you'll probably end up forgetting them.

I think the key to learning Finale is experience.

Joe