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Double Bass The end of Finale
- Thread starter oren
- Start date
I just worked on a chart for one of my ensembles at the U on Sib 6 at home. What a great program. I tried to work on it at school on MonoSibelius Glutamate (which the school has a license for), and it was a nightmare. Everything about that ribbon screams Micro****. Gone are the menus, and the keystroke shortcuts, and all of the things that made Sib 6 easy and intuitive. Instead, you get this idiotic ribbon that takes up 1/3 of the screen with no shortcuts for the simplest functions. So, they took an easy, intuitive thing and made it way more complicated and less intuitive. You can't even print or export a PDF using the File menu like
Every.
Single.
Other.
Program.
On.
Earth.
How stupid is that?
Recently at the U, we also had an "upgrade" of our beloved BlackBoard program, which worked flawlessly for years, to the new version, which ironically is also called "BlackBoard Ultimate". Same old story. It works less well, the simplest functions have been made more complicated, and everything about it also screams Micro****. Which shouldn't be surprising, since our organization also uses Outlook and Teams, both of which are flaming dumpster fires that fail regularly and coincidentally, hate working with Mac computers...which nearly everyone in the music school uses.
Oy.
Every.
Single.
Other.
Program.
On.
Earth.
How stupid is that?
Recently at the U, we also had an "upgrade" of our beloved BlackBoard program, which worked flawlessly for years, to the new version, which ironically is also called "BlackBoard Ultimate". Same old story. It works less well, the simplest functions have been made more complicated, and everything about it also screams Micro****. Which shouldn't be surprising, since our organization also uses Outlook and Teams, both of which are flaming dumpster fires that fail regularly and coincidentally, hate working with Mac computers...which nearly everyone in the music school uses.
Oy.
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I'm really enjoying this...
(Does that make me a bad person? So Be It.)
Thanks!
You're welcome. All of the above was just IMFO, of course. And don't even get me started on "Reality TV" or Disney Pop.
That's the score library, right? The editor application itself is free, and is excellent.
Avid (short for "Avarice?) is vile, (not a typo for "viol"
Attention, Mac Finale users - here is why you should export PDFs and MusicXML versions of all of your charts sooner rather than later (like right away):
From Invalid Link Removed
Created on August 22, 2024 - Last updated on September 12, 2024
Attention Mac Users
Apple will release macOS 15 (Sequoia) on Monday, September 16, 2024.
Finale v27 is not compatible with Sequoia and will not be updated.
For more information:
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
Apple will relase macOS 15 (Sequoia) on Monday, September 16, 2024.
In light of our recent Finale sunset announcement (read more here), MakeMusic will not be releasing any future Finale updates.
This means any future compatibility issues that may arise between Finale and Sequoia will not be fixed, and Sequoia will not be officially recognized by MakeMusic as a supported operating system.
While MakeMusic will continue providing technical support for Finale v27.4.1 on Invalid Link Removed (10.14 Mojave through 14 Sonoma) through August 25th, 2025, this technical support will not extend to Sequoia.
Mac users relying on Finale should wait to update their operating system and check their System Settings to Invalid Link Removed.
For more information on Finale's sunset, including a special crossgrade offer to Dorico Pro, please see our Invalid Link Removed.
From Invalid Link Removed
Created on August 22, 2024 - Last updated on September 12, 2024
Attention Mac Users
Apple will release macOS 15 (Sequoia) on Monday, September 16, 2024.
Finale v27 is not compatible with Sequoia and will not be updated.
For more information:
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
Apple will relase macOS 15 (Sequoia) on Monday, September 16, 2024.
In light of our recent Finale sunset announcement (read more here), MakeMusic will not be releasing any future Finale updates.
This means any future compatibility issues that may arise between Finale and Sequoia will not be fixed, and Sequoia will not be officially recognized by MakeMusic as a supported operating system.
While MakeMusic will continue providing technical support for Finale v27.4.1 on Invalid Link Removed (10.14 Mojave through 14 Sonoma) through August 25th, 2025, this technical support will not extend to Sequoia.
Mac users relying on Finale should wait to update their operating system and check their System Settings to Invalid Link Removed.
For more information on Finale's sunset, including a special crossgrade offer to Dorico Pro, please see our Invalid Link Removed.
And just a further note - I keep all my charts in Dropbox folders, and Finale's Translate Folder To MusicXML would not work on my Dropbox folders at all. I had to copy all my .mus and .musx files to a local drive to get it to work. And then the Include Subfolders feature in the MusicXML Preferences didn't work - it didn't even try the subfolder that had the majority of my files, around 350 lead sheets. And I have so far only tried opening one of the files in Dorico, so I don't know if there are hidden quirks awaiting!
LOL! Tell me about it: I started when Finale 1.0 was in beta, circa 1988, and I ripped out many a hair trying to get scores and charts into acceptable shape. It honestly amazes me that it eventually became such a widely-used industry standard given how insufferably unintuitive it was in the early days.
Just checking back in here after a week or so of trying to use both Dorico and Musescore (the application editor only) in my normal "workstream".
My current application for these programs is not writing full scores; at this point in my musical career I'm primarily sitting in the front of the computer with my bass on my lap transcribing bass parts for either study or a gig down the line. This involves a lot of detailed editing on timing, pitch, and articulation, measure by measure, as I try to both work things out and notate them accurately.
For this purpose, Dorico fails. It is a very capable program, but it aggressively doesn't like this style of input and requires way too many, as they say in the software biz, mode changes. Moreover, it uses non-standard interface conventions which makes the learning curve very, very steep. Interestingly, with all of my searches to figure out "how to do..." I can't help but notice that the Dorico staff are very quick to respond, which is great, but surprisingly very defensive regarding the interface choices they have made to the point of snarkiness. I'm not sure why this is, but it's impossible not to notice this. My feeling is that they have optimized their input for a particularly efficient way to notate and that is what they see as their differentiating feature set.
Musescore 4, currently free, uses a more conventional interface and the learning curve is far quicker. Moreover, it is fairly well developed for notation of electric instruments which makes both notating and playing back (to see if I got it right) much more straight foward. This is the application that I'm most likely to use going forward. Your mileage may very, but I'd be interested in what other former Finale users have discovered and why they have made the choices they made. Both are very capable programs.
My current application for these programs is not writing full scores; at this point in my musical career I'm primarily sitting in the front of the computer with my bass on my lap transcribing bass parts for either study or a gig down the line. This involves a lot of detailed editing on timing, pitch, and articulation, measure by measure, as I try to both work things out and notate them accurately.
For this purpose, Dorico fails. It is a very capable program, but it aggressively doesn't like this style of input and requires way too many, as they say in the software biz, mode changes. Moreover, it uses non-standard interface conventions which makes the learning curve very, very steep. Interestingly, with all of my searches to figure out "how to do..." I can't help but notice that the Dorico staff are very quick to respond, which is great, but surprisingly very defensive regarding the interface choices they have made to the point of snarkiness. I'm not sure why this is, but it's impossible not to notice this. My feeling is that they have optimized their input for a particularly efficient way to notate and that is what they see as their differentiating feature set.
Musescore 4, currently free, uses a more conventional interface and the learning curve is far quicker. Moreover, it is fairly well developed for notation of electric instruments which makes both notating and playing back (to see if I got it right) much more straight foward. This is the application that I'm most likely to use going forward. Your mileage may very, but I'd be interested in what other former Finale users have discovered and why they have made the choices they made. Both are very capable programs.
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I don't tend to work that way (I transcribe with pencil and paper, then input into software for playback validation and sharing), but I'm not sure I understand your comment about Dorico not liking your inputting ring into the program when transcribing. Could you maybe explain in some more detail?
Dorico tends to separate out the process of musical input from modifying/formatting/engraving. For example, it's probably really efficient to play a part on a keyboard, or type it in on a keyboard (funny how both of these very different things have the same name), and then go back and modify it. The switching back and forth from editing to inputing requires lots of clicks and setting stuff in properties menus. Its very inefficient to this a little bit at time in Dorico. There are some really speedy shortcuts but they require you remember the syntax and type them in.
Musescore uses context sensitive menus and palettes to do the same thing without changing modes, has many implicit properties, and organizes them in a more accessible way for me. I can't really explain it better than this, but if you give both programs a spin I think you'll see what I mean. If you are copying a hand-written part into the computer, Dorico might be more efficient for you. Both of these programs are a joy to use compared to Finale. I'm wondering why I waited so long to try something else.
I used to do what you do, transcribing by hand, but as the years have gone by, I've found that I often can't read my own handwriting much less my own handwritten musical notation. Also, as I'm very bad at notating rhythm, I like the measure by measure confirmation of what I'm entering.
Thanks for the explanation. I suspect that, like in most other software there are probably a limited set of operations that we each tend to use all the time and a much larger set of options that get used infrequently, if at all. For me, a good part of learning how to use Dorico has been learning how to use the popovers and keyboard syntax for those operations I use all the time, so that they become part of a natural flow. YMMV, of course!
How different is the (MIDI) keyboard entry aspect of Dorico from that of Sibelius? By that I mean, I assume that you have one hand on the keyboard to enter the pitch, and the other on the keypad to enter the rhythm of the pitch. On Sibelius, this process was very easy since the designated keys were all bunched together in a logical layout.
I've seen students working with Musescore and there is a lot of clicking on icons for rhythm, which looks cumbersome…. But they may just be inexperienced and not have developed the chops to do it faster.
I've seen students working with Musescore and there is a lot of clicking on icons for rhythm, which looks cumbersome…. But they may just be inexperienced and not have developed the chops to do it faster.
Both Musescore and Dorico default to a different rhythmic convention for input than I was used to in Finale. I think that this might cause lots of clicking when originally learning the mouse input interfaces. I haven't used Sibelius in ages, but I'm guessing that Dorico might be an evolution of that platform since I understand that the company was founded by some of the same people who originally developed Sibelius. Dorico seems to really be set up for midi input but I haven't really given it much of a try yet. I never used that input method in Finale as I could never get midi to work well with that software; I'm not really optimized for it.
Here's an example that I was transcribing for someone. I tried it in both platforms but never was able to complete it in Dorico.
With Sibelius, and with MuseScore when I transitioned to it about two years ago, I found that I was just as fast typing in the notes on the computer keyboard without a MIDI keyboard. With both programs (MIDI or not), note rhythmic values can be selected prior to pitch key press via the numeric note pad...no mouse clicking or touching needed. Tuplets and multi note chords are easily accessed via alt or cntrl key combos, slurs and ties are single key presses, chord symbol entry is similar. Mousing and clicking really only is used for selecting items you wish to edit or copy, insertion, deletion, or initiation points, i.e. chord symbols, lyrics, text boxes/frames, etc. For actual note entry, the regular keyboard is fast and works great.
Really, I found both programs quite similar in terms of note entry, although I admit I've never used anything newer than Sibelius 3.0.
The differences between the programs (Sibelius and MuseScore) are more in how they deal with spacing and other subtle but important formatting tasks. That took me a while to get used to with MuseScore, but it was tough getting up to speed in similar areas when I started with Sibelius a long time ago, too.
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