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Finale 2004 OS X Shipping on Jan 16th
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Whatever guy. Perhaps you need to get banned from here. Have fun using Sibelius at Temple U or where ever the hell you use it.
Sibelius/Finale
I'm a music education student about to go student teaching. I have used Finale for the past 7 years or so pretty regularly (since most of high school).
I have done very "normal" notation as well as a great deal of "funky" notation for projects for professors.
However, the high school teacher I will be working with this Spring during my student teaching uses Sibelius for playback/note learning for his students. He does this instead of being behind the piano during rehearsals and it seems to work great during my observations.
What's nice about Sibelius that makes it a very interesting tool for this purpose is that you can actually do volume adjustments for the individual parts in playback and not just off/on. This is very useful when you want to play all parts perhaps, but really bring out the alto part when working on their notes, or play the piano full volume but only have their parts played *SLIGHTLY* to help a little?
Human playback (including proper ritardations and dynamic changes) is also existent in Siblelius. Supposedly it's now included in Finale but it's a "new" feature and I suspect will not be great in the first iteration. It works pretty damn well from what I've seen in Sibelius.
This right there is the reason I will be looking at Sibelius instead of Finale for the future.
Brett
I'm a music education student about to go student teaching. I have used Finale for the past 7 years or so pretty regularly (since most of high school).
I have done very "normal" notation as well as a great deal of "funky" notation for projects for professors.
However, the high school teacher I will be working with this Spring during my student teaching uses Sibelius for playback/note learning for his students. He does this instead of being behind the piano during rehearsals and it seems to work great during my observations.
What's nice about Sibelius that makes it a very interesting tool for this purpose is that you can actually do volume adjustments for the individual parts in playback and not just off/on. This is very useful when you want to play all parts perhaps, but really bring out the alto part when working on their notes, or play the piano full volume but only have their parts played *SLIGHTLY* to help a little?
Human playback (including proper ritardations and dynamic changes) is also existent in Siblelius. Supposedly it's now included in Finale but it's a "new" feature and I suspect will not be great in the first iteration. It works pretty damn well from what I've seen in Sibelius.
This right there is the reason I will be looking at Sibelius instead of Finale for the future.
Brett
I would like to quietly observe that I've never met a REAL composer/arranger that felt inhibited by his/her personal choice of notation program. Livid arguments about which is better are usually perpetuated by people whose composition skills don't quite match up with their arguing skills, so they use the latter to bluff and bluster the former.
Yes, it is a shame that it took Finale this long to finally carbonize. It has frustrated and disappointed many users, including your's truly. However, it is finished, and I look forward to using it.
Finale is not inferior. Neither is it superior. Sibelius is also a respectable program. I really think the choice has much more to do with your working style, and whether or not you are comfortable with a given platform already.
In any case, there are a whole lot of composers doing fine work on each platform, and it's an interesting sidenote that the better composers are generally too inundated with real notation work to have time to develop pissing matches about programs.
Yes, it is a shame that it took Finale this long to finally carbonize. It has frustrated and disappointed many users, including your's truly. However, it is finished, and I look forward to using it.
Finale is not inferior. Neither is it superior. Sibelius is also a respectable program. I really think the choice has much more to do with your working style, and whether or not you are comfortable with a given platform already.
In any case, there are a whole lot of composers doing fine work on each platform, and it's an interesting sidenote that the better composers are generally too inundated with real notation work to have time to develop pissing matches about programs.
>Finale is not inferior. Neither is it superior. Sibelius is also a >respectable program. I really think the choice has much more to >do with your working style, and whether or not you are >comfortable with a given platform already.
From what I've heard and seen Sibelius has always been the "easier" program and Finale the more "complete."
Now the look of Finale for OS X (at least the screenshots, as I don't think any of us has actually seem a running copy yet) appears to take a lot of the look and feel of Sibelius. Perhaps edging it closer to the "ease-of-use" of Sibelius.
Sibelius on the other hand, appears to slowly be adding more and more feature parity with Finale...
Seems like competition is doing the right thing, and we will be getting two better products.
From what I've heard and seen Sibelius has always been the "easier" program and Finale the more "complete."
Now the look of Finale for OS X (at least the screenshots, as I don't think any of us has actually seem a running copy yet) appears to take a lot of the look and feel of Sibelius. Perhaps edging it closer to the "ease-of-use" of Sibelius.
Sibelius on the other hand, appears to slowly be adding more and more feature parity with Finale...
Seems like competition is doing the right thing, and we will be getting two better products.
Finale was lacking...
I took a summer course with Doug Hicks from Akron (great person by the way). We spent half the course on Finale and the second half on Sibelius.
I am a long time finale user.
I was able to work MUCH faster on Sibelius with the speedy note entry.
Finale saw the writing on the wall and fixed their program to work EXACTLY like Sibelius - VERY SWEET
Through competition, Finale HAD to make their program better.
I have been disappointed by delays and am waitting for my finale copy to arrive...
I took a summer course with Doug Hicks from Akron (great person by the way). We spent half the course on Finale and the second half on Sibelius.
I am a long time finale user.
I was able to work MUCH faster on Sibelius with the speedy note entry.
Finale saw the writing on the wall and fixed their program to work EXACTLY like Sibelius - VERY SWEET
Through competition, Finale HAD to make their program better.
I have been disappointed by delays and am waitting for my finale copy to arrive...
Oirectine
macrumors regular
Hmm
Hey, I go to Berklee, and I can tell you, Finale is the most convoluted, confusing program I've ever used. I've never tried Sibilius but I would not be surprised to find that I liked it much more.
I'm no idiot. I can usually figure out what I want to do on computers, whatever it is (I compile stuff regularly, write shell scripts, read /. every day, etc). I picked up other programs, like Reason, in no time. However, when it takes me a half hour to figure out how to copy a single bar of a drum groove, or I have to ask the guy at the front desk of the computer lab how to add a legato mark to my melody, there is definitely a problem. Finale is a freaking LESSON in horrible UI design. It's a nightmare to use, and I know many people here who agree with me.
But anywho, just because Berklee uses a program doesn't make it better. We have Digital Performer 4 on all our computer labs. Does that make it better than Protools, Logic, Cubase? No. There's simply a need to standardize such programs for the entire school, for classes and such. Berklee also uses the imperial system of weights and measures. Is that superior to the metric system?
Also, there is no one notation program that can be all things to all musicians. Depending on your needs, preferences, the way you work, people are obviously going to have different opinions, and they're all correct. I thought that was obvious but apparently some people are religious about their notation software.
Heh, this thread is pretty old, I wonder if anybody will actually read this.
Hey, I go to Berklee, and I can tell you, Finale is the most convoluted, confusing program I've ever used. I've never tried Sibilius but I would not be surprised to find that I liked it much more.
I'm no idiot. I can usually figure out what I want to do on computers, whatever it is (I compile stuff regularly, write shell scripts, read /. every day, etc). I picked up other programs, like Reason, in no time. However, when it takes me a half hour to figure out how to copy a single bar of a drum groove, or I have to ask the guy at the front desk of the computer lab how to add a legato mark to my melody, there is definitely a problem. Finale is a freaking LESSON in horrible UI design. It's a nightmare to use, and I know many people here who agree with me.
But anywho, just because Berklee uses a program doesn't make it better. We have Digital Performer 4 on all our computer labs. Does that make it better than Protools, Logic, Cubase? No. There's simply a need to standardize such programs for the entire school, for classes and such. Berklee also uses the imperial system of weights and measures. Is that superior to the metric system?
Also, there is no one notation program that can be all things to all musicians. Depending on your needs, preferences, the way you work, people are obviously going to have different opinions, and they're all correct. I thought that was obvious but apparently some people are religious about their notation software.
Heh, this thread is pretty old, I wonder if anybody will actually read this.