On Tuesday, July 9, 2002, at 11:55 PM, Richard Walker wrote: >> In all seriousness, let's see that Sib >> articulation/expression/playback effect that's not possible to >> do in Finale.
> In all seriousness, I think the proper question is how hard you > want to work to achieve a desired effect, Well, that's a different question than the remark I replied to in Horace Brock's post. So meantime, while Sibaliens appear to be scrambling to come up with something to answer my question I'll continue... > and for Finale users the question ought to be, "Why do I have > to work so hard to get things done?" Why shouldn't a crescendo > be reasonably good (maybe not perfect, but better than nothing) > with one keystroke instead of ten? Firstly, although it wouldn't be my personal #1 upgrade request, I wouldn't oppose any attempts to streamline Finale's Midi interface and have already agreed with David Fenton that such a move would be advantageous for users and for Coda (just so long as I can continue doing what has been working for me at that level). Secondly, most folks who use Finale a lot get some kind of macro utility to assist them with repetitive tasks. > Why shouldn't expressions understand what is wanted without me > having to intervene all the time? I don't know. Theoretically, there's only time and money factors involved for Finale to have those kinds of features. Of course I can understand why folks would want to have things automated but my sentiments are much closer to the remarks Tim Thompson made concerning flexibility because I use Finale as a composition tool as well as a notation application. I want to be able to vary my expression playback effects because I typically have several renditions of the same material contained in a master score. And just because a marking says English Horn, doesn't mean that I want variant E to switch to English Horn at that particular point in time. > Why is so much of what I want to achieve such a pain in the ass > to get done? That's life buddy. No pain, no gain. > Contrary to appearances, I'm not trashing Finale. Really. > There's an awful lot about it that I like, but having tasted > the other side, I think there's an awful lot of mediocrity, and > downright perversity, in the user interface too, and there's > really no reason to accept it. Power users may have discovered > workarounds and cludges, or cracked the code, or made their > peace with the status quo, and from those lofty heights this > may all appear petty and childish, but damnit, a program > shouldn't take ages to master Let's examine a few of the considerations: Most users have at least 20 years of music experience and these users have a very wide range of requirements. If you multiply that by the total number of users, then perhaps it's possible to realize the complexity of the task at hand because that's what Finale tries to cover. If you were to say that your musical requirements could be adequately dealt with in a manual that takes one hour to read I'd say that you'd probably be underestimating yourself because if one applied themselves musically for only 2 hours a day over 20 years there would be about 14,600 hours (not counting leap years) of music attainments to account for. As it happened, something to this effect struck me when I first started to read the Finale documentation. I'm not without complaints (especially for things Macintosh), but I give Coda due respect that they have put just as much into Finale as any composer puts into his or her music. Did I answer your question? Well maybe not, but I suggest that if you want to make Finale be the kind of environment that you enjoy working in you should voice your opinions (and good ideas) through Coda's official support channel. Philip _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
