At 7:28 AM 09/23/02, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: [answering Christopher BJ Smith] >>That's one more reason why I still compose and arrange with pencil >>and paper, and only go to Finale afterwards to make it look nice. > >You're right. I realize that I'm uncomfortable composing music with text in >Finale, although I've composed almost everything that can be notated in a >standard way within Finale since I started using it 10 years ago.
I probably compose less frequently than either of you, but I'm not satisfied with that. In this case, I agree with David Fenton. Finale is a tool for composers, and one of the things composers do is doodle around with lyrics in the course of the creative process. The program ought to be able to do that without compelling you to go to pen and paper. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and I now believe this can be achieved WITHOUT destroying the power or the continuity of the system that exists. The model is Automatic Music Spacing and Automatic Update Layout. That is, there is a function which reviews your data and tidies it up according to a certain set of rules devised to intelligently guess what you want. For those who are content to follow these rules all the time, there is the option to choose a new "Automatic Lyric Ordering" so that it is constantly being performed on the fly. Those who prefer to manipulate lyrics on their own with complete freedom can simply ignore the function and never use it, in which case everything will continue to be exactly as it is now. Or they might make use of the function occasionally, with the option of undo if they don't like the results. For those who choose to use the automatic option, the result will be that certain irregular lyric manipulations will be repaired as soon as they happen. With this option on, certain ways of using the lyric system will become unavailable -- but those ways are precisely the ones that a typical user is going to want to avoid, either because they're just weird (eg, syllables all mixed up in a crazy order) or dangerous (eg, duplicate assignments). It would be like the program is looking over your shoulder forcing you to keep your lyrics in tidy order, just like Automatic Music Spacing forces you to space your music to avoid collisions. I'll elaborate on this when I have more time. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
