On Saturday, June 7, 2003, at 01:40 PM, Christopher BJ Smith wrote:
Basic things seem to go very quickly, but anything fussy will take a lot of time, which would make it a good choice for students, bad choice for me.
I actually don't think it's that great a choice for jazz students if they want to do anything more complicated than a lead sheet. (At least, it wasn't back in 1.4.) Part extraction in Sibelius is very, very, very bad, and I really wouldn't want to tackle a jazz orchestra chart unless things have substantially improved since then.
Hm, I'm going to have to test that, as part extraction seemed to go very similarly to Finale, with the exception of changing numbers of measures per line, which seemed to be very fussy in Sibelius.
You seem to be stuck with Sibelius' way of doing things in a number of ways, but their way is so easy and immediate! Their equivelant of the Setup Wizard always gives a score that plays back with the right instruments, for example.
Finale's doesn't?
Not on my machine. And the chords need to be turned off for playback, and the drums parts are very fussy in Finale (I hated having to learn the percussion map, and it seems to be buggy in 2003, as things are not working the same when I have imported a 2002 or earlier file, and I can't get custom heads to show up properly using Simple Entry (Speedy is fine, though) and you can't transpose things if they have started out on the wrong line, etc.)
But they are really lacking certain advanced features for modern music and jazz, including lacking articulations for scoops, doits, long accents, and falloffs, and all those funny string markings (except for the usual ones, which are there.)
Doesn't Sibelius support custom alternate fonts yet? Couldn't you use JazzFont instead of "Ink" (or whatever their faux-manuscript font is called)?
Sibelius does support custom fonts, including the JazzFont, but for that I would have to create markings in the new font, and define their playback, etc, exactly the same thing I was lambasting Finale about in other areas. The idea (for marketing purposes) is to have all this stuff already set up and working right out of the box for either classical or jazz/pop students to get right to work, without a lot of customising.
And I actually like the Inkpen font, especially the text, and PARTICULARLY the numbers, which are ever so much more readable than the JazzText equivelants. Nothing to stop me from using them in my Finale files! (except for lack of transportability to other users.)
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