I'm sure that everyones use of Finale differs in some way or another,
but it does seem to me that if an "as near as one can get it to live
sounding" home recording of what one has written is what you're
after, then a separate program to achieve that would seem the most
logical to me.
My use of Finale is to write arrangements from big band to symphony
pops. So I want to be able to enter notes as quickly as possible,
hear them back with a reasonable facsimile of their corresponding
sounds (the saxophones will forever sound crappy) and then be able to
print out parts with less trouble and in less time than it used to
take me to copy them by hand.
And it's the last part where Finale could do with the most
improvement. I love having all the tweaking tools that are essential
to the engravers but I would like to see better music spacing and
page layout that would look good automatically. Even though I'm not
an engraver I do like to see the parts appear almost good enough to
publish.
I'm sure that achieving a standard that everyone would agree looks
"pretty good out of the box" is almost impossible, but I sure wish it
was better than it is now. The music spacing I especially find awful
and even after using Finale for 15 years ( I'm sure it's my fault for
not filling out all the measurments correctly, in all the various
boxes) the distance between staves after I extract parts ALWAYS needs
to be changed.
I do feel, especially after reading the posts of the incredibly
skilled and computer savvy folks on this list, that even though I'm a
long time user and avid manual reader I can't help but think that,
along with most computer programs, I only know half of it.
Thanks for listening to the ramblings of a loyal Finale user. I don't
need to told that Sibleus can do all of that :) I haven't learnt this
program yet!
Mike Greensill
www.mikegreensill.com
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