Carolyn wrote:
I teach at Cal State Long Beach, in a department that's 40-50% music ed
majors. They get some Sibelius instruction early on. Even still, almost
half the ed majors use Finale. A majority of the other music students
use Finale and about 30 of 35 comp majors. We never require them to
choose one or the other.
What they all come to realize is that both programs take work to learn
and they tend to make their choices based on what their friends use, as
they'll be their sources for help. Of course some choose by which ever
one they can find in bootleg. Only a small handful ask about the
learning curve. Money and friends with knowledge seem much more important.
I teach the advanced Finale class and find that not just the composers
are interested. I usually get one or two Sibelius users as well. Less
than half return to Sibelius after the class.
Beginning next spring, all majors will be required to take a basic tech
class so they can negotiate a simple recording and a basic score. We'll
gladly offer PC and Mac versions for both Finale and Sibelius. I'll be
interested to see the enrollment numbers in the various sections.
Thank you for sharing this with us -- I agree that many people who don't
know about a technology area will follow the lead of their peers, since,
as you point out, their local tech support will be their friends.
Please keep us posted on what you observe with that basic tech class
(what a great idea for a requirement -- I'm sure more and more music
departments will be requiring such things in the coming years).
It would be interesting to learn (although I can't begin to figure out
how one would do this) about the reasons for people to take your
advanced Finale course, and then to remain with Finale rather than
return to Sibelius (if that was what they started with.) One reason may
well be that with Finale, once one is shown how to use the great
adjustability to advantage, it becomes much less scary, and is indeed
one of the greatest strengths of Finale.
How did you handle the hyphen issue and the 9-key enharmonic flip bug in
Speedy Entry? Did you not get into situations where those might arise,
or is everybody there still working with Fin2006 or earlier?
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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