OK, not aiming to revisit old wounds - but I thought I would share one
aspect of my recent experience of teaching a class of
mainly-Finale-newbies to the application.
For the note-entry method, I showed them how to use Speedy, and what the
keystrokes meant and did. In 5 minutes they were entering a Haydn
string quartet movement, and at a surprisingly quick rate. This was
without a MIDI keyboard.
I hope that MakeMusic still realises that Speedy is a really excellent
tool for note entry that is (in my opinion) considerably more
straightforward than using Simple without a MIDI keyboard. Speedy seems
a better balance of simplicity and power. Because there are fewer
options as compared to Simple, there are fewer keystrokes to come to
grips with as a beginner - but the options that are there are easy to
use and powerful enough to enter all pitches and rhythms you want.
Plus Speedy is great because it provides the user with the option to
select pitch then enter rhythm for note entry.
Mind you, it would be good to able to change clef from within Speedy I
suppose. Maybe press ? and a list of clefs pops up. This would be
relevant to the tool because it relates to pitch.
Anyway, in the end I just hope that Finale doesn't consider removing or
crippling Speedy. It really is an excellent and easy-to-use tool.
Matthew
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