Re: [Finale] Two parts on one stave
On 10/14/2014 3:15 AM, dc wrote: Belated thanks for your replies. I think shared staff (or stave) will be fine. By the way, am I right in assuming that stave is British and staff American? Yes. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com http://www.davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Two parts on one stave
So the Americans have staff sergeants, whereas the British have stave sergeants? Klaus Sendt fra min iPad Den 14/10/2014 kl. 11.40 skrev dc den...@free.fr: Le 14/10/2014 09:44, David H. Bailey écrit : Yes. Thanks for confirming, David! Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] News update on MakeMusic move to Boulder
Architects lost control of Finale years ago. I am not picking on Finale, because it is an industry-wide phenomenon and a routine hazard of aging products, but the evidence is everywhere that architecture is out the window at MM. Here are a few clues: 1. Beat-attached smart shapes are only partially implemented. (Slurs and dotted slurs are not implemented.) An architected solution would have implemented all at once. 2. Although Exclude from Measure Numbering works graphically, many parts of the program (especially scroll view navigation) get very confused by it if you use it more than once or twice in a piece. 3. Plugins unlink some items when editing a part and not others. If an architecture were in place there could be no difference between manual and plugin edits because both would be taking the same code paths. I beg to differ that programmers are a dime a dozen. Though this is certainly the prevailing industry view of them (since the bean counters took control), a good programmer is worth a dozen bad ones—probably two dozen—and the best thing you can do for yourself is to find one of the good ones and let them do it. On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 12:37 AM, Eric Dannewitz ericd...@jazz-sax.com wrote: Though to do smartmusic you need to have finale so. Programmers are a dime a dozen. As long as they retain the architects of the program's it should be fine. I have less worries about finale and makemusic than I do with avid and Sibelius Sent from my iSomething -- On Oct 13, 2014, at 10:26 PM, Craig Parmerlee cr...@parmerlee.com wrote: See http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2014/10/03/makemusic-hq-move-eliminate-120-minnesota-jobs.html The company, which develops software for teaching and composing music, offered transfers to more than half of its workers and several dozen have agreed to move, Fisher said. Because some employees are still considering the offer, he couldn't say how many will relocate when the time to move comes early next year. So in rough numbers, there were 120 employees. They offered transfers to about 60. About 30 or 1/4 of the company is going to stay on board. Considering this encompasses Smartmusic and Garritan, and Smartmusic is more in line with the mission of Peaksware, my guess is that we'd be lucky if 15 experienced Finale people remain with the company -- and that would have to include coverage for Printmusic and Songwriter. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] News update on MakeMusic move to Boulder
I agree with you Robert. There really hasn't been strong design leadership. MM programmers basically hack away until they get something that the company is willing to put into the market. Evidence of this is features that take 3 releases to actually get close to right. Every software product has some bugs, but we are talking more about partially thought-out implementations in this case. Another such example is MIDI Retranscribe. This is a very nice feature to clean up the notation. There are various cases where (again because of poor architectural design) copying content causes the notation to get sloppy -- for example turning dotted quarters into quarter-tie-8th for no good reason. Retranscribe cleans that up. BUT... when you do Retranscribe, it preserves Smartshapes and Expressions (excellent) but loses Articulation (come on, guys, nobody tested any of this.) In programming, there is a concept called orthogonal design. The basic premise is that data structures and algorithms should be designed such that the operations are naturally all-inclusive. It is more a philosophy than a programming technique, but to be successful, you really must commit to this type of thinking all the way through the product. Most programmers today learn the opposite way -- linearly, and they are hopeless. The state of the programming art has been on a long decline for decades. Regarding availability of programmers, it seems to me you need a special type of programmer in this case. There is quite a lot of art in music notation. It ain't like programming a website. Most programmers will have no appreciation for the subtleties of symbol placement and how the slightest change can make a big difference. You really do need great programmers who are musicians. Fortunately this is not really a rare combination. My bigger concern is that there simply will be no commitment to staffing at the level to properly support the product, let alone produce enhancements. It appears the very best case is that little happens the rest of this year, as everybody is either looking for a new job or planning for a move to Boulder. And little happens in 2015 because they will be hiring people and trying to get them up to speed. My guess is the very best case is that we get some bug fixes in the second half of 2015 and maybe get a new release by the end of 2016. By then, Steinberg may have their product ready. On 10/14/2014 8:19 AM, Robert Patterson wrote: Architects lost control of Finale years ago. I am not picking on Finale, because it is an industry-wide phenomenon and a routine hazard of aging products, but the evidence is everywhere that architecture is out the window at MM. Here are a few clues: 1. Beat-attached smart shapes are only partially implemented. (Slurs and dotted slurs are not implemented.) An architected solution would have implemented all at once. 2. Although Exclude from Measure Numbering works graphically, many parts of the program (especially scroll view navigation) get very confused by it if you use it more than once or twice in a piece. 3. Plugins unlink some items when editing a part and not others. If an architecture were in place there could be no difference between manual and plugin edits because both would be taking the same code paths. I beg to differ that programmers are a dime a dozen. Though this is certainly the prevailing industry view of them (since the bean counters took control), a good programmer is worth a dozen bad ones—probably two dozen—and the best thing you can do for yourself is to find one of the good ones and let them do it. On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 12:37 AM, Eric Dannewitz ericd...@jazz-sax.com wrote: Though to do smartmusic you need to have finale so. Programmers are a dime a dozen. As long as they retain the architects of the program's it should be fine. I have less worries about finale and makemusic than I do with avid and Sibelius Sent from my iSomething -- On Oct 13, 2014, at 10:26 PM, Craig Parmerlee cr...@parmerlee.com wrote: See http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2014/10/03/makemusic-hq-move-eliminate-120-minnesota-jobs.html The company, which develops software for teaching and composing music, offered transfers to more than half of its workers and several dozen have agreed to move, Fisher said. Because some employees are still considering the offer, he couldn't say how many will relocate when the time to move comes early next year. So in rough numbers, there were 120 employees. They offered transfers to about 60. About 30 or 1/4 of the company is going to stay on board. Considering this encompasses Smartmusic and Garritan, and Smartmusic is more in line with the mission of Peaksware, my guess is that we'd be lucky if 15 experienced Finale people remain with the company -- and that would have to include coverage for Printmusic and Songwriter.
[Finale] Brand new iMac and Finale question
My old iMac from 2008 died and I was forced into buying a brand new iMac, OS X 10.9.4. I previously used Finale 2008 without any trouble. All of my files (and applications) from my old Mac were migrated over from an external hard drive. I was able to reconnect my MIDI interface and input notes from my synthesizer to a finale 2008 document, and am able to playback using Garritan sounds. All seemed fine…EXCEPT…none of the text (lyrics, dynamics) appear when I open previous files (although all of the notes are there, and there are hyphens but no lyrics). For the heck of it, I created a brand new file successfully, then went to lyric tool and added some text. As I type in one syllable at a time, that syllable appears, but then disappears. Again, all that remains are some hyphens. When I clicked on each note that should have a syllable of text, the syllable appears and then vanishes. I went into the pull down menu and went into “edit text” (or edit lyrics, whatever it’s called) and there was absolutely nothing in the large box. I was unable to type anything directly into that box. Please help thanks, Martin ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] News update on MakeMusic move to Boulder
talking more about partially thought-out implementations in this case. I still think that Finale (and Sibelius) are still screwing up implementations of things like linked parts and magnetic layout that Igor Engraver had right decades ago. Igor had (severe) problems but was designed from the startin a non-modal, grab-anything-and-move-it, link-exactly-what-you-want fashion. Finale and Sibelius read the ad copy from Igor about these features but no one ever actually used the program for long enough to understand the beauty of these concepts or why they worked so well. Steve P. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Anybody think we will ever see any more fixes for F2014?
In the history of Finale updates, I can’t remember Finale putting out more than 3 per version. So, I’m guessing that the next iteration of Finale will have a new version number on it. -Randolph Peters ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Anybody think we will ever see any more fixes for F2014?
Maybe those comparisons of cars and Tvs were a bit over the top - although I'd like to know what your reasons are - you don't give any. About Adobe and other patches, from Apple and MS Operating systems, I've been using Macs for almost two decades and I can't think of a single update that has done anything other than IMPROVE functionality and increase security. But I know from reading the list of new features when I update that there are indeed some bug fixes, though they have always seemed completely obscure to me. Their updates have only, typically, improved performance and security. Nobody addressed Mathematica, which is probably the most comparative software. I have a transcription/composition/engraving client, a major client, who just does not understand bugs at all and you should try explaining to someone that you purchased an expensive product that has things that don't work - he comes from the rest of the marketplace, like cars, Tvs, heating systems, whatever, where if you sold a new product that had issues, you would just take it back - because it was obviously broken and no professional product wouldn't work 100%. He doesn't get it at all. It makes it really embarrassing to apologize and try explain this doesn't work properly, it's normal it's broken And it's really made me question why software is any different. You can't say the sophisticated engineering that goes into manufacturing an entire car isn't potentially as detailed as a software app - considering there is a lot of software right there in car, for example? Best, Dean -- Dean Rosenthal www.deanrosenthal.org On Oct 13, 2014, at 1:35 PM, Eric Dannewitz ericd...@jazz-sax.com wrote: Comparing software to a TV doesn't work. Or your car. Its ridiculous. Adobe's products are FAR from perfect and most of them have a list of legacy bugs that would make Finale's look teeny weenie. And Adobe also does what people are accusing MakeMusic of.moving on and fixing issues (or working around them) in newer versions. Most all companies do that I think (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc). On Oct 13, 2014, at 10:15 AM, Dean Rosenthal deanrosent...@gmail.com wrote: No. I don't understand why it's acceptable for a product to be sold with enough bugs. Paying for a bug-fix release (one that would riddled with at least some other issues) is not the answer. Imagine if you bought a widescreen tv, only to find that certain features worked only some of the time and some not at all, to compound this, your cable service also presented programming issues and challenges. Or your car. Features as prominent as a gauge. Or even a major program like Mathematica, which is at least equally sophisticated in context to Finale. Or an Adobe product. Think about what it would mean to the market and to advances and innovations. We are stuck with a great application that is unfortunately far from perfect and for some reason the company does not have high enough standards to perfect their product the way the other products I've mentioned perfect them. Comments? Dean -- Dean Rosenthal www.deanrosenthal.org ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Anybody think we will ever see any more fixes for F2014?
On 10/14/2014 1:16 PM, Dean Rosenthal wrote: [snip] it's broken And it's really made me question why software is any different. You can't say the sophisticated engineering that goes into manufacturing an entire car isn't potentially as detailed as a software app - considering there is a lot of software right there in car, for example? [snip] But cars are buggy, too -- witness the numbers of recalls of millions of vehicles over the years. Sometimes the bugs don't come out for a long long time in cars -- we owned a 2006 Saturn Ion which just received a recall notice (we traded it in 6 months ago). And just as with software, car manufacturers try to hide the bugs as long as they can until they're finally caught. Witness the millions of GM cars which had faulty ignition switches that we only found about within the past year, even though they had been installed *and known about at GM* quite a few years ago and GM said to go ahead and install them anyway! It's the mindset of manufacturing these days, whether it's hardware or software -- put out a product that's a buggy as can be and still be sold, and then try to fix things when enough people complain about them and cry about how difficult it is to track them all down and fix them. But that's because manufacturing, whether hardware or software, is all about pleasing the shareholders first and then pleasing the customers only as much as it helps to keep the shareholders happy. If corporations put as much effort into fixing buggy products as they do into evading taxes, we'd all be much happier and not be complaining about the bugs nearly as much. But that won't ever happen again in our lifetimes, not as long as Wall Street is king and the consumer is only a peasant with very little power. -- David H. Bailey dhbai...@davidbaileymusicstudio.com http://www.davidbaileymusicstudio.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Anybody think we will ever see any more fixes for F2014?
David, I generally agree with your comments on this subject. But I really don't think this is a Wall Street play in this instance. I think it is a case where Finale as an independent company could not find a business model that worked consistently. It seems to me that this SHOULD have worked. There are a lot of people who have minimal notation requirements, and they have always dabbled at the fringes (Rhapsody, Encore, etc) For them, MuseScore is probably adequate. So that does take a lot of buyers out of the potential market. I would have thought the two biggest segments are churches (choir directors) and schools/universities. Evidently neither Sibelius nor Finale was able to present a proposition to these segments that brought in enough revenue to fund continued support and development. I would argue this is because they spread their efforts too thin and brought relatively little value to the market over the past 10 years. There is always a debate about what might have been. That leaves the hard core users, who are professional or at least semi-professional copyists, songwriters, arrangers, show producers, sound track writers and so on. Unfortunately this may be just too small a market to work. We are loyal of necessity, mainly because there is no other alternative. But it seems clear enough that Peaksware is interested only in milking the cash cow. Had they the slightest interest in returning the product to a leading position, they would have presented some kind of vision to the market by now. The good news, if there is any to be found, is that there is a very important segment that was overlooked by both Finale and Sibelius. This is writers and producers who work primarily in the DAW space. That is a rapidly growing market. Their compositional workflow is quite different from the typical Finale workflow. They compose intuitively and interactively. But some of them have a need for notation. It is just that notation is toward the end of their work flow whereas it is the beginning of the average Finale user's workflow. And I believe that is the reason Steinberg has been willing to make a much bigger investment than Makemusic and Avid combined in the past 2 years. My prediction is that we will never see another significant notation release (patches or new features) from Peaksware, although they are likely to push Smartmusic along. If we do see a significant new release from Peaksware, I bet it will be within 9 months of the commercial introduction of the Steinberg product. On 10/14/2014 2:57 PM, David H. Bailey wrote: But that won't ever happen again in our lifetimes, not as long as Wall Street is king and the consumer is only a peasant with very little power. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Anybody think we will ever see any more fixes for F2014?
I think this list is being entirely too pessimistic about prospects for future Finale releases. I should let someone like Michael Good speak for himself (or for Peaksware) but I believe some key developers from Finale are making the move. That hardly seems like they are abandoning Finale. I've said it before and I'll say it again: don't even begin to count on the Steinberg release until there is an announced release date and feature set. Bringing software to market faces many challenges that have nothing to do with the quality of the tech team developing it. One the Steinberg product faces is that it pretty much has to address every use case of Finale and Sibelius that those two have evolved over twenty years. Yes, it will potentially do some new innovative thing incredibly well, but v1.0 will almost certainly fail at some other critical tasks that Fin/Sib handle with aplomb, and that failure could be the deal breaker that kills the product. (This is an oft-repeated tale in this industry.) I agree with the comments about MuseScore. I also think you will see MuseScore progressively steal away higher and higher level users over time. MuseScore is a rapidly moving target with a major upgrade imminent. On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Craig Parmerlee cr...@parmerlee.com wrote: David, I generally agree with your comments on this subject. But I really don't think this is a Wall Street play in this instance. I think it is a case where Finale as an independent company could not find a business model that worked consistently. It seems to me that this SHOULD have worked. There are a lot of people who have minimal notation requirements, and they have always dabbled at the fringes (Rhapsody, Encore, etc) For them, MuseScore is probably adequate. So that does take a lot of buyers out of the potential market. I would have thought the two biggest segments are churches (choir directors) and schools/universities. Evidently neither Sibelius nor Finale was able to present a proposition to these segments that brought in enough revenue to fund continued support and development. I would argue this is because they spread their efforts too thin and brought relatively little value to the market over the past 10 years. There is always a debate about what might have been. That leaves the hard core users, who are professional or at least semi-professional copyists, songwriters, arrangers, show producers, sound track writers and so on. Unfortunately this may be just too small a market to work. We are loyal of necessity, mainly because there is no other alternative. But it seems clear enough that Peaksware is interested only in milking the cash cow. Had they the slightest interest in returning the product to a leading position, they would have presented some kind of vision to the market by now. The good news, if there is any to be found, is that there is a very important segment that was overlooked by both Finale and Sibelius. This is writers and producers who work primarily in the DAW space. That is a rapidly growing market. Their compositional workflow is quite different from the typical Finale workflow. They compose intuitively and interactively. But some of them have a need for notation. It is just that notation is toward the end of their work flow whereas it is the beginning of the average Finale user's workflow. And I believe that is the reason Steinberg has been willing to make a much bigger investment than Makemusic and Avid combined in the past 2 years. My prediction is that we will never see another significant notation release (patches or new features) from Peaksware, although they are likely to push Smartmusic along. If we do see a significant new release from Peaksware, I bet it will be within 9 months of the commercial introduction of the Steinberg product. On 10/14/2014 2:57 PM, David H. Bailey wrote: But that won't ever happen again in our lifetimes, not as long as Wall Street is king and the consumer is only a peasant with very little power. ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
Re: [Finale] Anybody think we will ever see any more fixes for F2014?
As far as I know, he has made no such statements publicly other than the vague, bland non-denial the day they announced they were moving to Boulder. Have you seen any? I really would have thought that would be a priority, considering that the news was basically, We're firing the CEO, we're moving to Boulder, and maybe a few current employees will come along, and oh, by the way, we specialize in coaching software, which is a lot like music notation. I would have though that with a few months to toss this around among themselves, maybe they would want to make a statement or two their customer base. On 10/14/2014 4:23 PM, Robert Patterson wrote: I should let someone like Michael Good speak for himself (or for Peaksware) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
