Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 9 Jul 2005 at 19:46, Ken Durling wrote: > At 05:18 PM 7/9/2005, you wrote: > > > > > When you R-click in Create>Text> Metronome Mark , you get a > > > context menu that has a Q note, as well as others, which you can > > > select and then follow with =158 or whatever. > > > >Ok, I can do that, after about 10 tries. > > What, are you trying to do it with your feet??Come on. Well, the problem is caused by the lack of clarity of what is selected and what is not. I still don't know what I did right to get the context menu that allows me to insert a quarter note. I haven't a clue. > Anyway. I'm not trying to convert you, just address some basic > misapprehensions. Enough bandwidth already. Well, I think it's quite clear from my having gone back to try the same things in the Sibelius 3 demo that there are quite serious performance problems in Sibelius 4. There is certainly a substantial reduction in responsiveness of basic UI interaction, and that's the source of most of my problems -- the cursor comes up eventually, but I have to wait for it. It's obviously never going to work for me unless they do an update that fixes the performance problems. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 05:18 PM 7/9/2005, you wrote: > When you R-click in Create>Text> Metronome Mark , you get a context > menu that has a Q note, as well as others, which you can select and > then follow with =158 or whatever. Ok, I can do that, after about 10 tries. What, are you trying to do it with your feet??Come on. Anyway. I'm not trying to convert you, just address some basic misapprehensions. Enough bandwidth already. Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 9 Jul 2005 at 17:09, Ken Durling wrote: > At 01:48 PM 7/9/2005, you wrote: > >Also, I have major problems with understanding where my typing is > >going when I do something like Ctrl-Alt-T (to insert text) -- there > >is no onscreen indicator of where the text is going to appear, and > >there is a huge pause between my typing and the actual appearance of > >the text onscreen. There just isn't enough visual feedback here for > >me to be able to understand what's going on. > > Yes, there is an on-screen indicator: If you select an object before > typing Ctrl-Alt -T for Tempo text, a cursor will appear above the > selected object. . . I can't get it to work reliably. I select a note, and see no insertion point. If I select a time signature (to type in a tempo marking), I get the blue arrow when I hit Ctrl-Alt-T, but no selection point until I click somewhere. And even then, there's a 1 second delay between the click and the appearance of the cursor. Completely unusable! > . . If you don't select something, you get a "loaded > mouse arrow" which you can insert anywhere by clicking. The blue arrow, yes, and my complaint is that the destination that the text ends up does not appear predictable to me. And the 1-second delay for the appearance of the cursor means it's just completely not at all usable -- I could never begin to get any work done with that kind of lag in the interface, and it appears everywhere throughout the program. Sorry, but if that's as good as Sibelius can do performance-wise on my PC, then I'm not considering buying it. Finale has no such lag problems, and never has, so there's nothing inherent in the process of what's being done that should disqualify my system as too slow for this kind of work. It's clearly something about Sibelius's coding that is not working on my system. As I'm not replacing this PC any time soon, Sibelius is disqualified. I just tried the Sibelius 3 demo to compare, and it exhibits none of the lag time that the Sibelius 4 demo shows. I'm sure glad I didn't commit to Sibelius with version 3, given how unacceptably slow version 4 is! It also seems to me that the appearance of the score in Sibelius 3 is vastly superior to that of Sibelius 4. I'm just comparing the two sample files of Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, and Sibelius 3 looks *much* better than Sibelius 4. The selection colors are also much, much clearer to me (the blue of the selected notehead is much clearer. Also, it seems to me that the older music font is much more attractive. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 9 Jul 2005 at 17:06, Ken Durling wrote: > At 01:48 PM 7/9/2005, you wrote: > > >How? I don't know how to create a metronome marking. I can choose > >your sequence of commands, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to > >type to get a valid metronome mark. Q=158? If I go to the Sibelius > >Demo help file (which is remarkably stupidly provided as a > >phenomenally slowly-loading Java applet, instead of either as a > >Windows Help File or as HTML, and one that even more stupidly copies > >the horrid interface of Windows HTML Help), I get no help on this > >topic. But I do find that Q=158 actually works. The problem, of > >course, is that I'd *never* want that appearing in a score -- I'd > >want the quarter note symbol. I haven't a clue how to insert that. > > When you R-click in Create>Text> Metronome Mark , you get a context > menu that has a Q note, as well as others, which you can select and > then follow with =158 or whatever. Ok, I can do that, after about 10 tries. The problem is, yet again, there is no clarity whatsoever to the insertion point, which, for whatever reason, doesn't appear until, well, I don't know when it appears. It appeared at a certain point, and once it was there, I could right click and get the context menu. After I started typing? After I doubleclicked? I don't know. What I do know is that this behavior for typing text is completely foreign to any program I've ever used, of any kind. There is no model for this kind of behavior that I'm aware of. And I feel like I'm skating on thin ice, not having a clue what results are going to happen (this would not be so bad if the undo were more sensible -- I find that I almost always have to undo several times to undo what seems to me like a single action). Also, I haven't even mentioned the fact that I can't tell where the item is going to end up, so I always need to move the item after creating it. If I click and drag, it takes about a full second for the item to move. That's bloody ridiculous. > >Likewise, the real thing that should be happening is that I should be > >able to define my tempo markings (like Allegro Vivace) to control > >tempo. I understand the concept of the dictionary (I think), but > >can't seem to get it to work reliably in having tempos set by them. > > > > > . . . Ctrl-right or left arrow will move you > > > measure by measure where plain arrow goes note to note - just > > > like the old Wordstar command. Pretty basic. > > > >Wordstar! I haven't used Wordstar since the 80s, and it wouldn't at > >all occur to me as a model for navigation commands for playback. > > Well, my point is that every word program since has used the same > commands. Ctrl as a magnification of a command is a basic Windows > principle. ??? Why would word navigation be an obvious model for moving the playback starting point? -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 01:48 PM 7/9/2005, you wrote: Also, I have major problems with understanding where my typing is going when I do something like Ctrl-Alt-T (to insert text) -- there is no onscreen indicator of where the text is going to appear, and there is a huge pause between my typing and the actual appearance of the text onscreen. There just isn't enough visual feedback here for me to be able to understand what's going on. Yes, there is an on-screen indicator: If you select an object before typing Ctrl-Alt -T for Tempo text, a cursor will appear above the selected object. If you don't select something, you get a "loaded mouse arrow" which you can insert anywhere by clicking. Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 01:48 PM 7/9/2005, you wrote: How? I don't know how to create a metronome marking. I can choose your sequence of commands, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to type to get a valid metronome mark. Q=158? If I go to the Sibelius Demo help file (which is remarkably stupidly provided as a phenomenally slowly-loading Java applet, instead of either as a Windows Help File or as HTML, and one that even more stupidly copies the horrid interface of Windows HTML Help), I get no help on this topic. But I do find that Q=158 actually works. The problem, of course, is that I'd *never* want that appearing in a score -- I'd want the quarter note symbol. I haven't a clue how to insert that. When you R-click in Create>Text> Metronome Mark , you get a context menu that has a Q note, as well as others, which you can select and then follow with =158 or whatever. Likewise, the real thing that should be happening is that I should be able to define my tempo markings (like Allegro Vivace) to control tempo. I understand the concept of the dictionary (I think), but can't seem to get it to work reliably in having tempos set by them. > . . . Ctrl-right or left arrow will move you > measure by measure where plain arrow goes note to note - just like > the old Wordstar command. Pretty basic. Wordstar! I haven't used Wordstar since the 80s, and it wouldn't at all occur to me as a model for navigation commands for playback. Well, my point is that every word program since has used the same commands. Ctrl as a magnification of a command is a basic Windows principle. Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 9 Jul 2005 at 9:33, John Howell wrote: > At 12:55 AM -0400 7/9/05, David W. Fenton wrote: > > >Anyway, that's enough for now. Most of the notational aspects I could > >probably figure out how to configure, but I find the user interface > >is, overall, really poorly done, with lots of places where it's > >extremely hard to find how to control things (they just aren't > >located anywhere on any of the menus that would make sense to me). > >Also, there seems to be very little in the way of context-sensitive > >menus. I would expect that if I right click on a text expression I'd > >get some shortcuts to commands that are specific to the type of > >object I'm clicking on, but there's nothing there. > > Gee, that describes exactly how I feel about Finale, coming to it from > Mosaic. IT'S WHAT YOU'VE LEARNED!!! (And, of course, what you > HAVEN'T yet learned!) But when did you make that switch? Finale was markedly less user- friendly before about Finale 97. Since that time, there have been vast improvements in basic usability and discoverability. I've tried every single menu choice in Sibelius in the process of hunting for things, and haven't been very successful in finding a lot of things. And it's pretty clear that initiating playback from a particular point has *no* non-keyboard UI, other than the bad one I complained about (which, to be fair, is exactly like a lot of sequencers, which doesn't make it good, just common). The greatest problem for me is the poor implementation of onscreen feedback about what you're operating on and where your typing is going to end up, as well as problems with simple navigation around a file. Nothing behaves the way standard Windows programs are supposed to operate, and this makes it quite difficult and frustrating. That's not a Finale-based criticism at all. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 9 Jul 2005 at 8:35, dhbailey wrote: > Unfortunately, Sibelius tries to make that "gorgeous output and easy > to use right out of the box" claim which leads to frustration in many > beginners. > > Equally unfortunately, Finale has a known history of a steep learning > curve (which has gotten to be far less steep as the years have passed) > which it seems unable to shake. > > They're both equally complex to learn if a person wants to reach a > professional engraving level. I've tried very hard to edit out of my comments anything that I knew was just my trying to put a Finale paradigm on Sibelius. But I also think that the Sibelius reputation for having an intuitive UI is not deserved. Aside from the problems with the concept of "intuitive interface" (nothing on the computer is truly intuitive unless you've already got a huge base of knowledge behind it), I don't think Sibelius's UI is any more intuitive than Finale's. Indeed, there are many cases where Finale implements an easier UI of operating directly on what you're editing, whereas Sibelius gives you a dialog box with lots of settings to adjust. If I took out the names and replaced them with "ProgramA" and "ProgramB" I'd bet that just about every Finale and Sibelius user would guess wrong precisely because of the respective reputations of the two programs. I don't think Sibelius's "intuitive" or "easy-to- learn" reputation is deserved, and I don't think Finale's "non- intuitive" and "hard to learn" reputation is deserved, either. As you say, both programs are complex and difficult to learn. But somehow Sibelius has magically gained a reputation that I simply don't believe is warranted, at least not from my experiences with the demo. And my objections here are not about *how* things are done, since that's obviously going to be different from Finale -- my objections are in how the UI is designed and how functionality is implemented. The key difference seems to me to be in discoverability -- Sibelius makes it harder to find answers than Finale does, it seems to me, partly because Sibelius doesn't give as easy access to the properties of objects. This is not a criticism based on my inexperience with Sibelius, but based on observation of how things are done in Sibelius. There are also a number of areas that Sibelius doesn't feel like a professional program to me (the edit boxes in the dictionary edit were one of those), and the visual feedback seems very, very poor to me (I can't tell from looking at the screen what in the word is going on, since I can't always clearly see what's selected, or can't tell where my typing is going to appear onscreen). And performance on my PC is abysmal compared to Finale. I've never been a fan of Finale's screen redraw, but it seems much better than Sibelius's. My PC is not new, and not fast, but it's also not a laggard in the field of all the other applications that I use. Sibelius is markedly slower than any other application I've got installed. So, I don't believe I'm being unfair here. I'm trying to bend over backwards to avoid the kind of temper tantrums that come from simply not having absorbed the paradigms and organization of a different program. Maybe I'm not very successful at that. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 8 Jul 2005 at 23:34, Ken Durling wrote: > At 09:55 PM 7/8/2005, David Fenton wrote: [] > >I also find simple page navigation very frustrating. How do I move > >right in the page display? [typed later:] Well, I've discovered that > >there are scrollbars that can be turned on (don't know why they're > >off!) and that you can click on the navigation palette in a special > >way to navigate from page to page, but this does not feel at all > >comfortable to me. I cannot seem to position the view window > >successfully where I want it. That is, I can't seem to figure out the > >relationship of the position of the mouse click to where the view > >window ends up. > > I never use the navigation palette or the scroll bars. I'm entirely > comfortable with a combination of click and drag and page up/down. Well, on my system, click and drag is not easily controllable. I don't know if it's a screen redrawing issue, or a mouse issue, or if my system is just too slow, but I can' reliably drag to where I want to (i.e., the drag never moves the score as far as I moved my mouse), and this is extremely uncomfortable. PageUp/Down do nothing at all except move me vertically within the currently displayed window. I can't see how to navigate horizontally except by scrollbars (which makes it pretty hard to position things, unless I set it to display one or two page widths, which is either too big or too small). [] > >4. playback was very annoying. I wanted the view to be 2-page view, > >but every time I started playback, it switched back to 100% (or some > >larger percentage), which made it very, very difficult to follow > >playback. Ah -- I see there's a setting that was set to always play > >back at 75%. > > You can set this however you want it, even no zoom, where I have it > set. Well, it was just a case where there was a setting that needed to be changed. I do kind of understand the utility of it for someone who wants to playback at a fixed size. I prefer to *work* at a fixed size and don't really want playback to alter that. I only use larger sizes in Finale for final layout, when I'm checking exact placement of items like expressions, etc. Of course, I broke my own rule for new applications -- you should always browse through the options dialogs to see what things you can change. I probably wouldn't have realized the problem going through it, but I would have remembered the setting when I ran into the to-me inexplicable behavior. > >5. I tested their version of "Human Playback" and found that the > >default settings were best (espressivo with basically no rubato). But > >I don't like certain interpretations of how the shape of lines should > >be interpreted, specifically, any time a line has a disjunction (say, > >a leap up an octave) the first note after the leap is accented. > >That's musically *awful* for just about any style I can think of. > > If you look to Sibelius as a playback program, . . . Well, I don't look at Finale as a playback program, but it does what I need. I'm not certain yet that Sibelius does, except with a very annoying UI that I think is bad even in sequencers. > . . . I think you're barking > up the wrong tree. And the above behavior sounds more like a problem > with your sound module than Sibelius - mine does no such accents on > wide leaps. And playback is what you're criticizing - at least many > here are - Finale for pursuing. It's a notation program. I am really > pleased so much was implemented in this upgrade that directly > addresses engraving. Well, I need playback in Finale to prep files for MIDI, since I am wedded to notation as my method for creating MIDI performances. And I don't want to have to repeatedly edit the MIDI file after exporting it from Finale -- I want as much as possible done in Finale. And I'm not asking for perfection -- just something that's good enough for general MIDI files to play on anyone's synthesizer (because of that, I don't tweak things overly carefully, like setting much in the way of balance between instruments, since I don't know what sounds they'll be playing back on). I liked certain things about the Sibelius "live playback," but there was definitely an accent on the top notes. It's not a problem with my sound module, either, because it doesn't happen anywhere else -- it's something that Sibelius is specifically choosing to do to the performance before it sends it to the synthesizer. It's not a huge thing, though it would mean I'd never use it. And, to be fair, I haven't really heard Finale's Human Playback. I might be equally dissatisfied with it. My concern was that someone implemented into Sibelius's idea of how music should sound an idea that is antithetical to everything I've ever been taught about musicality. [] > >8. responsiveness of the UI on my 500MHz P4 with 768MBs of RAM is > >ABYSMAL. Everything is extremely slow. Playback in Sibelius's page > >view gets way ahead of Sibelius's abi
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 12:55 AM -0400 7/9/05, David W. Fenton wrote: Anyway, that's enough for now. Most of the notational aspects I could probably figure out how to configure, but I find the user interface is, overall, really poorly done, with lots of places where it's extremely hard to find how to control things (they just aren't located anywhere on any of the menus that would make sense to me). Also, there seems to be very little in the way of context-sensitive menus. I would expect that if I right click on a text expression I'd get some shortcuts to commands that are specific to the type of object I'm clicking on, but there's nothing there. Gee, that describes exactly how I feel about Finale, coming to it from Mosaic. IT'S WHAT YOU'VE LEARNED!!! (And, of course, what you HAVEN'T yet learned!) John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
Ken Durling wrote: [snip]> Sib's UI is not dreadful Far from it. It works wonderfully and is very flexible. But it takes tine to learn. I'm still trying to find time to pursue finding my way around Finale better. Neither program is perfect, and layout is one of the tougher issues in Sibelius. But I'm not going to call either program awful because I just haven't learned how to use it! . This is something that every user of either program needs to remember when trying the competition. I have been using Finale for 12 years (I think, starting with version 3.5) and I remember coming from MusicPrinterPlus and having a slow beginning to get comfortable with Finale. I know David Fenton has been using Finale longer because he was already resident on this list when I joined, shortly after I started with Finale. It took me a while to get comfortable with the working methods that Finale forced me to use. And then I got very comfortable with them, to the point that I can fly with the program now, doing music entry very fast and comfortable and being able to solve most of my notational problems myself, only rarely consulting the on-line documentation or asking questions on this list. When I started using Sibelius I found it extremely frustrating because I didn't take the time to find where things are in the menus. Of course, Finale keeps moving things around and often with a new upgrade of Finale I'm frustrated for a short while until I get comfortable with the new locations of menu items. I blamed Sibelius, until I realized it was simply that I didn't take the time to learn the program. The more I use it, the more comfortable I get with it, and I realize that my 12-years of finale-workflow really gets in the way of giving Sibelius a fair chance. I am trying now to approach Sibelius as if it were a brand-new program (which it is) that I have to learn as if I had never used a notation program (that's hard to do!) I have been unfair in many (but not all) of my former criticisms of Sibelius and have tried to point out the same unfairness in Sibelius users' complaints regarding Finale. If anybody simply gets the program (I agree that both demos, Sibelius and Finale are lousy ways to learn the program, since neither is truly full-functioned and prevent really learning how to use the program, since you can't save a project and continue working on the same thing for a week or more continuously to really get comfortable with the program), does the included tutorials, joins one of these lists and reads the questions and problems raised by others and tries out the solutions themselves, even if they haven't reached the point where they need a particular function, and they will get more comfortable more quickly with the way either program works. Both programs can and do generate gorgeous notation and both programs can and do generate truly ugly notation. With either program the output is the responsibility of the user. Both programs are very complex and neither will stand up to a cursory attempt to learn it. Unfortunately, Sibelius tries to make that "gorgeous output and easy to use right out of the box" claim which leads to frustration in many beginners. Equally unfortunately, Finale has a known history of a steep learning curve (which has gotten to be far less steep as the years have passed) which it seems unable to shake. They're both equally complex to learn if a person wants to reach a professional engraving level. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
Richard Smith wrote: [snip]> Here's where I will probably say the wrong thing on a Finale list. The competition has been great for both programs. However, I think Finale has benefited more than Sibelius. I think the long discussion of dynamic parts here is an indicator of that. I remember pre-Sibelius Finale. It's MUCH better now. You won't get any argument from me on that point. As to whether it's directly Sibelius-caused or just the natural evolution of Finale which would have ocurred anyway, whether or not Sibelius existed, is something nobody will ever know for sure. But it is curious that several things that Sibelius initiates end up in Finale. I don't see much of the opposite happening, although there was an interesting post on the Sibelius-list where they wish that Finale's purported ability to use ANY kontakt-based samples (not just the Sibelius-only Kontakt-silver or Kontakt-gold) would happen in Sibelius. Perhaps that will show up in an interim release of Sibelius. I also remember the reports of Sibelius version 1 for Windows/Mac and Sibelius is MUCH better, now, too. That may be because it knows it has tough competition from Finale, and again, it may simply be the normal maturing of a product. But in any event both programs have improved immensely over the past few versions, since Sibelius appeared in this marketplace. In any event, these two giants of the notation software field have been good for each other if for no other reason than the competition for the relatively small market for notation software has made both stronger. I just hope that Finale doesn't keep heading towards the sequencer end of things (which has gotten strong attention in the recent few versions, starting with the inclusion of the soundfont player and human playback) at the expense of notational improvements. There have been some posts on the Sibelius list which congratulate that program's developpers on remaining focused on the core purpose of the program, notation. I wish I could make the same congratulations to Finale's developpers. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 11:34 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote: I never use the navigation palette or the scroll bars. I'm entirely comfortable with a combination of click and drag and page up/down. Sorry, should have added Home and End, (and Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End.) Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 09:55 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote: On 8 Jul 2005 at 18:16, Ken Durling wrote: > At 12:39 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote: > >And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the > >music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): > > > >1. change the page percentage OR > > > >2. change the system percentage > > > >The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a > >way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone > >else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. > > Objection overruled. Don't blame Sibelius for what you don't know how > to do. This is a very basic setting under Layout > Document Setup> > Staff Size. I don't know Finale well enough to know exactly what is > meant by "page percentage" but I suspect that it's under House Styles> > Engraving Rules> Staves> Justify when % full?I could be wrong. I posted about this later on. The UI for adjusting these things in Sibelius is buried in dialog boxes, whereas the UI in Finale is based on right clicking on things displayed onscreen, or dragging margin lines, or by using one of the standard tools. While the Finale methods have their drawbacks in terms of some loss of precision if you only try to drag things around onscreen (instead of using the tools that allow precise settings), in Sibelius, I could see no way to visually see the settings I was changing, except to visit a dialog box, make the changes and then close the dialog (yes, one of the dialogs had a preview, but it was too small to be entirely eliminate the need to close the dialog to see the results). I also find simple page navigation very frustrating. How do I move right in the page display? [typed later:] Well, I've discovered that there are scrollbars that can be turned on (don't know why they're off!) and that you can click on the navigation palette in a special way to navigate from page to page, but this does not feel at all comfortable to me. I cannot seem to position the view window successfully where I want it. That is, I can't seem to figure out the relationship of the position of the mouse click to where the view window ends up. I never use the navigation palette or the scroll bars. I'm entirely comfortable with a combination of click and drag and page up/down. I mucked around quite a while with a MusicXML imported file and there were a whole host of problems in the conversion (I'm not blaming that on Sibelius), and I had a devil of a time figuring out how to fix them. Here's a couple: 1. the first time I imported, I let Sibelius choose the instruments. It chose orchestral strings instead of the solo sounds. I never was able to figure out how to change the playback to use solo string patches instead of orchestral. 2. the piece being imported had independent key signatures, but only in the final movement. The problem was that the key signature change in the piano part for the second movement was missed (it's only the piano that has independent time sigs). Now, I have no way of telling if this is a MusicXML problem or not (the file won't re-import into Finale, giving me a DTD error), but I don't really care about that. My concern was with how to fix it. And because of Sibelius's page view orientation, it was extremely hard for me to reliably select measures to transpose. 3. the cello part had some sections in treble clef. I didn't expect to get the right performance from a MusicXML import, but in giving a look, I couldn't quite figure out how to get the treble clef passage to play an octave below notated (it didn't come out right with an ETF import, either). 4. playback was very annoying. I wanted the view to be 2-page view, but every time I started playback, it switched back to 100% (or some larger percentage), which made it very, very difficult to follow playback. Ah -- I see there's a setting that was set to always play back at 75%. You can set this however you want it, even no zoom, where I have it set. 5. I tested their version of "Human Playback" and found that the default settings were best (espressivo with basically no rubato). But I don't like certain interpretations of how the shape of lines should be interpreted, specifically, any time a line has a disjunction (say, a leap up an octave) the first note after the leap is accented. That's musically *awful* for just about any style I can think of. If you look to Sibelius as a playback program, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. And the above behavior sounds more like a problem with your sound module than Sibelius - mine does no such accents on wide leaps. And playback is what you're criticizing - at least many here are - Finale for pursuing. It's a notation program. I am really pleased so much was implemented in this upgrade that directly addresses engraving. 6. I also just tried ETF import, and it's not too bad, actually. But now the tempo is wrong. For some reason the MusicXML import got the right tempo, but ETF doesn't. I c
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
David W. Fenton wrote: I had no real difficulties with note entry. It was the application of articulations/expressions that I found difficult, because of the palette-based approach, which I dislike intensely as a user interface. It's the kind of thing that is easy to figure out, but not easy to use in the long run. It seems I chose the wrong example to illustrate the problem but you have illustrated it perfectly. I like Sibelius' approach to articulations because I know it. For me, the key to the "palette-based" approach is to use the ten key pad rather than the mouse. It's fast and, I think, very straight forward. You may not agree. That's not a strength or weakness of either program, just a difference between you and I and our knowledge of each. The problem is when a Finale user tries to make Sibelius act like Finale and it is clumsy or doesn't work. That's not Sibelius' fault. "Easy to learn" and "easy to use" are often mutually contradictory goals in user interface design, and for music entry, Agreed. Sibelius was biased so much towards "easy to learn" that it made using it once you'd learn painful and slow... I understand all of that, but the problem is the claim that the Sibelius UI is intuitive. It isn't -- it's got just as many "secrets" as Finale. They're both slow to learn in the depth needed for quality work. Sibelius will produce passable work sooner than Finale, but really good work takes an intimate knowledge of the program. Sibelius and Finale have a differently shaped learning curve but it's probably about the length. And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): 1. change the page percentage OR 2. change the system percentage The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. Were you trying that in version 1. As I recall, it was harder in that version. Since version 2, the document layout menu has allowed you to adjust the size of the music by inches, mm, or picas. While there is no direct percentage, the effect is the same. This is a classic case of it doesn't work like Finale but it produces the same result with the same effort. At first I really wanted Sibelius to do page layout like Finale. I thought I had more control with Finale. I even contacted Sibelius and told them I thought they should consider using Finale's page layout methods. It took me some time understand how Sibelius' page layout worked but now I like it better. It's far less tedious than Finale's but you've got to know how the program works. As with all software (even very "active" software like Sibelius) you can't let the software think for you; which, I think, is your point about easy to learn is not the same as easy to use. I don't necessarily think Sibelius is better, just better for me most of the time. Finale working methods don't work well with Sibelius. Sibelius methods don't work with Finale. Here's where I will probably say the wrong thing on a Finale list. The competition has been great for both programs. However, I think Finale has benefited more than Sibelius. I think the long discussion of dynamic parts here is an indicator of that. I remember pre-Sibelius Finale. It's MUCH better now. Richard Smith www.rgsmithmusic.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 8 Jul 2005 at 18:16, Ken Durling wrote: > At 12:39 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote: > >And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the > >music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): > > > >1. change the page percentage OR > > > >2. change the system percentage > > > >The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a > >way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone > >else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. > > Objection overruled. Don't blame Sibelius for what you don't know how > to do. This is a very basic setting under Layout > Document Setup> > Staff Size. I don't know Finale well enough to know exactly what is > meant by "page percentage" but I suspect that it's under House Styles> > Engraving Rules> Staves> Justify when % full?I could be wrong. I posted about this later on. The UI for adjusting these things in Sibelius is buried in dialog boxes, whereas the UI in Finale is based on right clicking on things displayed onscreen, or dragging margin lines, or by using one of the standard tools. While the Finale methods have their drawbacks in terms of some loss of precision if you only try to drag things around onscreen (instead of using the tools that allow precise settings), in Sibelius, I could see no way to visually see the settings I was changing, except to visit a dialog box, make the changes and then close the dialog (yes, one of the dialogs had a preview, but it was too small to be entirely eliminate the need to close the dialog to see the results). I also find simple page navigation very frustrating. How do I move right in the page display? [typed later:] Well, I've discovered that there are scrollbars that can be turned on (don't know why they're off!) and that you can click on the navigation palette in a special way to navigate from page to page, but this does not feel at all comfortable to me. I cannot seem to position the view window successfully where I want it. That is, I can't seem to figure out the relationship of the position of the mouse click to where the view window ends up. I mucked around quite a while with a MusicXML imported file and there were a whole host of problems in the conversion (I'm not blaming that on Sibelius), and I had a devil of a time figuring out how to fix them. Here's a couple: 1. the first time I imported, I let Sibelius choose the instruments. It chose orchestral strings instead of the solo sounds. I never was able to figure out how to change the playback to use solo string patches instead of orchestral. 2. the piece being imported had independent key signatures, but only in the final movement. The problem was that the key signature change in the piano part for the second movement was missed (it's only the piano that has independent time sigs). Now, I have no way of telling if this is a MusicXML problem or not (the file won't re-import into Finale, giving me a DTD error), but I don't really care about that. My concern was with how to fix it. And because of Sibelius's page view orientation, it was extremely hard for me to reliably select measures to transpose. 3. the cello part had some sections in treble clef. I didn't expect to get the right performance from a MusicXML import, but in giving a look, I couldn't quite figure out how to get the treble clef passage to play an octave below notated (it didn't come out right with an ETF import, either). 4. playback was very annoying. I wanted the view to be 2-page view, but every time I started playback, it switched back to 100% (or some larger percentage), which made it very, very difficult to follow playback. Ah -- I see there's a setting that was set to always play back at 75%. 5. I tested their version of "Human Playback" and found that the default settings were best (espressivo with basically no rubato). But I don't like certain interpretations of how the shape of lines should be interpreted, specifically, any time a line has a disjunction (say, a leap up an octave) the first note after the leap is accented. That's musically *awful* for just about any style I can think of. 6. I also just tried ETF import, and it's not too bad, actually. But now the tempo is wrong. For some reason the MusicXML import got the right tempo, but ETF doesn't. I can't for the life of me figure out where on the menus to go to change the playback tempo, or the definition of the Allegro Vivace at the beginning (which is stuck at H = 50, instead of H = 78 as in my original). OK, I've figured it out that I can recreate my tempo marking as part of the Text Dictionary, and I did that. But in creating it, I made the mistake of defining it as Q = 78 (instead of half). Now I'm trying to edit it, and there seems to be no way to change from quarter to half as the tempo pulse. OK, so I'll double 78 and use 156. Well, I try selecting 78 and typing over it -- no go. So I try backspacing. It deletes some of it,
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
At 12:39 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote: And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): 1. change the page percentage OR 2. change the system percentage The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. Objection overruled. Don't blame Sibelius for what you don't know how to do. This is a very basic setting under Layout > Document Setup> Staff Size. I don't know Finale well enough to know exactly what is meant by "page percentage" but I suspect that it's under House Styles> Engraving Rules> Staves> Justify when % full?I could be wrong. Ken ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 8 Jul 2005 at 23:23, Will Roberts wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > > And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the > > music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): > > > > 1. change the page percentage OR > > > > 2. change the system percentage > > > > The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a > > way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone > > else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. > > This is done via Layout > Document Setup, I think. Well, I'm sure I looked at that (I couldn't save the file, so it no longer exists), since I definitely went menu hunting to try to figure out where such settings might exist. But I apparently didn't find it. I just tried one of the sample files and see that you change this by choosing a different staff size (based on their raster sizes, I guess). The results are nearly as unacceptable as the original, because it maintains interstaff spacing (up to a certain point, at which it then leaps to a different interstaff spacing, but I don't know exactly what controls that change). It looks like there are more settings in HOUSE STYLES | ENGRAVING RULES that have an impact on this. And, of course, this is what makes me crazy about Sibelius's "intuitive UI" reputation. In Finale, you operate directly on the score to adjust these things, but in Sibelius, you go to a dialog box and make changes to settings there that then change the way things look onscreen. At least in the first dialog (Document Setup) you have a preview to show you the results of your changes, but in the ENGRAVING RULES, you can't see the results onscreen. This is *easier*? I guess it's easier if you don't want to change it. This is what happens to me every time I try the Sibelius demo (and I'm still working with the Sibelius 3 demo) -- I come into it wanting to like it more than Finale, and then I realize why Finale, despite all its flaws, is still better than the alternative! And I still don't see the "intuitive" reputation of Sibelius as being earned. This is *not* about me knowing how to use Finale already -- there's a huge difference between controlling layout with settings in dialog boxes and doing it instead by operating directly on the layout objects onscreen, as in Finale. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
David W. Fenton wrote: And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): 1. change the page percentage OR 2. change the system percentage The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. This is done via Layout > Document Setup, I think. Best, -WR ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
On 7 Jul 2005 at 22:57, Richard Smith wrote: > May I, as a longtime Finale user (begining with v.2) who now uses > mostly Sibelius (although I have Finale 2005), respond to this post. > > The reason you can't get Sibelius to work easily is probably because > you expect it to act like Finale. It is different. For instance, there > is no "speedy entry" (although you can make it work similarly) but > there are a variety of very direct keyboard and midi methods of data > entry that are more effective in Sibelius. > > A good approach for Sibelius is enter the music once, then copy, > paste, and edit. It's very quick and, often, midi is not needed to > work very quickly. Sibelius copies much more easily than Finale. Paste > can be reduced to highlight, point, press the middle mouse button > (sorry mac users). No little truck! I had no real difficulties with note entry. It was the application of articulations/expressions that I found difficult, because of the palette-based approach, which I dislike intensely as a user interface. It's the kind of thing that is easy to figure out, but not easy to use in the long run. "Easy to learn" and "easy to use" are often mutually contradictory goals in user interface design, and for music entry, If found that Sibelius was biased so much towards "easy to learn" that it made using it once you'd learn painful and slow. > When I started on Sibelius (after years on Finale), I felt clumsy. > Now, after 6 years of working with Sibelius, Finale is awkard for me. > They are just different. You may not want to learn Sibelius. That's > OK. But Sibelius will work extremely well if you don't try to make it > act like Finale. I understand all of that, but the problem is the claim that the Sibelius UI is intuitive. It isn't -- it's got just as many "secrets" as Finale. And my main objection was that I could never figure out, once the music was entered, how to (in Finale terms): 1. change the page percentage OR 2. change the system percentage The music was TOO BIG. I wanted it smaller. I couldn't figure out a way to do that. And the result was something I'd never show anyone else, because it looked like a kindergarten exercise. -- David W. Fentonhttp://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associateshttp://www.bway.net/~dfassoc ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
I haven't actually looked at Sibelius in a long time, but in David's case I am actually pretty sure he would find a lot of things to his liking in Sibelius. The basic concept of the application is much more what he has been asking for. Partly because Sibelius is a more modern package. But also considering what David does, I actually wonder whether Sibelius would actually be much more suited to his work than Finale. Johannes shirling & neueweise schrieb: From: "David W. Fenton" For all those who claim the Sibelius UI is so intuitive, I'd like to hear an explanation. Was I unable to find the methods for accomplishing basic things (i.e., bad UI), or is Sibelius simply unable to do the things I was puzzled by (i.e., badly designed application)? it may be you just don't know the programme. i used it recently and found some things frustrating because i hadn't figured out how to do them, but saw a colleague working just as fast on sib as i do on finale, i just hadn't mastered the keyboard shortcuts. not a concrete answer, but there is no reason to judge it so harshly: you (as i am) are a sibelius beginner and experienced finale user. maybe reading a sib manual would help... or at the very least giving it a more than cursory test drive. cheers, jef -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
May I, as a longtime Finale user (begining with v.2) who now uses mostly Sibelius (although I have Finale 2005), respond to this post. The reason you can't get Sibelius to work easily is probably because you expect it to act like Finale. It is different. For instance, there is no "speedy entry" (although you can make it work similarly) but there are a variety of very direct keyboard and midi methods of data entry that are more effective in Sibelius. A good approach for Sibelius is enter the music once, then copy, paste, and edit. It's very quick and, often, midi is not needed to work very quickly. Sibelius copies much more easily than Finale. Paste can be reduced to highlight, point, press the middle mouse button (sorry mac users). No little truck! When I started on Sibelius (after years on Finale), I felt clumsy. Now, after 6 years of working with Sibelius, Finale is awkard for me. They are just different. You may not want to learn Sibelius. That's OK. But Sibelius will work extremely well if you don't try to make it act like Finale. Richard Smith www.rgsmithmusic.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Original Message - From: "shirling & neueweise" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 9:47 PM Subject: [Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts From: "David W. Fenton" For all those who claim the Sibelius UI is so intuitive, I'd like to hear an explanation. Was I unable to find the methods for accomplishing basic things (i.e., bad UI), or is Sibelius simply unable to do the things I was puzzled by (i.e., badly designed application)? it may be you just don't know the programme. i used it recently and found some things frustrating because i hadn't figured out how to do them, but saw a colleague working just as fast on sib as i do on finale, i just hadn't mastered the keyboard shortcuts. not a concrete answer, but there is no reason to judge it so harshly: you (as i am) are a sibelius beginner and experienced finale user. maybe reading a sib manual would help... or at the very least giving it a more than cursory test drive. cheers, jef -- shirling & neueweise \/ new music notation specialists mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :.../ http://newmusicnotation.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Re: Sibelius - Dynamic Parts
From: "David W. Fenton" For all those who claim the Sibelius UI is so intuitive, I'd like to hear an explanation. Was I unable to find the methods for accomplishing basic things (i.e., bad UI), or is Sibelius simply unable to do the things I was puzzled by (i.e., badly designed application)? it may be you just don't know the programme. i used it recently and found some things frustrating because i hadn't figured out how to do them, but saw a colleague working just as fast on sib as i do on finale, i just hadn't mastered the keyboard shortcuts. not a concrete answer, but there is no reason to judge it so harshly: you (as i am) are a sibelius beginner and experienced finale user. maybe reading a sib manual would help... or at the very least giving it a more than cursory test drive. cheers, jef -- shirling & neueweise \/ new music notation specialists mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :.../ http://newmusicnotation.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
