Though I'm not sure where I stand at the moment in the Finale vs Sibelius war, I do know that I know a whole lot more about Finale than I probably should. Therefore, I invite you to post questions about how to use Finale here on this thread, and I, and I'm sure any of the helpful people around that might know the answer, will get to them for you.

Ask away!

If you want the best printed output you have to use Lilypond. It doesn't have an editor; it's just a typesetter, but you can export to MusicXML from Finale or Sibelius, convert the file to a lilypond input file, and run lilypond on it (although this doesn't take advantage of all the features of lilypond).

I tried both, and I settled on Finale. I've done some reading, and most professional copyists use Finale, because in the final analysis (especially with really modern and graphic scores) there isn't anything you can't do with Finale if you're willing to work with it, and Sibelius, for all it's slick interface, is limited. As for the look of Finale scores, I've never had any complaints...and the endorsement of professional copyists holds a lot of weight with me.

I wouldn't switch to Sibelius at this point even if it really were better. I have too much money and time invested in Finale. I've bought every decent upgrade they've put out in the last 6 years. When I found out that the 2006 upgrade was going to have Garritan Personal Orchestra technology and a studio mixer built in, I had to change my underwear! Also, they're increasing MIDI channels from 16 to 128! From now on, NO orchestral will be too big for Finale's playback to handle.

Nope, I'll be stickin' with Finale.

Oooh...dirty pool.

The upgrade is listed at $99, which is a steal...but in order to get the Garritan Orchestra, you have to pay another $189. I might have to rethink purchasing this upgrade right now.

Any of you have experience with Garritan? Is this a good deal? I'd heard that the stand-alone Garritan Personal Orchestra is something like $400 or $500. True?

How can you increase the MIDI channels without changing the hardware? (it's been a while since I "delved" into MIDI itself, so this may be a silly question)

I don't know enough about it to answer intelligently. All I know is what I read on finalemusic.com.

Oh dear. Sibelius has come out with a version 4. I'm still on version 2! 4 looks to have more bells and whistles than ever, in that complicated, Finale sort of way.

But get this feature. The score file contains all the parts too, so if you change a note in the score, the part gets automatically updated. This is nice, I'm glad they finally put in what Mark of the Unicorn's Mosaic (no longer updated) had in 1998 or thereabouts. Also, I'm appreciative of the plugin that creates a "handbells used" chart - it might come in handy for my bottles.

Interesting. Finale is doing a "handbells used" chart in its new upgrade.

I wonder how long it will be before these two companies stop trying to one-up each other and just merge, the way the rest of the corporate world is doing.

I've only recently started using Sibelius for a couple of things, and found a couple of them infuriating - spacing issues - so that a bar line is over there, when it should be over here, leaving a massive gap which looks very stupid...

I'd take a guess at the midi channels being upgraded to 128 either meaning: it can support 128 midi channels. If you soundcard can do it, Finale can do, when before it couldn't.

OR

It's doing some funky clever stuff which basically cheats it. Theoretically not TOO difficult to program, I suppose...

OR

It's not REALLY using midi internally, and if you give it a 128 channel midi file, it will be cool with it and play it totally 'software' and correctly. That is to say, if you hooked it up to an external midi synth (hardware) with only 16 channels, you'll still be limited to 16.

Or something else I haven't thought of.

I do tend to get wierd bar issues with Sibelius...especially when extracting and perfecting parts from an ensemble. Occasionally a bar flies off to one end, totally ruining the page! But, I just copy the actual music, delete the bar and add a new one that isn't all screwy.

Sibelius 4?!?!?! I have to check this out! 3 just came out!!! Argh...

I got one:

I never figured it out - how can i make strings sound pizzicato without creating another staff and setting it to Pizzicato Strings?

Answers VERY appreciated

What version of Finale are you using? I can answer - that problem was a thorn in my side - but my answer will vary depending on what version of Finale you use.

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 17 2005, 12:01 AM

What version of Finale are you using?

Easily done.

1. Click on Expression Tool

2. Double-Click the staff and measure where the pizzicato will occur

3. Select "Create" in the dialogue box

4. The next dialogue box has several tabs. In the "Text" tab, click in the large text box, then pull down the "Text" pop-up menu from the very top.

5. Select "Font"

6. In the font dialogue, select Times New Roman, Italic, and Size 12 - click OK

7. In the large text box, type pizz.

8. In the description field, add a description if you want

9. Click on the "Playback" tab

10. In the "playback" dialogue box, pull down the "Type" menu and select "Patch"

11. Leave the first two fields alone for now. Look at the "Effect" options. Make sure the option "Set Value To" is selected, and in the "Program Change" box, type in 46. Above, in the GM box, "Pizzicato Strings" will appear

12. Click OK

13. Back in the Expression dialogue box, the "pizz." expression you just created will be highlighted. Click "Select"

14. Choose which staves will be affected, where to begin playback, and whether to allow individual positioning (usually a good idea), and click OK. In the score, a pizz. marking will appear where you specified, and it will play back correctly.

When you want to go back to bowed strings, you'll need to create an arco marking, using the same steps as above, except in step 11 you'll use patch 49 in the Program Change box.

Hope that works for you. As involved as that sounds, it's actually a lot easier than it used to be in earlier versions of Finale.

ALSO - and this is important - make sure you have each of your string parts on a different channel, or the pizzicato marking will apply to all the strings whether you want it to or not. If you need a hand with that, let me know.

Thanks Lee, you saved my miserable existence!

;) :) :) :) :D :D :D

Don't mention it! ;)

Don't know if this counts as Finale, but I'm using Finale Notepad and wondering how to turn it into a MP3. Do I have to buy the full Finale?

Don't know if this counts as Finale, but I'm using Finale Notepad and wondering how to turn it into a MP3. Do I have to buy the full Finale?

You are going to have to "trade up" to the full Finale in order to get any of those bells and whistles. With Notepad 2005 you can't even save as a MIDI, but with Finale 2005 you can not only do that, but you can use the Save Special function to save as an MP3 or WAV file, and it records the piece with all the "Human Playback" functions, which are pretty darn cool.

Ah... thanks. Well I suppose that settles the Finale\Sibelius question for me, as well as the MIDI question.

((So that's what Notepad is for... to suck you in.))

((So that's what Notepad is for... to suck you in.))

Come to the Dark Side, Anakin! Mwahahahahahaaaa!

Originally posted by J. Lee Graham@Jul 18 2005, 12:08 AM

Come to the Dark Side, Anakin!

So Finale is the dark side now?  :happy: Sad to report that it's working...

Well, to hear Sibelius people talk, it is! You're not going to do any better with a trial version of Sibelius without trading up on that too, and I remember Finale being cheaper. Face it, to get what you want, you're going to spend a fortune either way, so you may as well do your homework on both softwares, figure out what's important to you, and make a decision.

But if you're already used to Notepad, and it works for you, then Finale is going to be your best investment.

I have a question about Finale.

How do you add/remove instruments to your score, and make it resize the score to fit the page at the same time?

When I removed some instruments I wasn't using, it didn't resize anything, so I had a bunch of unused space on each page. I tried to manually resize the staves, but then the positioning of my notes, rests, and markings got out of whack (and Finale couldn't automatically adjust them.) So I was wondering if anyone knew how to deal with this and still have your score look nice.

Have you tried using the Resize Tool? You can resize the music on a single page or for the entire piece.

1. Pull down the "View" menu from the top toolbar and select "Page View."

2. Click on the Resize Tool (the button on the Main Tool Palette looks like a % sign)

3. Click on any blank area of the page, either bottom or top; the Resize Page dialogue appears.

4. Enter a percentage in the "Resize Page To" field. If you want the music larger, choose a larger percentage than what's already there (that Finale has chosen for you), or if you want it smaller, a smaller percentage. You'll probably need to experiment a little, but don't get discouraged or impatient.

5. Choose the Page Range (1 through end of piece if you want all the pages uniform), and make sure "Hold Margins" and "Update Page Format" boxes are checked.

6. Click OK

If you don't like what you see, pull down the "Edit" menu, click "Undo Page % Change," and try again. Or just go back into the Resize Tool and try a different percentage.

Does that answer your question?

This has almost always fixed for me any such problems as you're describing. There are also things you can do about spacing multiple staff systems on a page. Let us know if I misunderstood what you needed (if I can't help, maybe someone else can), or if you need help spacing or moving staff systems.

So... get Finale???

I keep switchin' back and forth as people compliment Sibelius and Finale and Sibelius ad infinitum.

I've been trying out demos of all sorts of programs for a while... from NoteWorthy, to PrintMusic, to Melody Assistant. Most recently, I tried a Finale 2005 demo. It seemed very good, and I didn't really find it all that complicated (but I didn't do that many complicated things). I could find my way around it pretty well after just a little while. However, it was just a demo... and so you couldn't even save (you could print one page with a huge FINALE 2005 DEMO printed across it, lol). So, I lost forever a lot of nice simple melodies there, I think.

Anyways, I tried to get a Sibelius download but it didn't work and then the second one I got was a Stuff-It file or something which opened into an unknown file... So, where can you get a demo (or, perhaps, a "demo"... *cough*pirated copy*cough*) of Sibelius??

Right now I'm using NoteEdit which is a free program from Ubunto (Linux).

So, I'm thinkin' probably Finale 2005, then, maybe... ...