Finale 2003 (Mac)

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best - but not so simple...
Review: Finale and I go back a long, long way. How long? Let's just say that after working with several other music sequencing and notation programs I got the opportunity to try it out at a friend's studio. It was the mid-80's, Reagan was President and I think the version was 2.2 or 2.3. Later on it was the 90's and Finale 2.6.3. Now Coda doesn't go by version numbers anymore but by date; apparently its marketing department's objective is to have users pay the upgrade price every year. Sometimes it's not worth it to upgrade; sometimes it is. Depends on how critical your music work is to your livelihood and, more importantly, how well Finale meshes with your MIDI gear, computer setup and operating system.

Doing most music writing in Finale is simple. There's a setup Wizard which asks about the piece's title, composer, lyricist, page layout, instruments/vocals, etc. Once you get to the blank page itself there's several ways to get the notes onto it. There's Simple Entry (click them in with your mouse, or use Finale's keyboard commands). If you have a musical instrument connected to your computer via a MIDI connection you can use Speedy Entry (hit the note, press a number for the rhythm, the note pops up on the screen). The improvisational and the adventurous can try the Transcription tool; although, like most things in Finale, you have to go through a lot of set-up dialogs to get it to work just right. Same for importing a MIDI file.

Needless to say there's a lot to do with the notes once they have been put in. Lyrics, articulations, dynamics, tempo, and other music expressions can also be easily inserted. There's Mass Mover, which is sort of a "page layout" tool for notes and measures. A Resize Tool if you want a reduced score or extra-large music print. And the Staff Tool has a similar function related to, you guessed it, staff spacing and such. And the Page Layout tool (although you had better check your Mac's "Page Setup" before you try to print, just to make sure it matches your piece's page settings in Finale). In fact, Finale has so many tools that sometimes it's hard to keep them all straight. Unlike other notation programs, you can't just grab a note or a page number or a title onscreen and move it. Noooo-- you HAVE to go to a TOOL first! (Sorry to rant, but this is my main disagreement with Finale's user interface.) As a result, a lot of time in this program is spent switching between tools. And compared to other notation software, which have maybe four or five "palettes" with note/rest values, accidentals, word/lyrics input, etc., laid out on the screen, Finale offers a grand total of 30 different tools! There's even a "Special Tools" tool, for custom note tweaking. And there are also Metatools (Finale-speak for keyboard macros) and various Plug-Ins, to add to the complexity.

Don't get me wrong. I love working with Finale. It suits my notational needs about 99% of the time. And the music looks great streaming out of my laser printer. But sometimes it's a love/hate relationship. Let me explain.

Recently I received an email from a conductor. I had notated a vocal/orchestral score for him some years back, and now he wanted a piano reduction for his choirmaster and accompanist. He though he had done one but couldn't find it anywhere. Where was the score? Not on my Mac G3 (my present computer). Nor on the Mac PPC that I used before that. I finally found it, tucked away on my old Mac SE/30. Finale 2002, bless its digital heart, imported that huge Finale 2.6.3 file intact, with only a few very minor glitches.

Now for the piano reduction. "Aha, there's a Piano Reduction plug-in," I thought, gleefully clicking a couple of measures, only to find that doing that mashed notes and rhythms together into an unrecognizable blob. Good thing I didn't try it on the entire score! After some fumbling around I did find the proper tool (Implode Music) and, yes, I did have to go hunt down its Quantization settings, which I think were buried somewhere in the depths of the Transcription Tool. One does this a LOT in Finale: It seems that, while the simplest music tasks are easy, navigating through multiple menus and endless dialog boxes is necessary to get anything important done. It's like going through your crazy old uncle's dusty, disorganized toolshed to find a Phillips screwdriver.

I don't blame Finale for the lousy plug-in. I do fault it for its lack of a decent user interface. Yes, I know it has been getting better in that department; thanks to the efforts of its programmers Finale is a lot more user-friendly than it used to be. And they have added a PDF manual, online and "Quick" help, which is a bit confusing but a definite step up from the famously unhelpful Index to the earlier versions' three-volume hardcopy manual. But at the same time this accumulation of libraries, plug-ins, video help and other "feature creep" has resulted in this fine notation program morphing into a big, bloated memory hog.

Another issue is the lack of support for Mac OS X. According to their tech department, Finale 2003 will run in OS X - but only in "Classic" mode, which is like OS 9. In fact, the tech sheet recommends booting your computer in OS 9 in order to get optimal MIDI performance. That's a big reason I haven't upgraded to Finale 2003 yet....