Klarinet Archive - Posting 000640.txt from 1997/03

From: Virginia Scarfino <scarfinv@-----.NET>
Subj: Music Time Deluxe
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:30:00 -0500

I just thought I'd share my experience in purchasing some music notation
software.

I recently purchased a spiffy new computer that is fast, has lots of RAM,
and lots of hard-drive space. It replaced an old 386 machine. So, I was
finally able to start thinking about purchasing some music notation
software.

>From previous posts to the klarinet list, it sounded like Finale and Encore
were the two programs that were most highly praised. I went surfing one
night, and through simple web searches I found the sight for CODA products
that had a downloadable demo of Finale, and PASSPORT products that had a
downloadable demo of Encore.

I downloaded Finale first, and boy did I have a lot of problems with it -
I'm sure its a great program if you have the manuals to help you figure out
how to use it, but without that it was quite difficult to assess the
package fairly.

Next, I downloaded Encore, and it completely blew me away! It was
extremely intuitive, and the download itself came with oodles of examples
showing exactly what it could do. I had a piece of music entered into the
demo version in no time!

Given that I wanted a program mainly for arranging music for small chamber
ensembles, and for transposing, I figured I'd rather have the more
intuitive package, even if there were more subtle things that perhaps
Encore couldn't do that Finale could.

So, the following day, I got on the phone to a local music store that sold
music notation software. I found out that this particular store didn't
sell Finale (because "you have to be a Systems Engineer to figure out how
to use it" according to the sales rep), but it did sell Encore - for about
$800 CDN. Ouch! But the sales rep then informed me that there are other
packages available, and he suggested Music Time Deluxe at $139 CDN. He
told me that it was also made by PASSPORT products, but that it only
handled up to 16 staves, instead of the 64 that Encore supports (and also
didn't support guitar tablature whereas Encore did). Furthermore, if I
bought Music Time Deluxe, and then decided I'd rather have Encore, I could
apparently upgrade for about $300 CDN and I'd still be further ahead than
purchasing Encore outright.

I thanked the sales rep very much, got back on the web, went back to the
Encore sight, and downloaded Music Time Deluxe. Except for one tool bar, I
couldn't tell the difference between the two! I went ahead and purchased
Music Time Deluxe, and have been happy as a lark ever since!

For those of you that would like to download some of these demo programs
(and there are other ones as well), here are the sites:

http://www.codamusic.com/Finalepage.html
http://vortex.netbistro.com/georgemusic/passport.html

Also, I would like to make a suggestion for people with Music Notation
Software that are making files available on SNEEZY. It would be really
nice if along with the files specific to the software being used, if midi
(.MID) files could also be provided. This might make it easier for people
with different software to take advantage of the music files being
provided!

Ginny Scarfino
scarfinv@-----.net
Waterloo, ON
Canada