 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-07-08 22:56
I was wondering if anyone has any experience with Coda Music's PrintMusic or Allegro notation programs. I'll try to explain my situation briefly, and hopefully someone in a similar boat will have some advice. I have a Apple computer running OS X and I currently use Finale 2000 (which is for OS 9). When running in classic mode, the playback doesn't work, and the other alternative (rebooting in OS 9 each time I want to write music) is annoying and wastes time, so I'm looking to upgrade to a notation program that is OS X native.... I refuse to pay 400 dollars for finale 2004 (I think since I'm a teacher/student, it may be only 249, but that's still a lot). I'm happy with Finale 2000 (except for the reboot issues), but I think there are a lot of features that I could do without. I've also heard great things about Sibelius, but it's just as expensive as Finale (at least it was on www.wwbw.com), so....
Has anyone used PrintMusic or Allegro by Coda Music on a mac running OS X, and if so, what are the disadvantages compared to Finale. The demo for Allegro music which I downloaded from www.codamusic.com is for OS 9 and there was no demo for PrintMusic, so I can't really try them out. Any advice?
Thanks
Don Hite
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
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Author: diz
Date: 2004-07-08 23:18
Don
Don't feel you're alone here ... welcome to my world, too. I switched to Sibelius after much tooing and froing with Finale ... I'm a happy convert. Finale "power users" (spare me) will argue the case for sticking with Finale ... but for my needs Sibelius' interface and easy of use beat Finale hands down ... I also use an Apple (iBook).
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Author: Contra
Date: 2004-07-08 23:21
I can't be of any help with the mac part since I run windows, but I have used both Sibelius and Finale. Both have good qualities and bad qualities, but I rank Sibelius as having a few more good ones.
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Author: Ed
Date: 2004-07-09 02:36
I find Finale very easy to use. I think the "Sibelius is easier" stuff is just marketing from their folk.
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Author: diz
Date: 2004-07-09 02:41
Don ... good luck with your endeavours, by the way
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
Post Edited (2004-07-09 02:44)
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-07-09 02:56
I went back to www.codamusic.com... before it wouldn't show me the option of upgrading finale because I hadn't registered my version.... I did that and the 159 upgrade option showed up... This seems like a pretty good deal. however, as I said, I don't necessarily need all the features of finale and Print Music is only 60ish... Who knows... I don't know any midi type stuff or keyboard input... I just write small chamber pieces, so I don't really need unlimited staves or anything. I also don't scan in music or anything like that.. I used to use a CHEAPO program called MusikTime. It was like $19 (of course, this was 10 years ago). It worked fine, the only problem was that the layout stuff was a mess and it took a lot of effort to make a score look presentable... I don't need anything extraordinary.. then again, why not wait spend a little extra and get the really good Finale 2004... Then again, why upgrade now if I don't need it yet... If I wait a few years I could (presumably) upgrade to Finale 2006 or 2007 (assuming they have the same offer) and just scoot by with a cheaper version for the time being... Life is full of tough decisions! (haha - if this is the hardest decision I ever have to make, my life will be pretty easy!).
Thanks for all the suggestion. I downloaded the demo of Sibelius (I've never had problems with Finale being "confusing", but I figure it's always good to try something new). My only fear is having to relearn a program when I spent so long learning finale... Sibelius should offer a discounted price to people switching from Finale, that would definitely help out.
DH
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2004-07-09 03:21
Finale comes out with a new version every year now.
To me, it doesn't matter if you need ALL of the features, but just one or two can make all the difference. I used to use PrintMusic 2002, then upgraded to Finale 2004. It was a noticeable difference, though that's probably also because they cleaned up a lot of things in all the '04 versions.
theclarinetist, Sibelius DOES offer a discounted price to people switching from Finale, for $200
I'm thinking of picking up a copy of Sibelius at that price to do some significant comparisons and see if it handles any of my Finale-irritations with more elegance.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: GBK
Date: 2004-07-09 03:24
For those that do not know, Diz writes and edits a good deal of music.
For his needs, he finds Sibelius the better choice.
The experience of others may be different.
Rather than general debating, perhaps a discussion of strengths and weaknesses of each would be helpful to those with less experience...GBK
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Author: CPW
Date: 2004-07-09 17:33
Does Finale have a user support hotline?
Tech. support number
Perhaps they could email you (with attachment) a file that would take care of the OS X portion of the upgrade for less than the whole upgrade.
Worst they could say is no.
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2004-07-09 20:20
I messed around with the Sibelius demo today... From what little experience I got with it, it seems to be far superior from a layout standpoint than finale. I've always had a bit of trouble getting finale to do what i want as far as setting systems per page, measures per system... Sibelius seems a lot easier to make it look good... however, I spent about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to input a slur (the "online help center" was virtually useless...)
Oh well! I'll keep trying and see if it grows on me.
Don
theclarinetisT@yahoo.com
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