Treasures from American Film Archives: 50 Preserved Films (review)

TLDR: In short, although Finale may occasionally be difficult, it is exceptionally powerful, and its continual improvements speak of the ongoing commitment the authors can count on from the publisher.

Abstract: stand, with bad writing and poor organization. Here is one example: “The Automatic Barlines plug-in allows you to used to automatically set up barlines, matching the key changes in your document. In a high variety of music it is conventional to use a double barline when the key changes.” Indexing and organization are by tools and not musical issues. A problem I had recently illustrates this drawback. I wanted to have a first and second ending marked with brackets, but Finale drew the brackets over both systems. Searching the index for information on repeat signs, endings, and brackets yielded no answers. Then I discovered that the ending bracket is defined as a “Staff Attribute,” so information on this can only be found in the section dealing with the Staff Attribute Tool. The manual might benefit from a rewrite by both writers and musicians who know nothing at all about the program. Years ago I gave Finale telephone support a few tries, and was consistently frustrated to discover that they knew less about Finale than I did, and could never help me with the problems I had encountered. Consequently, I gave up completely on telephone support, and have not tried to contact them in more than a decade. I cannot say whether or not they have gotten any better, but they now have online support, including chat rooms. In preparation for this review, I made several unsuccessful attempts to login. I was repeatedly returned to the login page, even after being welcomed by name. I note that there are more than 20,000 postings listed, however, so there must be people who are successfully participating. Finale is now releasing Finale 2001, a demo of which I have examined. There are now sixteen default clefs and an improved Clef Designer. Text Blocks can be accessed in either view (although the Tool itself has not been improved), and some aspects of the page layout discussed above—most especially the relationship between measure groupings and the insertion of new measures, and the problem with selecting optimized staves to be shifted—have been improved. Finale 2001 also boasts the following selected new features: smaller files; web publishing; easier notation software; unlimited free support; forty plug-ins; and the free inclusion of Midiscan, making possible the scanning and importing of printed music into Finale. (Finale also claims to be compatible with Musitek’s Smartscore.) In short, although Finale may occasionally be difficult, it is exceptionally powerful, and its continual improvements speak of the ongoing commitment we can count on from the publisher.