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Davidmorehead
Registered Member
      
Date Joined May 2000
Total Posts : 1927
| Posted 10/25/2009 11:40 AM (GMT -6) |   | |
I am using 2010 and enjoying all the new features that have been added since 2006. Some of them are huge time savers for me.
These are some things I would still like to see added to Finale.
Control-click-drag to copy any item using the selection tool (expressions, staves, articulations, etc...) Wanna make a copy of a stave, push control, click on the stave's handle, drag to make a new copy. Wanna copy a chord, push control, click on the chord and drag a copy to a new note.
An editable tempo graph for the tempo tap feature. (Like most sequencers have)
Let the user leave the chord window open so you don't have to memorize chord suffix numbers.
Have the explode feature default to the staff you have selected just before you explode.
Have an option for swing 16ths. Currently, I am writing in 8/8 and showing a 4/4 time signature. It works, but why not make such a common thing easier?
Backwards compatibility-this is the main reason I am hesitant to use newer versions.
Ability to save and name filter settings when using the selection tool/mass edit
Have Finale be smart enough to play your first measure correctly when using grace notes and the first notes of the piece. Currently, I have to add a blank measure before the first measure if I want playback to be correct.
Add the Tgtools (pro) feature modify/transfer settings included with the program. It is a huge time saver to be able to copy the format of one part and apply it to another similar part. You shouldn't have to pay $100 extra bucks to get this feature.
That's all I can think of for now.
One more...When using the selection tool, Finale should show how many measures you have selected.
David Morehead
Finale 2006, 2008 & 2009 on a Sony Vaio Laptop
Facebook.comPost Edited (Davidmorehead) : 10/25/2009 10:08:58 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Philip.
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 689
| Posted 10/25/2009 12:33 PM (GMT -6) | | | These are all good suggestions. As always, be sure submit a feature request directly to MM through the tech support page. | | Back to Top | |
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warrenbarnett
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2003
Total Posts : 73
| Posted 10/25/2009 12:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Amazing how everyone wants backwards compatability. There are not too many programs of any kind that are completely backwards compatable out there. (Programs like Microsoft Office don't completely reinvent the wheel everytime, they just figure out different ways to do the same old thing, although occasionally the format does change and you have to get special new file openers for your old program versions.) I think that if anyone understood how a note or a bar is formulated in an .mus file they might understand a bit better. Every time that Finale upgrades, there are probably 100 things new to each note that must be saved, 5,000 things new to every bar/staff that must be saved, etc., etc., etc. To make something backwards compatable, people would lose so many things that they created in the newer version, and they would complain that they lost such and such and therefore Finale backwards compatability sucks. Much better that saving as an XML is possible, and the you can open the XML in an old version. Perhaps the change that COULD be made however, is to have the XML content always be saved as part of the .mus format, and then when older versions try to open an .mus when realizing it is from an older version, it opens the XML portion insted, thus solving the issue.
My requests for 2011 are:
Make sure everything with regard to VDL percussion works properly before releasing the newest version. It is something that always seems to get overlooked.
Please, please, please make it possible to name staff sets, such as Woodwinds, Brass, Strings, Percussion, etc. Seems like a simple thing, instead of always trying to remember what group of staves was in Staff Set 3.
Short and sweet
Warren Barnett
Finale 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
Garritan Personal Orchestra
Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.0,
Jazz & Big Band
Concert & Marching Band
Tapspace Virtual Drumline 2.51 | | Back to Top | |
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Wlgold
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2004
Total Posts : 615
| Posted 10/25/2009 3:21 PM (GMT -6) | | A couple of very modest requests for 2011:
1. The "Too Many Beats" dialog box is aggrevating. It doesn't give you an audio alert. Typically, I'm using the MIDI with my right hand, the qwerty with my left, and my eyes are either on the written score or the qwerty when I have to put in ties, etc. Very often I have gone 10 measures without realizing that the dialog box popped up and nothing is getting entered. Once I see it, there are 4 possible choices (only selectable by mouse - the up down arrows have no effect on the radio boxes.) The one I am most likely to want isn't part of the list. I'm almost always going to correct the mistake in the measure, but that option isn't there; the closest is "Leave the measure alone" which puts the cursor in the next measure, and then you have to go back. I would like to see something like the -ESC- key get rid of the box and leave the cursor where it is.
2. When you are working on a measure using the Selection Tool and then switch to Speedy Entry, it would be awfully nice if the cursor showed up in the same measure, instead of moving to the one on the far left of the screen.
I apologize if these are changed in F2010. It's still sitting on the bookshelf.
Finale 2008a, XP Pro SP3, 1GB, full GPO, JABB
AMD Athlon 1.15 GHz | | Back to Top | |
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gogreen
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1999
Total Posts : 320
| Posted 10/25/2009 4:52 PM (GMT -6) | | I'd like to see a feature that aligns expressions, just like the horizontal and vertical alignment of hairpins--unless this is already a feature in 2008, 2009 or 2010.
Arthur J. Michaels
Finale 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007c.r2 (using 2007c.r2)
P4, 3.00 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, SB Audigy 2, Windows XP SP3, Garritan CoMB
www.myspace.com/arthurjmichaels | | Back to Top | |
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Gareth Green
Player of fine trumpets
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1274
| Posted 10/25/2009 5:28 PM (GMT -6) | |
Ron. said...What I would like to see is a simple utility, so that you can load a percussion library onto a channel associated with a staff, then tell Finale which instrument from that library you want on each staff position. Period. End of story. That way no one has to mess with midi numbers and percussion maps. Just: this is the library, use these sounds here.
What???  They're are some of one us who have spent years figuring out how to use percussions maps! Why on earth would we want the process de-mystrified? For God's sake NO !!! ... Keep Percussion Maps as mysterious as ever ... Hold on ... NO !! ... take that retraining belt off me ... You Bas... ... ...
Gareth J. Green
Fin2010
Core2Duo E8400@3.00GHz; Vista 64-bit; 8Gb RAM; SB X-Fi Extreme Audio, ATI Radeon HD 4650.
Stolichnaya Blue
"Trumpet players have no use for musicianship; it's too much like having a conscience"
"Never take life seriously; no-one gets out alive anyway." | | Back to Top | |
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saxsolos
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2009
Total Posts : 16
| Posted 10/25/2009 9:52 PM (GMT -6) | | | I would be happy if they would save my default template files instead of overwriting them and making me start over with each update. | | Back to Top | |
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Jim Coull
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 1999
Total Posts : 2627
| Posted 10/25/2009 10:24 PM (GMT -6) | | Ok, so I have been complaining about 2010s percussion maps also, but could someone (Ron, Gareth, Peter) tell me what was so hard, complex and mysterious about pre-2010 percussion maps? I am certainly no computer geek, whiz kid (I'm too old for that) and I was able to figure them out fairly quickly.
Jim Coull | | Back to Top | |
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Motet
ø¤º°”°º¤ø
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 2658
| Posted 10/26/2009 1:06 AM (GMT -6) | |
warrenbarnett said...Hi Motet. What do you mean by "Un-deprecate Speedy Entry"?
MM is pushing Simple Entry over Speedy--what little improvements there have been to music entry in the past few years have all been to Simple; I don't think Speedy has changed at all in many a moon, despite bugs being reported. A couple of years ago someone had to ask here what the mapping of QWERTY keys to pitches was--it had been removed from the manual and I had to dig the picture out out of my 2005 manual. This may have been an oversight, though--perhaps someone can confirm if it's back now.
So I would like to see Speedy fully-supported again: bugs fixed, improvements made.
Finale 2005b Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 3 Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.80 GHz, 4 GB of RAM Post Edited (Motet) : 10/26/2009 1:30:55 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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mikepilkington
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 132
| Posted 10/26/2009 5:24 AM (GMT -6) | |
Fritz Meissner said...No guessing by Finale needed - if you put in an Eb, then it should show the flat. Finale may know that it is two separate layers, but that is irrelevant to anyone reading the music on paper who will just follow the normal rules of musical notation. Fritz
The flat to the E is in the key signature, therefore according to the normal rules of musical notation it will be played as a flat, since it is not in the same part as the earlier E natural, and will not have to be shown. Adding the flat is a cautionary procedure, and is easily done by using the asterisk key in the numbers block, which forces accidentals to be shown. If Finale did this automatically you would have to alter it if you did want an E natural for this second note, which might well be the case. Cautionary accidentals can be useful, if not overdone, and are easy to apply.
Michael | | Back to Top | |
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PeterQD
Win Fin v2 - 2009
Date Joined Jan 2007
Total Posts : 456
| Posted 10/26/2009 7:12 AM (GMT -6) | | mikepilkington said...
The flat to the E is in the key signature, therefore according to the normal rules of musical notation it will be played as a flat, since it is not in the same part as the earlier E natural, and will not have to be shown.
Mike, I'm sorry if I didn't explain properly, but this statement tells me you haven't grasped what I meant. Please consider the two bars in this image:
In measure 1 all the notes are in layer 1, the lower line was entered using Voice 2. Finale automatically added the flat to the 2nd E to cancel the natural on the first E, which is what I intended. However, in measure 2 the lower line has been entered in layer 2 and now Finale neglects to add the flat. A piano player will read the 2nd E as a natural because it hasn't been cancelled, but this wasn't what I intended.
This is the inconsistency that I would like to be corrected. Adding accidentals manually is not a problem, but having Finale work differently depending on the number of layers is too error-prone.
18 years and still learning...
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Saffron
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 2469
| Posted 10/26/2009 7:45 AM (GMT -6) | |
PeterQD said...
mikepilkington said...
The flat to the E is in the key signature, therefore according to the normal rules of musical notation it will be played as a flat, since it is not in the same part as the earlier E natural, and will not have to be shown. Mike, I'm sorry if I didn't explain properly, but this statement tells me you haven't grasped what I meant. Please consider the two bars in this image: In measure 1 all the notes are in layer 1, the lower line was entered using Voice 2. Finale automatically added the flat to the 2nd E to cancel the natural on the first E, which is what I intended. However, in measure 2 the lower line has been entered in layer 2 and now Finale neglects to add the flat. A piano player will read the 2nd E as a natural because it hasn't been cancelled, but this wasn't what I intended. This is the inconsistency that I would like to be corrected. Adding accidentals manually is not a problem, but having Finale work differently depending on the number of layers is too error-prone.
Peter is absolutely, 100% correct about this; it's a long term bug (or design deficiency) that Finale cannot represent the normal rules of music with respect to accidentals on multiple "layers".
It's resulted in more errors making their way through to print in my music, than any other problem, because Finale plays "Eb" in this example, while showing what any trained pianist would read (and play) as E natural.
It's high time this was addressed.
Brian
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