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Knut
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2006
Total Posts : 601

Posted 11/5/2013 3:46 PM (GMT -6)

MM has published a couple of videos under the Finale vs. Sibelius banner on their website. In one of them two graphic notation examples are shown with the narration: 'Only Finale let's you create any music you can immagine'. One of the pieces shown is a circle score, AFAIK impossible to complete within Finale itself. The other one is an advanced score, probably possible to do in theory within the shape designer, but given how difficult the shape designer is to work with, it would be extremely tedious. Anyone dealing with this kind of notation would almost certainly use a program like Adobe Illustrator to do the graphical aspects.

Unless I've completely overlooked some kind of new Feature in Finale 2012 or 2014, I find it quite deceptive to market Finale in this way to Sibelius users.
What do you think? Here's a link: bcove.me/j2mto3cu

Knut

15" MacBook Pro 2.6 Ghz. Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, Apogee Duet2, Samsung SyncMaster 245b
OSX 10.6.4, Finale 2011c w/GPO & JABB, Patterson Plug-Ins, TG-Tools and QuickKeys 4; Sibelius 6, Logic Studio 8, Adobe CS3, FontLab Studio 5.1, FontExplorer X Pro

Kelby
MakeMusic, Inc. Employee

Date Joined Jan 2008
Total Posts : 69

Posted 11/5/2013 5:06 PM (GMT -6)

You have seen this?

http://www.finalemusic.com/blog/finale-outside-of-the-box/

-K

Kelby Stine

Repertoire Development Music Engraver and Editor
MakeMusic, Inc.

Jari Williamsson
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 3246

Posted 11/5/2013 5:08 PM (GMT -6)

First of all, this is just marketing, nothing else. I personally don't like the X vs. Y approach at all, and it can backfire. But OTOH, the "other product" in this case built all it's initial user base on marketing that was based on nothing else but anti-Finale comments from users.

Regarding the circular score, it was added as an example score in Finale 2012. There's a MM blog post somewhere about how it was done.

I personally like the Halloween pumpkin that MM posted some weeks ago better, that one was really great IMO. That document inspired me to create the script demoed in the following video (the "animation" of the staff lines at the left is made by random-created shapes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmLNyzgLoVQ&hd=1

I also tested to do a script that automatically made a circular score a couple of weeks ago (such as select a few measures of music as a selection and automatically create a shape for it). I came as far as creating the staff, barlines and almost got the noteheads right, but then decided to not spend unnecessary time on it. Technically, it's quite doable to create such a tool in Finale.

It's much better for me to spend the time on shapes that I would actually use, such as in the attached picture. Just because the Shape Designer UI is useless, I don't think the shape support is useless.

Jari Williamsson

Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM

www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site

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Michael Mortilla
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 2378

Posted 11/5/2013 5:51 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks Jari. I was looking for this a few times today and couldn't find it. I went to the blog and entered "circular" in the search window and found it in a snap! :)

www.finalemusic.com/blog/finale-outside-of-the-box/

You guys can d/l the score and see that it IS possible to do this all in Finale. Even play it back!

Os X 10.8.4 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2012; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Knut
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2006
Total Posts : 601

Posted 11/5/2013 5:51 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks for the link, Kelby. Actually that was the only way I could imagine how to do it, but I could never imagine anyone going through the hassle of creating and placing all those custom lines in addition to creating the circular staff in the dreaded shape designer. Clearly I was wrong.

Thanks for your thoughts and insight, Jari!

Of course this is just marketing, and I'm not saying Sibelius has gone about their business differently. And since both examples are possible to do in Finale (with a lot of work) after all, I guess I will have to revise my statement about it being deceptive. However, as I see it, this isn't really a good representation of the shape designers capabilities. Creating a circular score in Finale employs a series of work arounds more than anything else, and thus maybe isn't what MM should focus on in a promo video, at least not until they've made serious improvements to the shape designer. But this is of course just my subjective opinion. After all, I stand corrected. Both examples are possible. I agree that the problem has more to do with the shape designer UI than the shape support, but when it comes down to actually spending time making more than minor graphic notation elements within Finale vs. doing them in Illustrator or a similar program, I would never dram of doing them within the former.

Your graphic actually represents something I've done manually myself a couple of times. I would love to see you release a plug in for this (if you haven't already).

Knut

15" MacBook Pro 2.6 Ghz. Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, Apogee Duet2, Samsung SyncMaster 245b
OSX 10.6.4, Finale 2011c and 2014 w/GPO & JABB, Patterson Plug-Ins, TG-Tools and QuickKeys 4; Sibelius 6, Logic Studio 8, Adobe CS3, FontLab Studio 5.1, FontExplorer X Pro

Michael Mortilla
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 2378

Posted 11/5/2013 5:54 PM (GMT -6)

Oooops! I missed Kelby's post. Would have saved me a few minutes... LOL! Yes, thank you, Kelby.

Os X 10.8.4 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2012; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Philip.
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 1466

Posted 11/5/2013 6:01 PM (GMT -6)

I did a blog post about this a few months ago...

www.sibeliusblog.com/opinion/finale-sibelius-and-knockouts/

... in which I offered a few genuine reasons to use Finale over Sibelius:

- Managed (linked) parts with voicing support
- Custom page ranges for page-attached text-items
- Flexible brace, bracket, and sub-bracket groupings, including nested groups
- Custom smart lines that allow text (not just symbols) for the continuation and right end of a line
- Glissando lines and other “smart shapes” that automatically snap to notes, including across multiple staves

Finale 2008b, 2009b, 2010b, 2011c, 2012c
Sibelius 5.2.5, 6.2, 7.1.3
Logic Pro 9
Mac 10.6.8
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
14 GB RAM
www.nycmusicservices.com/

Vaughan
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 1999
Total Posts : 4984

Posted 11/5/2013 7:55 PM (GMT -6)

But your conclusion in your blog at the end of your description of Finale 2014 was also quite apt:

'Whether by coincidence or not, most of Finale’s new features are designed to offer functionality that largely compares with what has been possible in Sibelius for quite some time. That these features are now the chief selling points of Finale lends itself to various conclusions — one of which is a recognition of the incredible talent that Avid lost when they downsized and eventually fired its London-based developers last year. One cannot help but recognize the foresight and skill that the former Sibelius development team had in conceiving workflows and features advanced enough that it took its main competitor more than two years to match them.'

And there is still no comparable Finale functionality to match Magnetic Layout, although I'll be fascinated to see how Jari's plugins handle this (in a completely different way).

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2012c, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.8
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Michael Mortilla
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 2378

Posted 11/5/2013 8:01 PM (GMT -6)

Well you can look at "features" and you can look at "function" and when it comes to ease of music entry, for me Finale has S. beat hands down. Don't forget that S. added a "Finale mode" so users could enter notes more easily. WHAT?!

Yeah, Finale mode. So what's that tell you?

I tried S. for a year and was lucky to have been able to sell it. Personally, i HATE it. It doesn't think like I do. Finale really does.

Features alone simply don't tell the whole story.

Os X 10.8.4 Mac Pro 8 core; 20GB RAM.

Finale 2012; Digital Performer 8 [64 bit];

MIDI Life Crisis

Vaughan
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 1999
Total Posts : 4984

Posted 11/5/2013 8:12 PM (GMT -6)

True, and I still prefer F over S, but you have to admit that something like ML is both a feature and a function which can save a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Vaughan

Finale 3.2 - 2014, Sibelius 4 - 7
Tobias Giesen's plugins, full version, Robert Patterson plugins, Dolet 6 plugin
MacOS 10.9
MacPro 6GB, MacBookPro (2011) 8GB
Kontakt 4.2

Amsterdam

Per Ottar Gjerstad
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2000
Total Posts : 132

Posted 11/6/2013 2:22 AM (GMT -6)

And we must not forget this little gem:

http://finaletips.nu/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&id=4:fun-stuff&Itemid=2

Per Ottar Gjerstad
Mac Book Pro 15"

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