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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Windows - FORUM HAS MOVED! > A message from MakeMusic's new CEO | Forum Quick Jump
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Erin Vork
Notation and Garritan Product Specialist
      
Date Joined Nov 2011
Total Posts : 185
| Posted 12/3/2014 10:38 AM (GMT -6) |   | Posting this on behalf of Gear Fisher, MakeMusic's new CEO:
Greetings everyone! I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Gear Fisher, and I’m the new CEO of MakeMusic. I thought I’d take a moment to update you on some of what has taken place since I became involved with the company a few months ago. These are exciting times and a lot has been happening behind the scenes.
First of all, as you may have heard, the company is currently in the process of moving to Boulder, Colorado. We have completely remodeled a new office space and we’ll be starting the move-in during the first week of December. about 30 people from the existing Minnesota-based team will be making the move to Boulder, helping to ensure that we maintain continuity and consistency for all of our customers going forward. I’m incredibly appreciative to them for their commitment and dedication to seeing the future of MakeMusic continue to thrive. We’ll also be hiring for dozens of new positions from product development to marketing, support and beyond. If you are interested in being part of a great new team, keep an eye on our careers page. It’s no understatement to say that we are completely re-imagining the company, and the future holds tremendous opportunity.
This is also a perfect time for me to introduce the new MakeMusic leadership team:- Adam Wig, Manager, Customer Success Team
- Sonia Bertek, Director of Marketing
- Michael Johnson, Director of Engineering
- Mark Adler, Notation Product Manager
- Fred Flowerday, VP of Product
- Michael Good, VP of Research & Development
- Stephen Hancock, VP of Sales
This group of exceptionally talented individuals will oversee the future of MakeMusic. If you will be attending the Midwest Clinic, NAMM or one of the many Music Education Association conferences across the country, I hope you’ll introduce yourself. We are dedicated to establishing trust within the community, and delivering excellence in our products. I am personally committed to SmartMusic and Finale, and focused on making those two products better than ever.
Finale
With today’s release of 2014d, I want to reassure everyone that we are fully dedicated to Finale’s future. You’ll note that I’ve appointed two professional musicians, Mark and Fred, to oversee its development. They are both longtime MakeMusic employees, highly respected, and incredibly passionate about enabling improved workflows, speed and quality within Finale. The first order of business will be to shore up and modernize the systems and processes we use for building Finale, which means we are not racing to release another upgrade. Look for us to deliver several more incremental updates over the coming year to improve stability and speed. We’re going to take the time to get it right. Quality is paramount; it leads to trust, and I’m focused on earning it. It will take time, and it will take action, and it will take some patience on everyone’s part.
SmartMusic
The 2014 back-to-school season saw growing adoption of SmartMusic across thousands of schools. We have continued to develop exciting new content for SmartMusic and we’re working to add much, much more. From a product development standpoint, we have a lot of work to do to improve the user experience for both educators and students. We need to improve workflows and make it easier to onboard both the educator and an entire classroom of students. Gradebook usage continues to grow, but it is still underused by the vast majority of teachers. This incredibly useful and powerful resource provides qualitative, objective assessment as well as straightforward tools to deliver and receive assignments. Look for us to make it easier for every student to use SmartMusic, both on their computer and iPad in the coming year.
Overall, I want to see Finale become more integrated with SmartMusic. We need to make it easier to publish content into SmartMusic and help teachers, students and performers discover and use that content. This will be an over-arching goal for MakeMusic going forward.
With all the change going on, it would be easy to be overwhelmed, but we have tremendous enthusiasm and commitment across the company and the future is bright. I’m out to build a world-class company that delivers world-class products. That’s my life’s work, that’s what I care about, and I’m honored to have the opportunity to lead MakeMusic into the future.
Erin Vork
Notation and Garritan Product Specialist
Product Management
MakeMusic, Inc.
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Ralph L. Bowers Jr.
Polymathist
Date Joined May 2012
Total Posts : 883
| Posted 12/3/2014 10:56 AM (GMT -6) | | Finale
"With today’s release of 2014d, I want to reassure everyone that we are fully dedicated to Finale’s future. You’ll note that I’ve appointed two professional musicians, Mark and Fred, to oversee its development. They are both longtime MakeMusic employees, highly respected, and incredibly passionate about enabling improved workflows, speed and quality within Finale. The first order of business will be to shore up and modernize the systems and processes we use for building Finale, which means we are not racing to release another upgrade. Look for us to deliver several more incremental updates over the coming year to improve stability and speed. We’re going to take the time to get it right. Quality is paramount; it leads to trust, and I’m focused on earning it. It will take time, and it will take action, and it will take some patience on everyone’s part."
Nice to read that working on product perfection and not an upgrade will be the goal for awhile.
Finale 2010b, 2011b, 2012c, 2014c TGTools Pro, Patterson plugins, JW plugins (current)
Sibelius 6.2, 7.1.3, 7.5.1, Write Score Sound Sets, Bob Zawalich plugins, Dolet 6.4
Print Music 2004, 2010a, 2011a, 2014b
Progression, Progression 2, Notion 4, [Notion 5, (bought but not installed)]
Pro Tools 9.5, Reaper
Kontakt 5
GPO4, World Instruments
Smart Score Pro X , PhotoScore Ultimate 6 & 7 ( 7 has some utility----best of those available)
M-Audio "Oxygen 25" Midi input keyboard (recent addition 2014)
Systems (4) // Windows XP Pro, 2@ Windows 7 Pro, 8.1 Pro, 64 bit, 4GB - 16GB RAM
Paper & Pencil
BMus, MM (Musicology) | | Back to Top | |
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gogreen
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1999
Total Posts : 1618
| Posted 12/4/2014 6:14 PM (GMT -6) | | Erin Vork said...
Here's what I know about Garritan at this time: We are evaluating the future development opportunities for Garritan. In the meantime we will continue to support the current suite of Garritan products.
I know it's not much (nor is it definitive). The best thing I can say is "stay tuned."
Erin, you may not have intended these words to sound ominous, but that's the feeling I get. Coupled with no mention on the Garritan forum of the MakeMusic changes, and, to a lesser degree, no mention that a new Aria engine is available, I get the feeling that Makemusic is pushing Garritan away quickly and strongly. Am I wrong?
Art
Arthur J. Michaels
/www.facebook.com/composerarthurjmichaels
Finale 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2011b.r2 (currently using 2011b.r2)
Core i7 860 @ 2.80 GHz, 8.0 GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP 1
Sonar X2 Essential
Garritan COMB2, GPO4, Aria Player 1.620, Audacity 2.0.6
Dell 2408 WFP, 1920x1200
M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496
M-Audio Keystation 88es, Casio WK-3000
M-Audio AV40 monitors
AKG K-240 Studio headphones
Brother HL-5150D printer
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CraigP
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2013
Total Posts : 313
| Posted 12/5/2014 1:01 AM (GMT -6) | | gogreen said...
Coupled with no mention on the Garritan forum of the MakeMusic changes, and, to a lesser degree, no mention that a new Aria engine is available, I get the feeling that Makemusic is pushing Garritan away quickly and strongly. Am I wrong?
I'd certainly be interested in hearing a statement of direction. But the lack of a statement is, in effect, a statement itself. There is always a question of the business case. As the current Garritan libraries cover the majority of (at least basic) needs, surely they are looking at a diminishing returns problem from future investments.
I am not particularly concerned whether or not Garritan produces more sound libraries. There are other suppliers for that if a person doesn't find the Garritan libraries sufficient. My concern is that the integration between HP and Garritan is really poor. For example, with the JABB library, none of the mutes work correctly with HP without doing some tweaks, and even then it doesn't work very smoothly.
Speaking of HP, HP is seriously dysfunctional in 2014 without a whole lot of tweaking that was never necessary on earlier releases. I didn't see nay mention in the D patch of fixes in that area. | | Back to Top | |
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Flint
silly bear
Date Joined Oct 2006
Total Posts : 3151
| Posted 12/5/2014 10:27 AM (GMT -6) | |
CraigP said...
My concern is that the integration between HP and Garritan is really poor. For example, with the JABB library, none of the mutes work correctly with HP without doing some tweaks, and even then it doesn't work very smoothly.
That's not been my experience at all - as long as I have a KS patch assigned, all it takes is a text expression to get the right mute sounds. No tweaking or work involved other than creating the (playback-undefined) text expression.
woodwind specialist and doubler - Finale 2014 using Speedy Entry - no capslock, GPO 4 Full, Garritan Jazz & Big Band 3, Garritan Concert and Marching Band 2, Windows 8 64-bit, 12GB RAM
If the composer says in effect to the performer: "I do not care whether you perform my music or not," we cannot argue the matter. But if he indicates: "I want you to perform and respond to this music," then his fundamental duty is to write his music so that it is accessible to interpretation. When the performer cannot approach the composer's meaning because of capriciously obscure notation, he may in effect say to the composer: "Why should I bother to puzzle out your music?" - Gardner Read | | Back to Top | |
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Juliepiano
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 57
| Posted 12/17/2014 9:11 PM (GMT -6) | | | Thank you for your post, Erin. I've been using Finale since version 1 for Windows (I recently ran across the 5 1/4 inch floppy disks it came on while cleaning out my garage, and my husband encouraged me to keep them as a souvenir). I've purchased the upgrades every year. It's been wonderful to see the software improve and become more user friendly over the past 23 years. I write student materials that need lots of unusual formatting, and I still haven't found anything that I can't do in Finale. I've always had good experiences with tech support. Wishing you the best in your move to a new state, a new distributor, and a new staff. Keep the improvements coming! | | Back to Top | |
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SysExJohn
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2014
Total Posts : 57
| Posted 1/8/2015 7:04 AM (GMT -6) | | Interesting reading,
[quote]Ron said: Interesting question, Steve. The Garritan user forum has had a question posted for almost a year asking users what they would like to see in the next iteration. There are some serious flaws in the libraries that need addressing.
I posted a solution to an incorrectly looping note within the oboe d'amore samples both in the older Northern Sounds forum and also the new Garritan forum. Here: forums.makemusic.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2776. With no response in the latter.
If you have other problems with sample playback feel free to post them to me. The one quoted took just 10 minutes to resolve.
I have all the ARIA based Garritan libraries except the CFX piano.
[quote]Erin said: Here's what I know about Garritan at this time: We are evaluating the future development opportunities for Garritan. In the meantime we will continue to support the current suite of Garritan products.
I posted the above fault in the sfz file of the oboe d'amore to Garritan support on the 7th of December.
A request for the sfz file followed a few days later. Then nothing ...
Erin, this isn't rocket science!
As a retired principal consultant in data communications, specialising in earth/satellite communication I believe I know.
I could be wrong though!
The problem in the sfz file is trivial in the extreme and took 10 minutes to fix.
sfz file loaded into notepad, faulty looped note playback located, sample imported into audacity, loop points detected, incorrect sample point located, new correct sample point found, new sample point entered into sfz file, problem fixed.
The sample loop point was incorrectly programmed as being part way up the waveform, instead of at a zero crossing point.
Perhaps I should add that I have absolutely no training in sound font programming.
It's the lack of communication from anyone associated with the company in the Garritan forum that dismays me.
It really is a great shame.
And it's only my 2 cents worth.
Kind regards,
John.
Finale 2012c, Sonar 7 PE, XGworks.
Garritan GPO4, JABB, COMB, IO, Organs, Steinway, Harps.
E-MU 1616m PCI and Cardbus x 2.
Yamaha AN1x.
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