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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Macintosh - FORUM HAS MOVED! > What Was Your First Notation Program? | Forum Quick Jump
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Jesper Hendze
Registered Member
      
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 364
| Posted 4/24/2011 1:17 PM (GMT -6) |   | Jim Coull said...
And of course, on the SE or the SE30, the screen was only 7", or something like that, so a lot of time was spent scrolling or using a really small screen view.
Ah, it was a 9" screen. I remember defending the size, if anyone thought it looked small. Until I got the A4 monitor with the Macintosh IIsi:
http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=IIsi&sort=date&performa=off&order=ASC
(with a 1.4 MB Floppy Super Drive! It was like upgrading from CD to DVD, 'cause some programs would only come on 1.4 MB instead of 800 kB)
Anyway, someone said in this thread that he didn't think Finale 1 had Undo. It had, but it took just as long as the operation itself. That was crazy sometimes. And remember how support worked in those days? Faxing and waiting for replacement disks in the mail!
Jesper
PowerMac Dual 2 GHz, 3 Gb RAM, OS X 10.4.11
Finale 2009 and all previous versions (although Finale 2.0 is the oldest present on HD)
Garritan Personal Orchestra
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Garritan Concert & Marching Band
XSample Chamber Ensemble
MIDI: Interface: emagic MT4
Keyboard: Korg X5D/Roland D50
Ensoniq MR Rack with expansion card (percussion)Post Edited (Jesper Hendze) : 4/24/2011 1:20:50 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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David Ward
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2009
Total Posts : 2834
| Posted 4/24/2011 3:10 PM (GMT -6) | | Some of these descriptions make me feel as though perhaps I became computerized and started with Finale at the best time (2001).
When I investigated Sibelius (I think it was actually called Sibelius 7, in honour of that symphony) in the early 1990s, I concluded that it couldn't manage scores like mine and perhaps never would be able to!
Before 2001, I used to work with piles of A3 manuscript paper ready for selection. In portrait shape I had available (with different right and left page margins) 14, 18, 24 & 28 stave paper, and in landscape shape 16 and 22 stave (all A3). If I needed, say, 36 staves for a system, I'd clip two 22 stave landscape pages to my drawing board, write music on the needed staves and then photocopy the A3 landscape pages individually while reducing the A3 to A4. I'd then sellotape these together and photocopy the result as an A3 portrait page to be included in my manuscript. This sounds convoluted, but one did have an easy flexibility. If one wanted 25 staves for heavily divided strings on one page and just five for the strings on the next, this was easily managed.
In my youth we didn't even have standard sizes such as A3. 30 stave paper was a different size from 24 stave and so on.
I also had 10 & 12 stave part paper in non-standard sizes.
I still have enough A3 manuscript paper in my house for the full scores of several very large operas!
David Ward
www.composers-uk.com/davidward
Finale 2010b
Mac 10.6.6
full TGToolsPost Edited (David Ward) : 4/24/2011 3:13:47 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Peter West
Registered Member
 
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 4272
| Posted 4/25/2011 2:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Jesper Hendze said...Jim Coull said...
And of course, on the SE or the SE30, the screen was only 7", or something like that, so a lot of time was spent scrolling or using a really small screen view.
Ah, it was a 9" screen. I remember defending the size, if anyone thought it looked small. Until I got the A4 monitor with the Macintosh IIsi: http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=IIsi&sort=date&performa=off&order=ASC (with a 1.4 MB Floppy Super Drive! It was like upgrading from CD to DVD, 'cause some programs would only come on 1.4 MB instead of 800 kB) Anyway, someone said in this thread that he didn't think Finale 1 had Undo. It had, but it took just as long as the operation itself. That was crazy sometimes. And remember how support worked in those days? Faxing and waiting for replacement disks in the mail! Jesper
In which case you must have started with v1.2 I think. v1.0 didn't have undo, I remember being excited and relieved when it was introduced. Unless I hadn't realised and thought it was new, but I'm sure the new feature was listed in the documentation.
I could be wrong, I've slept since then!
I bought a 19 inch monochrome (B&W, not even grey scale) for £1995. It came with a PCI card because the graphics capability of the SE30 couldn't drive a 19 inch screen.
I also bought a syquest cartridge drive which use 40MB removable hard disk cartridges. When 100MB ZIP drives came out I thought the world was really entering the computer age!
Peter
Music Publishing Services
*********************
Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.5.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
Finale 2008 2009 2010/Logic Pro Studio/Komplete/GPO/Kore 2/Max.msp/Pluggo | | Back to Top | |
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Rick Averill
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2011
Total Posts : 84
| Posted 4/25/2011 8:05 AM (GMT -6) | |
Happy Al said...
These kind of words sounds very strange to me. A blank page that will magically play anything you write on it, let you go back and make changes any time you want, automatically extract your parts, transpose with a press of a button... More limiting? The things you list are among the reasons I would never go back. But they are the technical things, not the creative ones. Having my mind trained to hear the music without a playback button, Seeing all those blank measures and imagining what you want to fill them with. These are the things I miss.
Freelance Composer & Arranger; Guitar/5-string Banjo/Electric Bass
Finale 2011c (Finale user since about 1988--v. 2.something)
Mac Pro Intel Quad, 10 Gig RAM; Snow Leopard (10.6.4)
GPO 4 (full version), C&MB 2, J&BB 3; Plugsound Pro; MOTU Symphonic Instrument, Ethno Instrument
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pwr
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2011
Total Posts : 137
| Posted 4/25/2011 8:40 AM (GMT -6) | | While earning my degree in music about 100 years ago, I learned the art of composition by utilizing staff paper and pencil. Perhaps it is psychological, but I still only create by using the old score paper and pencil. I then put the works into "Finale" for professional appearance.
Of course, "Finale" helps tremendously with checking notes, octaves, parallel fifths, etc. I no longer need to check my work in this regard, as "Finale" does it for me.
Similar to the "old school" and "new school" in many areas of life, I still think that it is better for students to learn composition with score paper and pencil, rather than lean on the technological tools to do some of the work for them before they learn the actual work themselves. I still teach private lessons in theory in composition, but I insist on students using score paper and pencil before moving into "Finale".
Any thoughts? Agree or disagree?
PWR
Finale 2010b.r1 for Macintosh
MacBook Pro
10.6.5 AND
iMac
10.6.7
Composer and Arranger of Music for Concert Band, Jazz Band, and Percussion Ensembles for:
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Peter West
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 4272
| Posted 4/25/2011 10:34 AM (GMT -6) | | pwr said...
While earning my degree in music about 100 years ago, I learned the art of composition by utilizing staff paper and pencil. Perhaps it is psychological, but I still only create by using the old score paper and pencil. I then put the works into "Finale" for professional appearance.
Of course, "Finale" helps tremendously with checking notes, octaves, parallel fifths, etc. I no longer need to check my work in this regard, as "Finale" does it for me.
Similar to the "old school" and "new school" in many areas of life, I still think that it is better for students to learn composition with score paper and pencil, rather than lean on the technological tools to do some of the work for them before they learn the actual work themselves. I still teach private lessons in theory in composition, but I insist on students using score paper and pencil before moving into "Finale".
Any thoughts? Agree or disagree?
PWR
I've read a number of people talk about parallel fifths in relation to composition and I really cannot understand the problem with them. Of course when one is imitating Bach-style counterpoint, one avoids them, because, by observation, Bach avoided them. But that only applies to stylistic composition in (generally) Baroque style.
Still, not getting at you personally, your comment reminded me of others and I wondered why people consider it to still be significant, what with the intervening years/styles/methods/techniques.
Peter
Music Publishing Services
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Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.5.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
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Jari Williamsson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 3246
| Posted 4/25/2011 10:52 AM (GMT -6) | | Happy Al said...
A few people lamented that Finale sort of blocks creativity, that a blank page is somehow more inspiring...
These kind of words sounds very strange to me. A blank page that will magically play anything you write on it, let you go back and make changes any time you want, automatically extract your parts, transpose with a press of a button... More limiting?
This is a strange world.
Try to put your work in the key of hungarian minor with a root of D (doable in Finale) - then try to transpose it to another root with a press of a button. Does it work?
Also, there are quite a few avant garde pieces that are virtually impossible to notate in Finale, because Finale assumes traditional western left-to-right notation.
I put a challenge on the Finale tips site about the notation of a simple piece by Mozart on the Finale tips site. Although the page has been read many hundreds of times, the first solution arrived on the page more than 3 weeks after the challenge was published. The piece is trivial to put on paper (if you have Mozart's genius) using pen and paper.
Another Mozart piece that you could compare is the Don Giovanni score section that uses multiple time signatures. Very easy to put on paper, very hard to do in Finale.
I would say, Finale will actually lead the user to use traditional keys, traditional tonality, traditional notation, barlines that line up, etc, etc, because that's what Finale does best. Just as a piano will lead the musician to use a maximum of 12 notes per scale. Pen and a blank paper will not lead the user into any specific way of thinking.
Jari Williamsson
Windows XP, Pentium 4
2.40 GHz, 4 GB RAM
www.finaletips.nu - The Finale Productivity Tips site | | Back to Top | |
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Zuill
"The Troll"
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 29077
| Posted 4/25/2011 10:56 AM (GMT -6) | | Jim Williams mentioned Laser Music Processor. That was my first as well. I though LMP was a PC only program. I guess I am wrong. The latest manual I still have for it mentions the system requirements. It required at least 512K memory in the 3.3 version of LMP. This version was pre-Windows, of course. I used a dot matrix printer, as my resources were quite limited at the time. I would take the print files to someone with a laser printer if I needed nice copies. It was a tedious program, with limited abilities. When I migrated to Finale 3.1, I thought I was in heaven.
Zuill
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
Finale 2002b, 2003a, 2004b, 2005b, Win XP SP3, 2011b Win 7 64bit
Favorite Forum quote: "Please, everybody, IGNORE THE TROLL!" | | Back to Top | |
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OCTO.
The radical answers.
Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 2659
| Posted 4/25/2011 2:58 PM (GMT -6) | | Jari Williamsson said...
I would say, Finale will actually lead the user to use traditional keys, traditional tonality, traditional notation, barlines that line up, etc, etc, because that's what Finale does best. Just as a piano will lead the musician to use a maximum of 12 notes per scale. Pen and a blank paper will not lead the user into any specific way of thinking.
Very well said. I agree. Only notation software I would need is a wysiwyg graphic-notation program. Not just Illustrator. A software that will allow me to put any symbol at any place and leave it there. Something in between Finale and Illustrator. I don't care about playback. I really don't care about new instruments in F 2012. I still don't know which instruments I have installed with Garritan.....
I know this is here OT, but just my thoughts......
Anyway, as I remember, my start, as said, was F 2000 and I remember that already there I could do anything I wanted...
Finale 2011c, OS X 10.6.7 OS X 10.5.8 / MacBookPro & iMac 20" / Logic Studio 8, Peak Express 6 / InDesign CS4
INGLISH iz not maj modr-toung!Post Edited (OCTOECHOS) : 4/25/2011 3:03:46 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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weeksc
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2000
Total Posts : 349
| Posted 4/25/2011 4:10 PM (GMT -6) | | Clint Roemer's book, pen, and paper that I had designed myself and had offset printed at a local printshop. This was while I was in high school, btw.
Later, after I got my first computer (after I started teaching band) that boasted a 20 Megabyte hard drive and a *full* 8 MHz of pure computing power, I invested in Music Printer Plus. The screen was 320X240 amber on black. My phone has better graphics, memory, and computing power now...
I used MP+ through two or three versions, but I finally had it with having to hand draw slurs because the ones produced by the program were so awful, and upgraded to Finale 2.01 (I think). I haven't looked back. MP+ had some cool things going for it, but Finale just killed it in practically every way.
I'm one of the guys who fell in love with FinWin because of the 5(!) printed manuals that came with the program.
Oh... and who besides me and Buzz Cecil remember the Finale Forum on CompuServe? Show of hands, please. He and I answered a lot of questions for newbies back then.
--Clancy
Finale 2008b
Intel 2.3 GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB RAM, Vista Ultimate x64, NVIDIA 8800 video card
Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum sound card
___________________________
I never claimed to know everything... I'm just right about the things I know!
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CWillCalho
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 256
| Posted 4/25/2011 5:01 PM (GMT -6) | | | C-Lab Notator on an Atari 1040ST which I believe then became Logic. I wish I had kept up with this program when I was beginning Finale as I would now be fluent in Logic. | | Back to Top | |
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jdpmus
Registered Member
Date Joined Sep 2002
Total Posts : 129
| Posted 4/25/2011 7:12 PM (GMT -6) | | First was a Yamaha keyboard that printed on adding machine tape. Very primitive. Then started sequencing on C-Lab Creator which later developed into Notator. C-Lab stuff from Germany written for the Atari 1040 ST. I have 204 leadsheets with lyrics printed from that ancient bit of software/hardware. Funny thing is that the latest version of Logic Pro will still print out the files (Apple bought C-Lab in the late 90's). One of my clients gave me Finale 2.5 and her Mac Classic to use in 1991. Gave it all back within a week and went back to Notator. Manuals from 2.5 read like the schematic for the space shuttle. Did 61 orchestrations on Finale 2.6 (?) on my new Mac Classic II in 1994-95 and learned a bit more about the software. When it came time to extract parts, you needed to go to lunch.
Finale 3.2 was a revelation as it worked on the PPC chip. A friend at NTSU recommended it and I have been using it since. | | Back to Top | |
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Snorlax
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 500
| Posted 4/25/2011 8:37 PM (GMT -6) | | Zuill said...
Jim Williams mentioned Laser Music Processor. That was my first as well. I though LMP was a PC only program. I guess I am wrong. The latest manual I still have for it mentions the system requirements. It required at least 512K memory in the 3.3 version of LMP. This version was pre-Windows, of course. I used a dot matrix printer, as my resources were quite limited at the time. I would take the print files to someone with a laser printer if I needed nice copies. It was a tedious program, with limited abilities. When I migrated to Finale 3.1, I thought I was in heaven.
Zuill
Zuill,
It *WAS* PC-only. I got out of the Apple thing early on.  ...and perhaps my timeline was a bit non-linear.
here's LMP trivia questions for you, Zuill: Remember the name of the person in charge? And what was Teach Services' main business?
Jim
Jim Williams--Indianapolis Brass Choir
N9EJR
WinFin 2010, 2011, TGTools , Core 2 Duo portables, XP Pro/Win 7 , 4gB RAM, 360 gB HDD, Full GPO, JABB, & CoMB, Echo Indigo I/O, Miraphone 5050 & Yamaha 321 euphoniums, Yamaha 621 Baritone Horn, Holton 58 Bass Trumpet, Guinness, briefs.Post Edited (Snorlax) : 4/25/2011 8:49:22 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Snorlax
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 500
| Posted 4/25/2011 8:43 PM (GMT -6) | | As a long-time user of Finale, I DEMAND the return of the TCD Watershed Bit.
Who remembers that????? 
Jim Williams--Indianapolis Brass Choir
N9EJR
WinFin 2010, 2011, TGTools , Core 2 Duo portables, XP Pro/Win 7 , 4gB RAM, 360 gB HDD, Full GPO, JABB, & CoMB, Echo Indigo I/O, Miraphone 5050 & Yamaha 321 euphoniums, Yamaha 621 Baritone Horn, Holton 58 Bass Trumpet, Guinness, briefs. | | Back to Top | |
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Snorlax
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 500
| Posted 4/25/2011 9:39 PM (GMT -6) | | TCD=Tonal Center Displacement, IIRC.
I'll check my ETF specification document.
Again, IIRC, it was a user-definable parameter in the first versions of Finale, and a competitor used it mockingly in an ad.
Jim Williams--Indianapolis Brass Choir
N9EJR
WinFin 2010, 2011, TGTools , Core 2 Duo portables, XP Pro/Win 7 , 4gB RAM, 360 gB HDD, Full GPO, JABB, & CoMB, Echo Indigo I/O, Miraphone 5050 & Yamaha 321 euphoniums, Yamaha 621 Baritone Horn, Holton 58 Bass Trumpet, Guinness, briefs.Post Edited (Snorlax) : 4/25/2011 9:46:21 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Happy Al
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 127
| Posted 4/26/2011 12:48 AM (GMT -6) | | Jari Williamsson said...Try to put your work in the key of hungarian minor with a root of D (doable in Finale) - then try to transpose it to another root with a press of a button. Does it work? Also, there are quite a few avant garde pieces that are virtually impossible to notate in Finale, because Finale assumes traditional western left-to-right notation. I put a challenge on the Finale tips site about the notation of a simple piece by Mozart on the Finale tips site. Although the page has been read many hundreds of times, the first solution arrived on the page more than 3 weeks after the challenge was published. The piece is trivial to put on paper (if you have Mozart's genius) using pen and paper. Another Mozart piece that you could compare is the Don Giovanni score section that uses multiple time signatures. Very easy to put on paper, very hard to do in Finale. I would say, Finale will actually lead the user to use traditional keys, traditional tonality, traditional notation, barlines that line up, etc, etc, because that's what Finale does best. Just as a piano will lead the musician to use a maximum of 12 notes per scale. Pen and a blank paper will not lead the user into any specific way of thinking.
I accept your conclusion, but I don't view it as a negative outcome.
If avant garde pieces are so far from traditional notation that Finale can't deal with them, then so be it. The world could live without another Helicopter quartet.
If it turns out that audiences turn increasingly to avant garde, then surely an avant garde notation software will be invented.
I don't think the nostalgia about pencil and paper is rational. Just like the nostalgia about writing letters isn't. Keep in mind that when modern pens were invented, there was a considerable resistance. Some said things like "If I don't dip my pen in ink, it doesn't feel right. I have to have my ink and feather.."
Watch a YouTube clip of the famous living historian Gore Vidal, saying proudly that he still uses a typewriter and doesn't like computes. Imagine what our kids think about such people.
Al
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Dr. Wiggy
Early music: modern methods
Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 12628
| Posted 4/26/2011 1:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Happy Al said...
If avant garde pieces are so far from traditional notation that Finale can't deal with them, then so be it. The world could live without another Helicopter quartet.
If it turns out that audiences turn increasingly to avant garde, then surely an avant garde notation software will be invented.
I don't think the nostalgia about pencil and paper is rational. Just like the nostalgia about writing letters isn't. Keep in mind that when modern pens were invented, there was a considerable resistance. Some said things like "If I don't dip my pen in ink, it doesn't feel right. I have to have my ink and feather.."
Watch a YouTube clip of the famous living historian Gore Vidal, saying proudly that he still uses a typewriter and doesn't like computes. Imagine what our kids think about such people.
There is a certain irony that you constantly rant against people who do not embrace the modern but prefer the traditional, yet you also condemn avant garde music!  That's the second time you've railed against Stockhausen on this forum.
Let's try to be "Happy Al" rather than "Hostile Al", and not make personal remarks about "such people" that have "not rational" personal preferences, eh?
Finale 2011c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.6
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
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Happy Al
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 127
| Posted 4/26/2011 2:13 AM (GMT -6) | | Wiggy said...Happy Al said...
If avant garde pieces are so far from traditional notation that Finale can't deal with them, then so be it. The world could live without another Helicopter quartet.
If it turns out that audiences turn increasingly to avant garde, then surely an avant garde notation software will be invented.
I don't think the nostalgia about pencil and paper is rational. Just like the nostalgia about writing letters isn't. Keep in mind that when modern pens were invented, there was a considerable resistance. Some said things like "If I don't dip my pen in ink, it doesn't feel right. I have to have my ink and feather.."
Watch a YouTube clip of the famous living historian Gore Vidal, saying proudly that he still uses a typewriter and doesn't like computes. Imagine what our kids think about such people. There is a certain irony that you constantly rant against people who do not embrace the modern but prefer the traditional, yet you also condemn avant garde music! That's the second time you've railed against Stockhausen on this forum. Let's try to be "Happy Al" rather than "Hostile Al", and not make personal remarks about "such people" that have "not rational" personal preferences, eh?
I don't condemn avant garde music as such. I just think the day it becomes relevant, there will be lots of programs to notate it. That's all I said.
I don't understand why you think I'm being hostile...
You think I offended Gore Vidal by pointing out that he's still using a typewriter?
You must be under an illusion that musical compositions are to referred to with a standard measure of respect, regardless of how one feels about them. If you happen to love the Helicopter Quartet, enjoy it as much as you wish. Don't think I need your permission to express negatively about some composition I dislike. No one is hurt by it.
Al
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