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These should not be overlooked as they make a substantial saving.īoth Sibelius and Finale have ‘intelligent’ elements built into the software. Both offer subscription possibilities as well as buy outright and educational discounts if you are a student or teacher. The next is to consider the budget against software features.
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The question that naturally arises is which of these leading programs should you chose? It makes sense if you have never tried any of these programs to download the free versions and take them for a spin to see how they work for you.
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This is version 26 of Finale and provides everything you would expect of professional notation software.
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At the top end is Finale itself, coming in at the full price of $600. You can orchestrate up to 24 staves, extract the parts, get excellent playback, and of course, print high-quality scores. The middle package is called ‘Finale Printmusic’ and is similar to the Sibelius package. With Notepad you can import MIDI files, hear it played back to you and print a copy of the score. This is a Windows-only program and grants you the possibility of composing on up to eight staves which is a more generous start than Sibelius. The alternative is Finale who presents an attractive entry-level program free of charge called ‘Finale Notepad’. The piece de résistance is ‘Sibelius Ultimate’ that offers no limit of instrumental parts and custom layouts alongside superb playback. This version of Sibelius allows you to compose using up to sixteen parts which are often enough for many less experienced composers or those who have no interest in exploring larger orchestral canvasses. The next step up is simply called ‘Sibelius’ and this will cost you $9.99 per month. There are as you would expect, restrictions with Sibelius First in that you can only compose with a maximum of four instruments. ‘Sibelius First’ is the entry-level into the program and is free to use a piece of software. Sibelius is currently available as a subscription deal on three different levels to try and capture the full range of clients.
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Avid rightly felt that a first-class notation program alongside their industry-standard Pro Tools was a winning combination.
Sibelius is now sold through Avid who became owners of the software in 2006. The number of features now available to composers is more than many will ever need but most like to have available at their fingertips. With both software packages, the possibilities in terms of notation and playback are extraordinarily good. This has made it a rival of Sibelius with composers and publishers alike for many years. Like Sibelius, Finale is written to produce exceptional scores ranging from simple piano scores through to compositions for a one-hundred strong symphony orchestra. Phil Farrand is credited as the first author of Finale that is currently in its twenty-sixth incarnation.
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It is often assumed that Sibelius was the first notation software but Finale reached the notation market first in 1988 with versions for both Windows and Macintosh computers. This did not make a significant impact on the popularity of Sibelius that was soon adopted by many leading composers and publishing houses, celebrated for its ease of use, functionality, stability, and beautiful printed scores. In these very first years of Sibelius, it ran only on Windows and Risk computers, only a little later making its way onto the Macintosh computers. The result was Sibelius, named after the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. These guys had had enough of writing out music by hand and decided, very profitably as it turns out, to design a piece of software that could make the task less laborious. Sibelius was the first notation program I spent money on back in 1993 when it was first released by Cambridge based brothers Jonathan and Ben Finn. For this article, I am going to take a look at two of the leading software programs that are in the first category that musical notation. These are ones designed to produce professional-looking scores, the same as you would buy from a publisher, and those created to produce ‘sequenced’ compositions that use virtual instruments. Essentially, there are two different types of software programs in common use amongst composers today.