Finale (R)

[Alan Sharkis]

Careful with MuseScore if you want to transpose songs. Works find if you only have a score, but if you have a score and parts then in some cases a few notes in the parts are not transposed correctly. (When you do playback they play correctly, but when you look at the written notes they are wrong. At least that's with MuseScore 3...

That’s been fixed in 4.0 and on. Musescore is now up to 4.4.

 

[debra]

That’s been fixed in 4.0 and on. Musescore is now up to 4.4.

That's good to know. I wonder when other known bugs get fixed, like the inability to select objects you made invisible. (That worked fine in Musescore 3.) I keep trying new sub-versions of Musescore 4 and each time it has been a disappointment...

 

[ColoRodney]

MuseScore does have a somewhat confusing and mostly blank page on accordion notation (it points out that it's a work in progress, "please add missing info." But if you click on "Accordion notation and playback tutorial," that page seems to have useful information. I'm not looking for realistic playback sounds, just enough for proofreading the notes.

 

[Zevy]

I’m never particular about the playback sounds. Most of my files are either accordion arrangements or lead sheets. Piano sounding playback works fine for me. The playback for me is only to “proofread” my work.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

That's good to know. I wonder when other known bugs get fixed, like the inability to select objects you made invisible. (That worked fine in Musescore 3.) I keep trying new sub-versions of Musescore 4 and each time it has been a disappointment...

I believe the release notes at the website list all the known bugs and their fixes, but it’s a pain to follow when a bug is listed in the release notes for version x.x and the fix is listed in the release notes for version x+3.x+7.4, if you know what I mean. Also, commercial software companies have a developer or a team of developers, whereas open source projects like Musescore have international communities. So the guys who write release notes, who are not necessarily on the development team, can make mistakes and typos when taking the info from developers and putting it into written form.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

I’m never particular about the playback sounds. Most of my files are either accordion arrangements or lead sheets. Piano sounding playback works fine for me. The playback for me is only to “proofread” my work.

I agree with you, and most of the time piano sounds work for me, too. Still, I think it would be beneficial, if not just a nod to the accordion community to have decent accordion sounds on playback.

 

[Big Squeezy Accordions]

Musescore is lacking in accordion sounds. It has a built-in soundfont that’s barely OK for accordion sounds on playback. It does, however, accept some virtual sounds.

Musescore now comes with Muse Hub, a facility which gets downloaded first, if you wish, but contains many sound packages that have a decent quality. Some are free. Once you download and install Muse Hub, you can download and install Musescore, Audacity, and other sound apps and packages from within Muse Hub. Unfortunately, there isn’t a sound package for accordion or other free reed instruments — yet.

Once inside Musescore, each staff becomes a ‘track’ in the mixer, and each track can be assigned to a sound from Musescore’s built-in soundfont, or from one of Muse Hub’s instrument packages (assuming you’ve downloaded it,) or another virtual instrument (again, assuming you’ve downloaded that.)

I’ve found a few things that might help. One of the problems with using that built-in accordion soundfont is that treble and bass play back at the same volume. That problem has been solved in version 4.4. It’s now possible to select separate dynamic markings in each staff of a grand staff: for example, mf in the treble and p in the bass, and it will play back that way. Or, you could use the mixer. Or, if you spell out the chords, you could put staccato marks under them and hide the marks. (By the way, if you use a Roland accordion as an input device, there’s a method to get AAA bass notation and have it play back correctly, but that’s too complicated to post here.)

In the meantime, I’m going to lobby the Muse Hub people to create a free sound package for free reed instruments.

I usually substitute the bandoneon sound for accordion in the mixer. It's less awful sounding.

 

[Siegmund]

No program has special features for accordion. There are a few things that one must tweak for accordion music. The most obvious is the creation of accordion register switch symbols.

Mozart (since version 15 in 2020) and Lilypond (since before I started using it) have had built-in register symbols. 3 years ago I spent a bunch of time teaching Lilypond how to properly expand register symbols and AAA chord symbols into the set of notes that sound at any given instant, so MIDI playback of all the notation was possible. One of our other members did something similar for an older version of Musescore.

It is the kind of thing I don't expect in the first version of a new software, but DO expect in the full version of a mature software that supports guitar tabs, Bartok snap pizzicato symbols, and whatnot.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Mozart (since version 15 in 2020) and Lilypond (since before I started using it) have had built-in register symbols. 3 years ago I spent a bunch of time teaching Lilypond how to properly expand register symbols and AAA chord symbols into the set of notes that sound at any given instant, so MIDI playback of all the notation was possible. One of our other members did something similar for an older version of Musescore.

It is the kind of thing I don't expect in the first version of a new software, but DO expect in the full version of a mature software that supports guitar tabs, Bartok snap pizzicato symbols, and whatnot.

I consider a notation program that can do with AAA notation what you said you taught Lilypond to do the ultimate. I tried many years ago to learn Lilypond, but I never got very far with the text-based input, so I tried what was then the only GUI front end for Lilypond -- Denemo.

Denemo had two drawbacks, as far as I was concerned. The first was that it couldn't access all of the Lilypond commands. The second was that it didn't recognize my controller keyboard. I asked the developer for help with that, and his response was, "It works with MY keyboard."
I'm tempted to go back to Lilypond some day, and I heard that another GUI for it has been developed. Do you still work in Lilypond, and, if so, do you use a GUI?

 

[Siegmund]

Denemo had two drawbacks, as far as I was concerned. The first was that it couldn't access all of the Lilypond commands. The second was that it didn't recognize my controller keyboard. I asked the developer for help with that, and his response was, "It works with MY keyboard."
I'm tempted to go back to Lilypond some day, and I heard that another GUI for it has been developed. Do you still work in Lilypond, and, if so, do you use a GUI?

Denemo still works that way (uses Lilypond itself, but doesn't let you use parts of Lilypond that aren't built into Denemo.)

I use the 'Frescobaldi' front end. It is still basically a text editor but has some amount of "click on a picture of a symbol to insert the code that generates this symbol" and "click on this location in the PDF and be taken to the line of code that generated it" functionality.
There is, supposedly, some kind of MIDI input function, but I can't say how good it is -- I type everything, and *want* to type everything, not use the mouse or a piano keyboard.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Denemo still works that way (uses Lilypond itself, but doesn't let you use parts of Lilypond that aren't built into Denemo.)

I use the 'Frescobaldi' front end. It is still basically a text editor but has some amount of "click on a picture of a symbol to insert the code that generates this symbol" and "click on this location in the PDF and be taken to the line of code that generated it" functionality.
There is, supposedly, some kind of MIDI input function, but I can't say how good it is -- I type everything, and *want* to type everything, not use the mouse or a piano keyboard.

Thanks.

 

[PhiliGol]

When I migrated from handwritten to computer aided notation (only few years ago ) I did some research and decided to go on with Sibelius.
I don't regret it a second - it's very intuitive, offers accordion register symbols and features anything you'd imagine.
The sound-lib is great, except...
accordion
Without knowing other notation SW I just guess it's the same for them.
To have a good accordion(orchestra) experience (incl. register changes) I believe there's no way around a good sampler (in my case KONTAKT) and a special accordion sound lib (in my case a sampled 1950's GOLA by company xsample).
I enjoy a lot doing scores with that setup running on a MacBook and can only recommend it in case you want to take it serious.

 

[dak]

It is the kind of thing I don't expect in the first version of a new software, but DO expect in the full version of a mature software that supports guitar tabs, Bartok snap pizzicato symbols, and whatnot.

Uh, LilyPond is entirely developed by volunteers. Features come about by people who feel strongly about those features contributing the code for it. The combination of "I feel strongly about it" combined with "why doesn't someone else who doesn't feel strongly about it volunteer to contribute it" does not make a whole lot of sense.

At best, you can complain about contributing being too hard. To make that constructive, you can suggest "if it only were a matter of [this and that], I would long have been able to submit what I have already done privately." There is no question that, say, the LaTeX infrastructure in connection with CTAN and other resources has managed to draw in much more diverse and loosely interacting contributions.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

While we're talking about about Finale, here's a video by a composer, David Das, who has a well-researched and logical answer to the question of Finale's successor:



and here's another composer, Kevin Lynch, showing what happens when Finale exports a file as a Music XML file and then imports that file first into Dorico and then into Musescore Studio. In either case, a good deal of editing must be done with the result:



My takeaway from these two videos is that Das' advice to export Finale files as Music XML files and also as MIDI files and pdf files is very wise, that his using Dorico as a substitute for Finale is based on his prior familiarity with Dorico, and that Kevin Lynch's statement that he'd choose Musescore over Dorico because Musescore imported one Music XML file of a Finale piece needed less editing is somewhat premature. If I had to do what Lynch did, I'd try a number of files before coming to the conclusion that Musescore does a better job at the Music XML transfer of a Finale file.

So, I would say to Finale users who want a substitute for Finale that if you're already familiar with either Dorico or Musescore, stick with that one. If your familiar with neither, try both and then decide. Notice that I didn't mention Sibelius as a substitute for Finale for the same reason that Das gave in his video. Nor would I keep Finale on a computer dedicated to just Finale. Computers have a finite life, after all.

 

[debra]

The right thing to do, for the company behind Finale, would be to make it open source so that tech-savvy users can maintain the code and the software can live on. Such a move has been made by other software companies in the past.

 

[Siegmund]

Uh, LilyPond is entirely developed by volunteers. Features come about by people who feel strongly about those features contributing the code for it...

To be clear, I was saying I expected accordion support in Finale and Dorico and similar programs that support other specialized notation and claim to do everything for everyone.

It was at least POSSIBLE to add it to Lilypond, without resorting to making separate staves for playback and printing and typing every note of a chord on the playback staff.

 

[Ventura]

. Computers have a finite life, after all.

LoL

you forgot i am still using a Windows for Workgroups computer
in my studio for Cakewalk 6, Band in a Box, my Word Perfect branded
Database for my setlists and cheat sheets as well as my .JPG editor
for scanned in old sheet music coverpages (the artwork) with the
floppy drive of course for my accompaniment modules and the original
version of USB (via an add in card) that only works with 64/128 kb. sticks

there is some old sheet music program on it too, that went out
of business long ago, but at need i can send a MIDI file
to it, set the key, then print it out on my old Okidata Dot Matrix
or the old Xerox Lazer printer-scanner that has an Epson emulation

and i still have a brand new WFW PC that i built as a spare
in a box in the attic just in case

i hate change when i have something i am used to using that works

 

[dak]

The right thing to do, for the company behind Finale, would be to make it open source so that tech-savvy users can maintain the code and the software can live on.

"The right thing to do" is not a concept in finances. Finale made a special deal with Steinberg predicated on Finale not living on. And when a company does not close doors but ends a piece of software, they have an interest in keeping their developers working efficiently. When a proprietary software product stops production, the code has been maintained with a view towards short-term marketability rather than long-term maintainability. That means that the most likely maintainers of newly open-sourced software tend to a large degree be from the pool of its original developers. Taking their toy away for good is likely in the best interest of the company interested in their ongoing productivity.

The track record of software going anywhere after getting abandoned under the fig leaf of open-sourcing has been abysmal. Most software that survived this step is because the original company kept a business interest in it and kept a sizable number of developers on it while changing the business model. In my recollection this worked out more or less for OpenOffice, for Blender, for Intel's GPU code in Linux, for numerous general-purpose libraries by IBM (which went through a somewhat aggressive "Open Source" phase at one point of time).

But more often than not, what you get is "abandonware" that falls into dismaintenance at a pace not all that much slower than proprietary software ended the hard way.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

We’re talking about millions of lines of spaghetti code here …

 

[Alan Sharkis]

LoL

you forgot i am still using a Windows for Workgroups computer
in my studio for Cakewalk 6, Band in a Box, my Word Perfect branded
Database for my setlists and cheat sheets as well as my .JPG editor
for scanned in old sheet music coverpages (the artwork) with the
floppy drive of course for my accompaniment modules and the original
version of USB (via an add in card) that only works with 64/128 kb. sticks

there is some old sheet music program on it too, that went out
of business long ago, but at need i can send a MIDI file
to it, set the key, then print it out on my old Okidata Dot Matrix
or the old Xerox Lazer printer-scanner that has an Epson emulation

and i still have a brand new WFW PC that i built as a spare
in a box in the attic just in case

i hate change when i have something i am used to using that works

Gee, I’m sorry I gave up my Atari 8-bit stuff; I ran out of room for it many years ago. But now, having looked at a FB group that has made phenomenal improvements to that seemingly ancient technology …