End of Finale, Start of….?

If you haven’t heard, the LONG TIME notation software (which I use), Finale, is going to be sunset. I think it is a terrible business decision. It would have been like Apple deciding to stop doing the Mac when it was in it’s iPod phase. Or it’s iPhone phase. Finale has been a stable, reliable platform to do music on. I have 24 years invested in this program. Thousands of Finale Files. I think MakeMusic’s pivot to “MakeMusic Cloud” is myopic.

There has been talk of perhaps one of the other software packages being able to open FinaleFiles natively. That would be nice. The current “solution” of exporting stuff out from Finale into MusicXML format is less than ideal.

So, what notation packages are remaining then? There is Sibelius. I’ve NEVER gotten into the Sibelius workflow. Ever. I have bought it a couple of times, and just never liked it.

There is the free Musescore. Honestly, it has come a LONG WAY. But it still has a long way to go. While simple leadsheets it can tackle, anything more looks like it would be rough.

So that leaves us with Dorico, the software started by ex-Sibelius developers after Avid gutted the original team. I tried it, and it has a lot of Sibelius like things about it. BUT……it does seem more Finale like than the other options. How it does linked parts is sorta how I think Finale would have eventually done it……if they ever got around to it.

Finale was really frustrating as it would introduce a feature……but it would have issues. They would wait a release or two, and then “fix it” and tout it as a new feature.

Anyhow, I tried, and I exported the “Zinn Practice regimen” to it. Looks pretty good. I need to get more of my “style” set up in it, but generally, it’s not bad.

  Zinn Practice Regimen 2024 (913.0 KiB, 2 hits)
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