Finale 2004 Available for Mac OS X

sunrein writes "After years of Mac OS X being available, MakeMusic has finally announced production and a Jan. 16 ship date of Finale 2004 for Mac OS X. This announcement comes after a public relations fiasco earlier this fall when the release date was pushed back just days before it was due to ship in late October."

Comments

Re:No big loss...

[sirfunk]

You seem to miss the point... Finale is music composition and notation. Logic and Cubase are terrible for that. Logic and Cubase are intended mostly for recording and midi syle "composition"... i guess the main difference is finale is used more to write scores, Cubase and Logic are used to actually produce the sounds.. it's hard to explain, use them more and you'll realize what they are for... or just read teh websites.

Re:Good Timing-NOT.

[scottblascocomposer]

Problem with the programs you named is that they are not designed for notation, but rather just sequencing (valuable, to be sure, but if you need notation features, you won't get good ones uf there are any at all). A lot of people will say Cubase, Performer, ProTools, etc., etc., but those programs are also all geared toward Sequencing and not notation. There are comparatively few true notation programs for OS X (or at all, really), and by far the two biggest are Finale and Sibelius.

There are others, but at this point they really play no true part in the competition game. Now, when one of them is capable of creating scores as attractive, flexible, and (most important for 99% of users) easily (which means not CLI-based, sorry), the big guys will start paying attention. Combine that with a simlar or lower price-point, and you have recipe for success, because I have yet to meet a user of any notation program who didn't have some gripes about it, or who would be unwilling to look to other programs.

Notation vs. Sequencing

[transient]

It seems that a fair number of people aren't aware of the difference between music notation programs and sequencing software. Finale is for music notation, programs like Cubase and GarageBand are for sequencing. Think of music notation as word processing for sheet music. It's not for putting together tracks on your computer, it's for people like my dad (professor of film music and music theory) who want to compose, say, a four-part bassoon piece.

Re:Notation vs. Sequencing

[divbyzero]

The reason why so many people get confused by this is that the vendors are constantly trying to blur the line between different classes of software. Try to name a current product in each of the following distinct categories that doesn't cross the line into at least one of the others:

• music typesetter
• linear MIDI sequencer
• pattern-based MIDI sequencer
• tracker
• stereo sample recorder / editor
• non-realtime multitrack sample compositor
• realtime audio sequencer or DAW
• sample loop sequencer
• software synthesizer

Convergence in not inherently good nor bad, but it helps to know what are the core strengths of any given program and what has been bolted on to the side.

Re:Good Timing-NOT.

[lindsayt]

I speculate that you're not familiar with the classical composition community. I have probably a half dozen sequencing and recording programs, similar to the ones you mention, but as they are primarily *sequencing* and not notation programs, none of them allow the depth, quantity of options, ease, and beauty of notation that Finale provides. There are other notation programs aimed at very large, complex compositions, but none is even remotely as popular as Finale: Sibelius and Prelude come to mind, though I'm not sure Prelude is still being sold (I used it in the early 90s before getting finale).

Most classical music composers started using finale in the early-to-mid 90s on their Macs because at the time that was really the only combination that gave a composer the ability easily to input notations from a (musical) keyboard and keep track of the up to forty separate parts that may appear in a complex symphony.

Of course now there are other programs and other platforms that can handle this task (I actually have most recently used finale on windoze with my Clavinova for my notation, I hate to admit) but the classic Clavinova->Finale->MacOS combination is still the most popular and the most supported, both by the industry and by the user base.

The user base was angry about the October debacle precisely because for many of them there is no other alternative, as most of them don't have or want a windoze machine and don't want to learn sibelius.

I hope to buy an iMac and Finale 2004 some time soon for this very purpose.

Open File Format = MusicXML

[sjdownes]

I have some good news for you then. Finale and Sibelius both support MusicXML. There's more info here.