Farewell to Finale Notation Software...
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- MakeMusic, the creators of Finale Notation Software, has announced today that is it retiring the flagship software and will no longer be selling or supporting it. Join me as we discuss the impacts this is having on the music, Broadway, and entertainment industry.
They have yet to de-authorize my pen and paper 😉
Well.. this is indeed a sad day. May all Finale music find a way to survive.
Honestly makes me feel like switching out of music prep and copyist work and let someone else deal with all that.
This is so sad. I've used Finale for my sheet music since I was 14 years old, which was quite a while ago now! Man, this sucks!
Let's discuss a software users "bill of rights." This is bs for the company to pull out the rug like this on ALL of its users.
I started using Finale in 1993 (v 2.2 and got EVERY upgrade). I used Finale almost daily until 2003. I did buy Sibelius when it came out in 1998 and also updated every time). Somewhere around 2007 or 2008 I began using Sibelius more regularly than Finale. I adopted Dorico the day it came out. I can tell you, there is a learning curve. But Dorico is far superior to Finale and Sibelius. Take the time to learn it. You will not be sorry.
I’m sorry to see what has happened to Finale (I still updated every time despite not using it simply for a love of what Finale did for me for so long). I always hoped Finale would rewrite the software, to restore its glory. But that it just impossible. Finale was a great tool. However, Dorico is exponentially better and is super powerful.
It looks super powerful! It just looks sleek and seamless. I think the transition from Finale files and MusicXML might be tricky. I worry that my formatting I had fine tuned in Finale will have to be corrected and tweaked in Dorico. I don’t know that for sure because I just bought Dorico. That’s tomorrow project!
@@KevinLynchNJ Finale is S Tier with MusicXML. The software was terrible, though. Did have v27. Not offering serial key offline activation for users is a massive slap in the face. $600 software for a lot of people who purchased before the price cut. Disgusting.
Already have Dorico Pro. Kinda prefer Sibelius UI, but Avid's pricing structure is @$$.
I agree
Avid is terrible. I want to buy it once and own it forever. I don't like Pro Tools for this reason. $600/year for Avid products and Pro Tools I would think is the next software that needs to go. Logic, Ableton, and Cubase are FAR ahead of Pro Tools. So sad. It's all about money and commerce. This is going to put a ripple into things.
Bummer, I first bought Finale in 1994. The software came in a big box with several nice books and a nice cheat sheet. Nowadays, you don't even get a disk.😢
All of our church hymnal orchestrations are in Finale. Lifeway Worship’s entire hymnal of 700 songs plus 300 other arrangements are in Finale. This will cause a lot of problems and extra work from music leaders. I use Doric personally and love it but Had Finale on my computers for 20+ years.
I had to finagle with Dorico, but I have it up and running now. Noteperformer works fine with it, and I just gritting my teeth and inputting a score today to learn it. So far I like the articulations and dynamic placement, but I prefer Finale note entry, but getting better at Dorico. Word of warning to Finale users - All the Numpad settings are off by 1 in Dorico! i.e. now Quarter note is 6, not 5, 16th note is 4, not 3... etc. Best of luck to all! Never give up! Never surrender!
FYI you can adjust the numpad shortcuts to reflect what makes sense to you in the key commands menu. I came from Sibelius originally and it was one of the first things I had to do!
Great attitude, excellent advice
Someone will definitely come up with converting app. Or else, Dorico will implement something in their software to make life easier. Cause, appart from learning a new program and customize it to get a new efficient workflow, the pain of conversion is the only other issue that make people freak out.
The dreaded email I did not see coming. It was like a punch to the gut. I watched a video about the XML formatting issues when you open a file from Finale into Dorico. It seemed minor if you know how to use Dorico. That is the rub. I have been using Finale since the Windows 3.5 version was released in the lare nineties. I'm an old dog that does not want to learn new tricks. Goodbye and thank you for all the memories.
I tried importing an XML file from Finale into Dorico last night. It is not so simple... Random beats of rests were added to parts, causing everything to become "out of alignment" so to speak. Text expressions were a mess. Took me about 35 minutes to clean up the 160 measure score in Dorico. Not looking forward to 35 years of scores (3.08gb of files) that will need to be transferred.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That!
I got Musescore
It’s frustrating that they don’t just open source the code and let the people do the work at the end of the day. It’s also frustrating that I’ve paid for this program under the idea that I had a perpetual license for the rest of my life and now they just up and pull the rug from us. And then have the audacity to not give us the transition period and give us the software for free.
Yes it is. Very much out of the blue with no warning sending everyone into panic! People's careers are on the line if they don't know an alternative software. Honestly, Dorico looks really robust and they have tons of features that Finale couldn't even come close to. I have a feeling Finale will be open source at some point. If not, I wonder what it would cost to purchase MakeMusic and release Finale. The valuation of their company is probably garbage now so it's not worth much.
@@KevinLynchNJ Agreed. There are so many people's decades of hard work and $$$ invested in the creation of their Finale files that SOMEONE should purchase the rights to Finale from MakeMusic and do everyone a favor by continuing the software under new management and issuance. Composers, arrangers, music schools/departments in colleges and universities, and the entire entertainment industry which uses notated music stand to suffer tremendously from the impact of this business decision by MakeMusic. Finale has a huge and well-established user base worldwide and so has a ready-made clientele for the next owner of Finale as a business property who recognizes this opportunity to pick up the fumbled ball and run with it. But they must do so soon because time is of the essence.
I've used both and I like Dorico more, Finale was cool but its past it's time ...like me!
hi you seem super nice, when u refer to "clients" who are they? and do u make a living with notation or do u do other stuff too. thanks!!!!!
I do! I also produce music, compose, record, orchestrate. My portfolio is on my website at www.kevinlynchnj.com
@@KevinLynchNJ are you on fiverr?
@@catherinemasuda5730 I am not, but I am on SoundBetter - soundbetter.com/profiles/598391-kevin-lynch
Hundreds of files, 25 years work, more than 3.000 pages of sheet music digitalized... yes, will the migration be a work for another life? 😅
Bummer. 😢
I transfer my Finale files over to Dorico, but it needs to tweeked a bit.
How easy was it? Do you have a house template or style you are using for all your music or just the defaults in Dorico?
They may have been facing bankruptcy, forcing the abrupt timing.
I've been using Finale since 1991. Going to be a slog, but the intro vids make it seem that Dorico does something better than Finale.
Totally. Finale had its good stuff, but the tedious click and drag method and issues seem to be remedied with Dorico. I’ll dive in tomorrow!
I think we are well within our legal rights as licensees to crack it
I’ve routinely found Steinberg to be easier to deal with than Avid.
Good to know! In what way?
Much easier to get help quickly and no subscriptions. When a new Steinberg version comes out it's not required that you take it and there's no yearly fee to keep using what you've already got. Before Avid bought Sibelius, it was very easy to get help from them, free of charge. Now depending on what kind of help one needs, Avid charges fees. It's also extremly difficult to get to an actual person to talk to. They always try to get you to talk to their Support Bot, but the Bot has never been useful to me. Back when Sibelius was privately owned their support was almost as good as Finale's support. Cubase is my main DAW, but I also have a license for Pro Tools, but I long ago stopped using it because of the yearly fees and because I just didn't really like Pro Tools as much as Cubase. There are other excellent DAWs out there that don't cost anywhere near what Pro Tools charges.
well be ready to pay for every update unce or twice a year
For Dorico??
Dorico user here since V3. Small number updates are free (ex 5.1>5.2), they only charge for major large number upgrades (5.x > 6.x whenever that gets released). Typically about ~1.5-2 years for that. The major upgrade prices have been reasonable.
Disaster. 35 years of work for me.
Its problem is that it works too well. How do we continue to support it independently? Windows sucks and Doritos and coda/makemusic leadership also sucks. This is evil and will extort millions from composers and it needs to be fought tooth and nail
XML conversion stinks. I tried to convert SIB files over to Finale and it looked like hot garbage.
The amount of time migrating scores is going to be agonizing. Tried opening several XML files in Dorico and it’s going to need a lot of work and formatting to get it to be printable again. Sigh…
@@KevinLynchNJ Exactly. My plan is to start fresh on Dorico and not format old XMLs
How are you planning to do this?
@@KevinLynchNJ Start building a Dorico template as I phase out Finale. Might take 6 months. Luckily I only work with piano/vocal
All of our church hymnal orchestrations are in Finale. Lifeway Worship’s entire hymnal of 700 songs plus 300 other arrangements are in Finale. This will cause a lot of problems and extra work from music leaders. I use Dorico personally and love it but Had Finale on my computers for 20+ years.
How do you like Dorico? Pros & Cons?
@@KevinLynchNJ I think there is a learning curve coming from Finale or Sibelius. I think you had to be more forward thinking and planned when using Finale. I think it's easier to adjust things on the fly or afterward. The integration with Cubase is a big selling point if you put any music to picture, which I've been dabbling in. The instruments load very fast without crashing the program (problem I had with Finale from time to time and with various versions of Sibelius). The shortcuts are different, as you would expect, but fairly logical. I would encourage everyone who's switching to start with video one and work through the first few vids and dive in. Let me think a bit and I should be able to come up with more pros/cons. I'm dealing with covid and am a bit tired.