Ode to Finale
When I hit college in 1995, I went into the music computer lab and learned of a notation software called Finale. It would be the industry standard for all notation software for the next 30 years. It would change a lot over the years becoming more user friendly.
It would be an arduous learning curve in the beginning. I grew up in high school writing all my music by hand on manuscript paper. If I’m honest is still do at times. Finale would later change that for me as well as my village of friends. As any young musician in college, I started getting creative trying to jot down my ideas of musical concepts. I jumped in a band, an interesting band with the instrumentation. I will leave that for a later blog. The members of this band all came up with wonderful compositions of pieces that we could display around the Raleigh, North Carolina area. Finale made this process better as we could capture our compositions and update them without having to rewrite the whole thing as we would have with manuscript paper.
By my junior year when pep band season came around, everyone was trying to come up with the next great popular song to compose. We had several submissions from members of the pep band. As you can imagine some worked and some didn’t. Some of my friends still laugh at my attempt at a rendition of Erykah Badu’s “On & On”. Though we had other members who get more laughs for other reasons. It was all Outstanding! (Sorry inside joke).
It was still a long process completing songs back then. It was because it took me some time to start using the speedy entry feature of finale. After some time, I was able to purchase a midi keyboard and that opened a whole new world to me. I was able to play in my notes into finale! WHAT! That change my whole workflow.
Fast forward 15 years, finale would become a must. It was a software I could not live without. I was writing music for shows, and events. I was using finale for transcripts. I was even using finale to jot down scales and practice patterns.
Then I get a phone call from one of my friends in 2024. “Hey, did you know Finale was going end of life!” WHAT?
What was I going to do? I am at this point using finale all the time. Not to mention had just paid for the upgrade. I didn’t want to learn anything else. I had years invested into learning this platform. I would soon learn of Dorico. WHAT IS A DORICO? I don’t want it, I want my finale. I have a show coming up and I must write out parts what am I going to do. Reluctantly, I started watching some videos about this never thing taking the place of my long-lost friend.
I made the plunge, Dorico was offering a promotion to finale users. Thay had a special discount for finale users to move over to them. I jumped all the way in headfirst.
I have to say now I use Dorico more then I even more then I did finale because of accessibility. I have Dorico on my Mac, but I also can have a fully functional version of Dorico on my iPad. WHAT. I can even have both files in one location on my iCloud account. Meaning I can work on it from my mac and finish it on my iPad. Now I always have my iPad with me, so I can work on ideas from anywhere I am.
Farwell my Finale friend.
Some friends are in your life for a season, but they leave a lasting impression on you.
Finale is that friend.
It would be an arduous learning curve in the beginning. I grew up in high school writing all my music by hand on manuscript paper. If I’m honest is still do at times. Finale would later change that for me as well as my village of friends. As any young musician in college, I started getting creative trying to jot down my ideas of musical concepts. I jumped in a band, an interesting band with the instrumentation. I will leave that for a later blog. The members of this band all came up with wonderful compositions of pieces that we could display around the Raleigh, North Carolina area. Finale made this process better as we could capture our compositions and update them without having to rewrite the whole thing as we would have with manuscript paper.
By my junior year when pep band season came around, everyone was trying to come up with the next great popular song to compose. We had several submissions from members of the pep band. As you can imagine some worked and some didn’t. Some of my friends still laugh at my attempt at a rendition of Erykah Badu’s “On & On”. Though we had other members who get more laughs for other reasons. It was all Outstanding! (Sorry inside joke).
It was still a long process completing songs back then. It was because it took me some time to start using the speedy entry feature of finale. After some time, I was able to purchase a midi keyboard and that opened a whole new world to me. I was able to play in my notes into finale! WHAT! That change my whole workflow.
Fast forward 15 years, finale would become a must. It was a software I could not live without. I was writing music for shows, and events. I was using finale for transcripts. I was even using finale to jot down scales and practice patterns.
Then I get a phone call from one of my friends in 2024. “Hey, did you know Finale was going end of life!” WHAT?
What was I going to do? I am at this point using finale all the time. Not to mention had just paid for the upgrade. I didn’t want to learn anything else. I had years invested into learning this platform. I would soon learn of Dorico. WHAT IS A DORICO? I don’t want it, I want my finale. I have a show coming up and I must write out parts what am I going to do. Reluctantly, I started watching some videos about this never thing taking the place of my long-lost friend.
I made the plunge, Dorico was offering a promotion to finale users. Thay had a special discount for finale users to move over to them. I jumped all the way in headfirst.
I have to say now I use Dorico more then I even more then I did finale because of accessibility. I have Dorico on my Mac, but I also can have a fully functional version of Dorico on my iPad. WHAT. I can even have both files in one location on my iCloud account. Meaning I can work on it from my mac and finish it on my iPad. Now I always have my iPad with me, so I can work on ideas from anywhere I am.
Farwell my Finale friend.
Some friends are in your life for a season, but they leave a lasting impression on you.
Finale is that friend.