# Sibelius is much, much, much better than Finale



## NoamL

I've been using Finale for a decade. Paid customer of Finale 2005 (and 2007.. 2010... 2012... 2014b). Until last week, I had never touched Sibelius.

*I always figured that Sibelius vs Finale was like DAW arguments.* You know, they're all more or less the same and you might as well use the one you're most comfortable with. Well, that's not true. Sibelius is better. And I'm never going back. Here is a short catalog of reasons.

1. Everything just snaps into place. Never move or stretch a hairpin. Never un-collide a dynamic. Everything is right the first time.

2. NotePerformer2 for Sibelius gives you decent playback capabilities, at least comparable to the built in Human Playback in Finale. You still have to use your orchestral imagination but hey... at this point in the industry if you're working with sheet music you're probably an orchestrator or copyist anyway.

3. Blazing fast keyboard shortcuts. Never open a menu to select a slur or dynamic. Just type it in. Adding _*mf*_ to a note is as fast as Cmd+E+M+F done. Slurs and hairpins are lightning fast and accurately shaped.

4. Musician instructions... super, super fast. On Finale I have to set up custom expressions bound to the keys (1. 2. a2 3. 4. are bound to Q W E R T respectively) and these have to be recreated or imported in every piece of music. In Sibelius a2 is just Cmd+T+a2 done. Automatically in the right place, right font.

5. Instant playback from anywhere you like in the score. Just select a note and press P. No more entering the right bar number into Finale's transport bar ever again or using the casette forward/rewind buttons.

6. Selective playback! Select any combination of staves, press P and Sibelius plays back JUST those instruments. 

7. Free scrolling around your score during playback.

8. Change an instrument in the middle of a movement? Just select the measure where the switch happens, answer a really quick dialog box to change the instrument and Sibelius does EVERYTHING for you. It creates the switch-instrument reminder text; changes the transposition; changes the instrument playback sound; even switches from one kind of percussion staff to another. Something that would take several minutes and multiple steps in Finale.

9. Cautionary accidentals automatically added as you write.

10. Paste as cue. No, seriously: cue notes are as simple as copying from one stave to another. Again Sibelius intelligently does everything right the first time and for you - resize notes, label the source instrument.

11. Paste as voice. This one is sexy! No more playing Nine Men's Morris with Finale's Move Layers "feature."

There's lots more. Of course adopting any new software has hurdles (for example, I went hunting in the manual for 20 minutes yesterday trying to figure out how to hide and show multirests in parts and how to move measures between systems and pages, which is very fast in Finale).

But overall, I just can't see going back to Finale. I'm sure the folks at Joann Kane and so on have their own souped up super-custom version of Finale with house rules and incredible macros and everything. But as a ten year customer of Finale, I feel I know the program about as well as any independent composer/orchestrator/copyist not working with a music publishing house can expect to. And every time I learn a new Sibelius feature it's like shaving off a desert island beard's worth of lost productivity time in Finale.


----------



## d.healey

It's a shame avid have abandoned it but at least it hasn't disappeared... Yet


----------



## ctsai89

Glad that I never started with finale first. 

Now... only if I used Cubase instead of Logic Pro since the beginning.... #regrets


----------



## Prockamanisc

Finale beats Sibelius if you're trying to make the most professional looking score. No matter how hard you try, Sibelius will never reach that level of professionalism. Sibelius is a great tool for composing, I feel, although people who grew up with Finale say that they compose just as effortlessly within Finale. I'm a Sibelius guy, though, through and through.


----------



## Luke W

NoamL, it sounds like Sibelius is a better fit for you and may have some playback advantages that make a difference if playback is crucial for your workflow. But as an arranger and engraver who's used Finale since 1992, I noticed many of your points simply demonstrated you hadn't found the shortcuts in Finale. Holding Cmd+E+M+F to add an mezzo forte in Sibelius is not faster than pressing 5 in Finale. Now having articulations snap into place without collisions would be nice (one reason I'm hopeful about Dorico). But pasting individual voices in Finale is simple, as is pasting cued notes. Scrolling around during playback would be interesting, but not valuable for the work I do. Again, sounds like Sibelius fits your workflow better - but engravers here in Nashville that use both programs would never say Sibelius is "much, much, much better." I would say "simpler to learn" if you're just starting with notation software. But Prockamanisc is right: Finale delivers the best looking scores, no contest.

On a different note, I think both Sibelius and Finale have become complacent. Sibelius because of new owners firing their developers, Finale because of lack of focus on significant improvement. I'm hopeful that Dorico's entrance into the field will spur both companies to innovate and, you know, fix bugs we've been griping about for years. Here's to healthy competition!


----------



## Rodney Money

Maybe it's destination (Finale) vs. the journey (Sibelius)?


----------



## Paul T McGraw

d.healey said:


> It's a shame avid have abandoned it but at least it hasn't disappeared... Yet



Avid has not abandoned Sibelius they just switched programming teams.

There are a steady stream of small improvements being made. There really is no need for any big improvements, as the program includes every feature and ability most users could ever dream of having. And I haven't discovered any sort of bug in years. I bought the annual subscription last year and this year, and a new version comes out about every 60 days with little improvements.

No, Avid did not abandon Sibelius, and they probably never will in my lifetime. And based on what has happened with that "other" team of programmers, perhaps the Avid folks made the decision to change teams for some very good reasons that were just never made public. Who knows? But I love Sibelius, and with NotePerformer I can not imagine using anything else.

(Also, I bought Finale just a few months ago to compare. Paid the cross-grade price and still have it. It has more options for engravers, true, but for composers, orchestrators and arrangers I can't figure out why anyone would stay with Finale.)


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen

I find that Sibelius rarely looks as good as Finale. It's also much more difficult to do complicated notation things in Sibelius. This is coming from a classically trained engraver. It can be slow, though. Check out Tim Davies's videos on orchestrating in Finale. Those tricks helped get through tight deadlines.


----------



## NoamL

Luke W said:


> ut as an arranger and engraver who's used Finale since 1992, I noticed many of your points simply demonstrated you hadn't found the shortcuts in Finale. Holding Cmd+E+M+F to add an mezzo forte in Sibelius is not faster than pressing 5 in Finale.



Luke I'm aware of all the Command-driven shortcuts in Finale (as I mentioned, I've augmented them with my own set of shortcuts for adding things like 1., a2, senza sord. etc).

The problem with these shortcuts is that they are context dependent on the tool menu. To switch from note entry to adding an "expression" (dynamic or written technique), you have to click a tool... then again to add an articulation... then again to add a slur or hairpin. I wish it were as simple as pressing 5 but if you have the wrong tool selected or no tool at all, it's not...

With Sibelius it's all driven directly from the keyboard. You can enter a note, make it sharp, make it staccato, add _*mp*_, and add *1.* all in one flow of typing.



Prockamanisc said:


> Finale beats Sibelius if you're trying to make the most professional looking score. No matter how hard you try, Sibelius will never reach that level of professionalism.





Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I find that Sibelius rarely looks as good as Finale.





Luke W said:


> But Prockamanisc is right: Finale delivers the best looking scores, no contest.



The only thing I find lacking professionalism in S is that there's a lot of white space on the page and I prefer the tighter measure arrangement of F. But considering that literally every orchestral score I've ever prepared in Finale has required a last step, often taking an hour or more, of budging stave distances, articulations, hairpins and slurs to decollide everything (and collisions aren't even highlighted, like they are in Sibelius!) and then often doing the same thing again on several if not all of the parts, it's kind of strange to say it's more professional.


----------



## gjelul

Sibelius is faster - however, it is no match to Finale when ot comes to what it can do.
And this is coming from a Sibelius user btw.


----------



## Paul T McGraw

gjelul said:


> Sibelius is faster - however, it is no match to Finale when ot comes to what it can do.
> And this is coming from a Sibelius user btw.



You are referring to publisher level engraving, right? Other than high-level engraving, what does Sibelius lack?


----------



## gjelul

Paul T McGraw said:


> You are referring to publisher level engraving, right? Other than high-level engraving, what does Sibelius lack?



That too.

What I find Sibelius lacks in comparison to Finale is new techniques, or other new music gestures, are way easier to create in Finale. As a composer in Finale I feel that I can create anything that I can imagine in music terms. With Sibelius no. 

However, when I was choosing which software to keep using for my notation needs, I used both for 2 hours each. Did get way ahead with Sibelius and I it for my everyday needs. Finale is a deeper notation program though.


----------



## Luke W

NoamL said:


> Luke I'm aware of all the Command-driven shortcuts in Finale (as I mentioned, I've augmented them with my own set of shortcuts for adding things like 1., a2, senza sord. etc).
> 
> The problem with these shortcuts is that they are context dependent on the tool menu. To switch from note entry to adding an "expression" (dynamic or written technique), you have to click a tool... then again to add an articulation... then again to add a slur or hairpin. I wish it were as simple as pressing 5 but if you have the wrong tool selected or no tool at all, it's not...



I have all the tools assigned to the function keys. So to be more accurate: I have to press F2 then 5 to assign mezzo forte. So two keys.


----------



## Luke W

NoamL said:


> The only thing I find lacking professionalism in S is that there's a lot of white space on the page and I prefer the tighter measure arrangement of F. But considering that literally every orchestral score I've ever prepared in Finale has required a last step, often taking an hour or more, of budging stave distances, articulations, hairpins and slurs to decollide everything (and collisions aren't even highlighted, like they are in Sibelius!) and then often doing the same thing again on several if not all of the parts, it's kind of strange to say it's more professional.



The final engraved product is visually superior. Whether you have to manually deal with collisions is irrelevant. Finale creates a better looking finished score. So far those chiming in on the thread seem to agree on this point. I have yet to have a client ask me to create publisher-ready scores in Sibelius.

But if engraving for publication isn't your main focus, then Sibelius offers other advantages over Finale. I believe it's more friendly to the composition process, especially in terms of learning curve from ground zero. So if ease of use and better playback are of utmost importance, then Sibelius is the better option.


----------



## Vik

NoamL said:


> 6. Selective playback! Select any combination of staves, press P and Sibelius plays back JUST those instruments.


Nice, I wasn't aware of that one. And - sorry for the whataboutism/offtopic question, but if you're going to learn a new score program anyway - why not consider Dorico, made by the original Sibelius team, but from scratch? Too much missing functionality, maybe?


----------



## resound

Magnetic Layout. 'Nuff said.


----------



## ctsai89

ugh Im honestly done with scores though. DAW only now


----------



## leon chevalier

So ?
Finally use Sibelius,
or sibeliusly use Final ?

(ok I leave...)


----------



## Anders Wall

This is what matters.
-->
http://blog.steinberg.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ten-music-notation-programs.pdf

Best,
Anders


----------



## stigc56

Paul T McGraw said:


> Avid has not abandoned Sibelius they just switched programming teams.
> 
> There are a steady stream of small improvements being made. There really is no need for any big improvements, as the program includes every feature and ability most users could ever dream of having. And I haven't discovered any sort of bug in years. I bought the annual subscription last year and this year, and a new version comes out about every 60 days with little improvements.
> 
> No, Avid did not abandon Sibelius, and they probably never will in my lifetime. And based on what has happened with that "other" team of programmers, perhaps the Avid folks made the decision to change teams for some very good reasons that were just never made public. Who knows? But I love Sibelius, and with NotePerformer I can not imagine using anything else.
> 
> (Also, I bought Finale just a few months ago to compare. Paid the cross-grade price and still have it. It has more options for engravers, true, but for composers, orchestrators and arrangers I can't figure out why anyone would stay with Finale.)


I work with Sibelius every day around 5 hours, and I can assure you that there are several bugs! Parameters in engraving options that are not remembered correctly, running headers that suddenly appears out of the blue. And how about slurs between staves, used a lot in harp and piano. I and so many other Sibelius users has been complaining about that for years, nothing happens! I can't wait to see Dorico get the last things in place and I and the Publishing House I work for will switch to Dorico ASAP.


----------



## Paul T McGraw

stigc56 said:


> I work with Sibelius every day around 5 hours, and I can assure you that there are several bugs! Parameters in engraving options that are not remembered correctly, running headers that suddenly appears out of the blue. And how about slurs between staves, used a lot in harp and piano. I and so many other Sibelius users has been complaining about that for years, nothing happens! I can't wait to see Dorico get the last things in place and I and the Publishing House I work for will switch to Dorico ASAP.



I fully understand your frustration and sympathize. Yet you are still using Sibelius for professional engraving? There must be some things about the program you prefer over Finale, right? Anyway, since I use Sibelius for composing and doing simple arrangements, I have not encountered these bugs, but I do not doubt you. As a retired business person, my guess is that the Sibelius management team sees the thousands of folks like myself as their target market, as opposed to the smaller number of professional engravers, and prioritizes the things they think the larger market would use most.

It could also be true that flaws in the original programming code make it difficult (impossible?) to address the bugs you mention without either a complete rewrite or more man hours to find the glitches than they can afford. I did some programming in the 80's and 90's as a hobby and I know that the bigger and more complex software becomes, the more difficult it is to solve issues.

Anyway, I hope Dorico is one day the program you want and need. I am just too old, at 64, to wait for that to happen.


----------



## Vik

stigc56 said:


> I can't wait to see Dorico get the last things in place and I and the Publishing House I work for will switch to Dorico ASAP.


May I ask what the most important things you have on the list of missing last things?


----------



## Pietro

Sibelius is still a great tool. But the biggest problem with it is the speed. The bigger the project, the slower it gets - to a point where an 80-page orchestral score takes often more than 5 seconds to copy a single note and another 5 to paste it in. However selecting a note and just clicking middle mouse key to paste it in is instant. Plugins also take more time the larger the score. To a point, where exploding parts would take you 10 hours instead of 10 minutes, performing one bar per second.

- Piotr


----------



## stigc56

Vik said:


> May I ask what the most important things you have on the list of missing last things?


I do a lot of arrangements for musicals and small combo's, so I need Dorico to be able to write drums staffs (5 line) slash writing for rhythm guitars, cue notes are also very important, and then I need to be able to record the music live into the app. My sight reading is good enough to be able to "record" a bass in one go, so that is needed as well. But I see the force in the whole structure about master pages, I mean the whole point in using computers for this kind of work is to be able to reuse your work and although Sibelius has the housestyles setup it's kind of convoluted to use in my daily work. I have created a setup in Metagrid and together with Keyboard Maestro it works okay.


----------



## stigc56

Paul T McGraw said:


> I fully understand your frustration and sympathize. Yet you are still using Sibelius for professional engraving? There must be some things about the program you prefer over Finale, right? Anyway, since I use Sibelius for composing and doing simple arrangements, I have not encountered these bugs, but I do not doubt you. As a retired business person, my guess is that the Sibelius management team sees the thousands of folks like myself as their target market, as opposed to the smaller number of professional engravers, and prioritizes the things they think the larger market would use most.
> 
> It could also be true that flaws in the original programming code make it difficult (impossible?) to address the bugs you mention without either a complete rewrite or more man hours to find the glitches than they can afford. I did some programming in the 80's and 90's as a hobby and I know that the bigger and more complex software becomes, the more difficult it is to solve issues.
> 
> Anyway, I hope Dorico is one day the program you want and need. I am just too old, at 64, to wait for that to happen.


I wrote a book about Finale in 2001 in Danish. I have taught Finale for many years and written quite a lot of scores in Finale, but the moment when Sibelius was able to adjust layout automatic, and avoid collisions between different elements, I bought the app.!


----------



## ptram

During the years, I've repeatedly heard that Finale can do things that Sibelius can't, and that its output is superior. I've not yet had evidence of this superiority, and would like to put these statements to test.

I'm stuck on Sibelius 6.2, since I hate everything that came after, but would be more than happy to partecipate to any comparison on copying any complex score in different notation programs. This would not shown the full set of differences (for example, it will not test speed with bigger scores, or how easy it is to extract separate parts), but would at least compare the layout features of each.

Paolo


----------



## cmillar

For me, I started on Finale back in the late '90's, then happily switched to Sibelius ver. 2 and have been using it up to version 7.5 for the last couple of years.

I got hold of Finale 2012 a few years ago, and just upgraded to Finale 25 last month....and am trying to get up to speed again on Finale.

I'm finding that Finale is definitely as fast as Sibelius for anything (once you use the Macros and set up your own keystrokes as well)

Chords? ...I haven't gotten into the Finale system too much yet... always thought Sibelius did jazz chords very well.

But....when trancribing or having to listen to an audio track in order to add and print out extra horn parts or something, I really love Finale over Sibelius. You just import an audio track, and you can even line up the score easily with the audio track.

Finale's not supporting video right in the program right now, but if I'm scoring for video I just do that in MOTU DP as my DAW (and, it'll convert anything to Music XML if one needs to print out parts for players from back in Finale or Sibelius...or, the DP scoring is pretty decent for fast and easy parts as well!) 

Some things are much faster to accomplish in Finale, and different things are easier to accomplish in Sibelius.

Score playback with NotePerformer is fantastic in Sibelius....but Finale does as super job as well using the built-in Garritan library and Human Playback. (.....nothing, nothing, nothing will ever be better than using a dedicated DAW for convincing 'human-like' playback imho....at least at this point in time....it seems futile to expect Finale or Sibelius to even come close to what you can do with Kontakt, PLAY, etc.etc. etc. in a real DAW program.)

It's a toss up....I'm not sure what I'll really 'stick with', but I really want to get to know Finale really well again seeing as I'm not a fan of Avid and their subcription model. There isn't anything past version 7.5 that matters to me.

So....they really both get the job done for most all music printing and scoring needs, except for the most avant-garde capabilities of Finale.


----------



## cmillar

douggibson said:


> Sibelius has the same function. No difference.



I mean to say that I like the way in Finale that you can actually see the audio track, and then adjust the timing in order to synch up the barlines to match the tempo of the audio file....and then start playback from whereever you like in the score.

Seems more clumsy in Sibelius; like you have to use ReWire and have an audio track in a DAW, create a MIDI tempo track, and then import that into Sibelius in order to match what Finale can do simply.

But, maybe I haven't explored that enough in Sibelius.


----------



## cmillar

douggibson said:


> No, nope. That's not how you do this in Sibelius. The "video" player plays mp3's and waves etc.
> You can have the audio just as you described, only not seeing the wave form. No rewire, or other program needed.
> Start and stop as you wish.



Thanks!....plus I found this great link as well:

https://hincheymusic.com/sibelius-playing-an-mp3-or-wav-or-aiff-in-sibelius/


----------



## cmillar

Now...my major compaint about Finale, and why I have to use Sibelius for ease and intuitiveness....

I'm pencil/paper trained middle-aged guy, and I like to work quickly and easily when I'm composing/arranging.

So, I've usually done most of my work on paper (at least even sketches) on paper first, and then get it into Sibelius, (or Finale once in awhile when wanting to compare programs.)

But I've been trying to compose directly into Sibelius over the last year, so that I can 'bypass' the transfer from paper and maybe save myself some time...and to try to really treat the software as composer-friendly to me for my initial writing.

Sibelius has been great, and I'm adapting. I love the way you can choose to 'noodle' and play on the keyboard in order to work out the music before hitting 'N' and then inputting your ideas.

It's what 'Speedy Entry' in Finale is trying to do....right?

But, in Finale, when you use 'Speedy' it squishes all you notes together, creating a real eysore and a technical 'flow-stopper' for composing and seeing what the hell is going on. On all the Finale forums and help groups, this seems to be a major complaint and for every complaint there is somebody with a different solution to try in order to get the input notes spacing themselves correctly.

In Sibelius, the music just flows onto the score, and thanks to 'Magnetic Layout', a composer can stay inspired, almost like writing with pencil on paper.

Plus, all the keystroke shortcuts that you can create yourself, in addition to the ones that already exist, really make Sibelius very composer friendly.

So...to me, Sibelius does seem a clear winner when it come to my way of thinking and working.

Haven't tried Dorico yet, but should probably try a demo.

Also...the little Notion program on an iPad is very useful when you try the 'handwriting' option....great for some idea sketching....the handwriting recognition really does work!

It's great to read and get people's feedback on the notation programs here in addition to all the other great V.I. information.

Excellent community!


----------



## JohnG

NoamL said:


> The problem with these shortcuts is that they are context dependent on the tool menu.



Yes ^^^^!!!!. 

I have been using Finale since 1.0 and this idiotic tool menu constraint still makes it incredibly sluggish. If you double-click an object, it should jump to the relevant tool. It doesn't.

That said, I can't stand / trust Avid to do anything but try to milk money from users, so I'm staying with Finale for the time being.


----------



## prodigalson

JohnG said:


> I have been using Finale since 1.0 and this idiotic tool menu constraint still makes it incredibly sluggish. If you double-click an object, it should jump to the relevant tool. It doesn't.



It does, you just have to be in the selection tool which you can get to by hitting escape. It is an extra step but at least it's quicker than clicking on the tool.


----------



## JohnG

prodigalson said:


> It does, you just have to be in the selection tool which you can get to by hitting escape. It is an extra step but at least it's quicker than clicking on the tool.



I can't quite understand, but that would be nice. Are you saying that you simply press the "Esc" key, then double click something?


----------



## prodigalson

JohnG said:


> I can't quite understand, but that would be nice. Are you saying that you simply press the "Esc" key, then double click something?



unless I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for then yeah, at least in 2014.5. While in the Selection Tool just double-click on any articulation, expression, chord etc and it'll take directly to that tool while also allowing you to edit that object.

While in any tool, just hitting Esc defaults to the Selection Tool


----------



## OleJoergensen

JohnG said:


> Yes ^^^^!!!!.
> 
> I have been using Finale since 1.0 and this idiotic tool menu constraint still makes it incredibly sluggish. If you double-click an object, it should jump to the relevant tool. It doesn't.
> 
> That said, I can't stand / trust Avid to do anything but try to milk money from users, so I'm staying with Finale for the time being.


Inspired by this video, I setup Quickeys 4 Mac with an Shuttle pro 2, to have quick access to the funtions I use most in Finale. I think it helped the workflow .


https://www.contourdesign.com/product/shuttlepro-v2/


----------



## Luke W

prodigalson said:


> unless I'm misunderstanding what you're looking for then yeah, at least in 2014.5. While in the Selection Tool just double-click on any articulation, expression, chord etc and it'll take directly to that tool while also allowing you to edit that object.
> 
> While in any tool, just hitting Esc defaults to the Selection Tool


Yep - what he said. I use that constantly.


----------



## Darren Durann

I tried Sibelius (been using Finale since 2006) and didn't like it as much, but that probably had a lot to do with the years on Finale. I think I'm too old to change my workflow. It still seemed like quite a nice program.

I just realized...I hardly ever even notate music anymore. I got so used to writing and working with midi.


----------



## Piano Pete

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I find that Sibelius rarely looks as good as Finale. It's also much more difficult to do complicated notation things in Sibelius. This is coming from a classically trained engraver. It can be slow, though. Check out Tim Davies's videos on orchestrating in Finale. Those tricks helped get through tight deadlines.



Gerhard, I have some workflow questions for you: 

1) Do you know if rtpMIDI can do the routing that Davies has in Finale on a PC? I have been dying for the longest time to set up these sorts of macros, but I have never found the time to really pursue it or learn a lot about it. The last time I tried using midi for macros, or macros in general, I was unsuccessful setting it up. I had it so that whenever a specific midi commanded was executed it would activate; however, it did it for any midi device I had hooked up (not ideal when putting things in with a keyboard).

2) Do you know if quick keys work on PC?

3) If I remember correctly from some of your posts, you use the logical editor in Cubase a lot. Do you have any recommendations on learning how to use that? (This last one doesn't have to do with Finale or Sibelius, but it is in the same general workflow vein.)


----------



## NoamL

Hey all, just wanted you to know I didn't just trollpost and abandon this thread, I'm busy orchestrating but there's some very interesting back & forth about the competing features and hopefully I'll have time next week to respond to all your thoughtful comments.


----------



## MaxOctane

d.healey said:


> It's a shame avid have abandoned it but at least it hasn't disappeared... Yet



No, not abandoned. There have been several updates, most recently this summer. It's still alive!!


----------



## Piano Pete

I have never really understood the Finale vs Sibelius war. As long as all of the information is there in a clean manner, the musicians don't care and neither does the public listening to the music. For engraving, I was told to learn one well. At the time, it was taught to me this way: Sibelius is quicker and easier to pick up from the get-go but is semi rigid in what it can do; Finale, on the other hand, requires a lot of book time to figure out how things function but is extremely flexible. Both can get you to the finish line: handing parts off to musicians. Luckily for us, lots of juicy plugins, macros, and toys have come about to streamline Finale's and Sibelius's workflow.

Now I am still a young bug in the industry, but I have never seen an engraver get turned away because they worked in either program. Just make sure you have nicely spaced scores, which is seems to take forever in either program, and make sure that you do not have collisions! The other oddity to avoid, that always gives me a chuckle on the podium, is the one page with large note-heads and the next one with micro ones.


----------



## Maddcow

I've been using Finale since around 1994 and have always felt it was better than Sibelius. I've tried Sibelius every few years to see what was happening with it but just couldn't get into it. However, I haven't looked at S for a while now and some of the features mentioned in this thread have me intrigued again (i.e. slurs/hairpins, collision avoidance etc). 

For me, though, the annual subscription is a major turn-off.


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen

Piano Pete said:


> 1) Do you know if rtpMIDI can do the routing that Davies has in Finale on a PC? I have been dying for the longest time to set up these sorts of macros, but I have never found the time to really pursue it or learn a lot about it. The last time I tried using midi for macros, or macros in general, I was unsuccessful setting it up. I had it so that whenever a specific midi commanded was executed it would activate; however, it did it for any midi device I had hooked up (not ideal when putting things in with a keyboard).


I've only used it with key commands.


Piano Pete said:


> 2) Do you know if quick keys work on PC?


It doesn't and I don't know of any alternatives. 


Piano Pete said:


> 3) If I remember correctly from some of your posts, you use the logical editor in Cubase a lot. Do you have any recommendations on learning how to use that? (This last one doesn't have to do with Finale or Sibelius, but it is in the same general workflow vein.)


RTFM!  I'd suggest looking through the presets and try to understand how they work.


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen

Piano Pete said:


> musicians don't care



In my experience, they do. I certainly do. If a score is easier to read things go smoother. When I get a part made in Sibelius (and most of the time you can easily tell unless the person has gone through the trouble of changing all of the default settings) I often get distracted by how things look. Things generally stand out less when it was created in Finale and I'll play better as a result. It probably has to do with it looking more like published scores that I grew up reading and what's in the notation manuals like Behind Bars.


----------



## Piano Pete

Thanks for the reply haha. Someone asked me the other day if I was reading any good books. I just listed all of the software manuals I have been reading :\... what a life.

I think many awkward scoring scenarios could be avoided if people just referenced published scores. Also, I second _Behind Bars_!!!! Cannot recommend it enough.


----------



## GalleryHakon

I've been using Sibelius, but since I don't use it very often or for very complex things, I actually find the interface clunky and unintuitive – unsurprisingly, I guess, considering how many options it has that I'll never need. Scores come out looking great with little tweaking, but I have found myself preferring to use Musescore. If you engrave for publishing, it may not be the ideal option as it won't give you as beautiful a score straight out of the box, but one could still do some of the groundwork in Musescore and export via MusicXML or Midi for final tweaking in Sibelius or Finale, which I think is a workflow I'd prefer from now on if I ever need to.


----------



## ptram

The defaults in Sibelius are different than in Finale. The two most evident differences should be the default font, and the note spacing rules.

Finale's Maestro font is modeled after the Fifties' Notaset character set, inspired to Schott's rendition of Breitkopf & Hartel's early century font. Sibelius' Opus seems to me like a slightly wider, more modern version of the Peters' end-of-19th's / early-20th century font. Helsinki looks like a smaller and slightly rounder version of Henle's Urtext Edition font, narrower, gentler and more ascetic. You can use Norfolk (a version of Bravura), and go a bit nearer to the Maestro/Notaset look.

Note spacing in Sibelius is "optical", with varying ratio, therefore less predictable spacing, while it should follow a fix Fibonacci rule in Finale. Change the spacing rules in Sibelius, and you get something similar to Finale.

Paolo


----------



## shnootre

I use Finale to compose, and to engrave, and have used it since 1993. I also own Sibelius, which some of my students use. I think for quick layout, Sibelius is better - Finale really makes you WORK for your formatting, and there are several things that happen during formatting that can be really devastating (every accidentally select ALL staves in a score, rather than just the ones on the page you're formatting, and then not notice for an hour or two how totally ruined all your prior formatting is?) 

For composing, I will never ever be able to switch to Sibelius. Sibelius doesn't handle tuplets well, or inserting notes. In finale, you can turn any notes into a tuplet, and you can play around with various rhythmic values. Should this be four quarter notes? A quarter note triplet and then a quarter? A quintuplet with the last note a quintuple half note? Toggling between these options is easy as pie in Finale. And the option to push notes into the next measure, or keep pushing notes into next measures until it all works out, is just great. If you're a composer who thrives on playing around with different rhythms and different rhythmic settings of an idea, I don't know how you could prefer Sibelius, where, in order to turn three quarter notes into a quarter note triplet, you have to erase them and start over. Madness. 

I also love the tools in Finale, especially since there is also the option to just double click on an item to activate its tools. I often just grab stuff with the selection tool, but on a dense score page, it's great to be able to select the smart shape or expression or articulation tool, and then just select a whole bunch of like objects and move them where I want. 

I have incorporated keyboard maestro into my workflow, and since the advent of 64 bit Finale and my really learning how to incorporate VE Pro, I've gotten great playback, and have mastered (to the extent possible) the midi features of finale, primitive though they may be. It is frustrating to me that the Finale team doesn't care a whit about composers working with third-party sample libraries, and the archaic midi tool has required a lot of macro programming in keyboard maestro, but once you scale the learning curve, it's actually pretty powerful. 

I haven't quite managed to understand sound sets in Sibelius, and I always feel bad that my Sibelius students don't get to benefit from my groovy sound libraries. Oh well. 

I thought Dorico was gonna be the solution, but it's rollout struck me as really embarrassing and presumptuous. Don't bill your product as the new standard and charge top dollar when it's entirely handicapped. 

One day there may be a notation program that really gives composers who are more comfortable working with scores than piano roll the power of a good DAW. I really don't believe it's too much to ask, and I hope that day is coming soon. 

In the meantime, I've weighed the pros and cons and I know Finale is the choice for me. Sibelius has been trendier since day one, and it's got a quicker learning curve and does quick formatting better (or at least more easily). With finale I feel like every single formatting move has to be done manually, but you can get a great result. 

One final thing - in Finale 25.4 export audio no longer works properly for me. I get great playback using VE Pro, but I have to use a third party application and bounce my audio in real time. That's a drag, but since the audio demos are really a secondary matter for me, it's not the end of the world. I know Finale doesn't care, since none of the libraries I'm using are Garritan.


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen

douggibson said:


> That's funny. I am 90-95% sure "Behind Bars" used Sibelius for the examples. (excluding the already published famous score examples) It was published by Faber, who have been a pretty strong leaning Sibelius using publishing house. I seem to recall Daniel (when he was with Sibelius) mentioning this.


Like I said before, my issue with Sibelius is how it looks by default. Of course these people change it. I just think that Finale looks a lot better by default.



douggibson said:


> However it is just rubbish to say using Sibelius will hinder a performance. Your telling me "Breitkopf & Hartel's early century font" means you can play Rach 3, but if it is in Helsinki font...... nope. No way. It's fine to like the aesthetic of one, but it's BS that it would impact a performance. Plus the notation manual you cited was done with Sibelius.



When you're sight reading and have only 1 chance to play it, everything on the page matters. There have been times that I copied out parts so that I could read them because there's no time to decipher poorly photocopied handwritten scores published 100 years ago while reading. Yes, I could have learned to play off of that but that would be far more work and I'd have to practice it. It's the same thing when new scores just don't look right and the proportions are off. I've seen it in everything from student works to scores for recording sessions to scores from revered composers who do it themselves.

When I'm reading I shouldn't be getting distracted by thinking about whatever program it was created in. Music from the larger publishers or places like JKMS seem to be the only place where you get decent looking scores nowadays. Parts from JKMS are pretty much the best to read. It's no wonder they get those projects...


----------



## Hellfiremusic

This will probably throw the cat among the pigeons, but Steinberg Dorico (designed by the creators of Sibelius) is, according to a friend of mine, far superior to Sibelius (since Avid asset stripped the company). I was a demonstrator for Sibelius once upon a time and still use it, but am going to switch! (PS: I can't comment on Finale since it has been years since I used it!)


----------



## Gerhard Westphalen

douggibson said:


> Sure, of course. With point #1 I have seen the most shocking terrible score and parts by both programs. You can't really blame the software for that. I have seen some horrible materials made by composers using Finale.
> 
> Which, again leads back to the person using it, and their knowledge.
> 
> For point #2 JKMS use BOTH Sibelius and Finale. They look really good because of the people using it.
> 
> Perhaps I misread your writing. I got the impression you were stating that only Finale is capable of professional looking sheet music.
> 
> I understand an aesthetic preference, and work flow, but it is WAY over the line to say only one is professional. Even your own examples go against this argument.
> 
> What aspect of this score would impede you as a performer ? I am genuinely curious.
> 
> https://www.nycmusicservices.com/engraving-a-new-edition-of-coplands-appalachian-spring/


I never said Sibelius can't do professional work. Theoretically you could make things identical in both. It's just that out of all of the horrible looking scores I've played (made by "professionals") the ones from Sibelius all stick out (all of which just use the stock settings). Having said that, most that I've played were made in Sibelius so perhaps I just don't have experience playing horrible looking Finale scores.

On the JKMS scores you can often tell which was used but they always look great regardless.

On parts, something about the staff itself throws me off. I'm not sure if it's the spacing of the lines itself or a more general sizing of it on the page. With Finale the staves are thin and long. Sort of elegant. In Sibelius you get these fatter staves (perhaps more space between the lines?) like you often find in children's books. I find that with things like clefs and time signatures the same is true with Sibelius being thicker and more blocky while Finale is thinner. This is, of course, without changing the settings. 

In scores, the thing that's a dead giveaway that it's Sibelius is the bracketing of the staves. Again, the Sibelius is thicker than the Finale. I personally just don't like the Sibelius one. I prefer to just use the line brackets which makes this difference more irrelevant but most people don't change it. As soon as I see the Sibelius bracketing I brace myself for a bad looking score. Dynamics will be all over the place, "p" and "f" will be used as dynamics, and at some point all hell will break loose  If I can't tell from the bracketing then I usually take it to be higher quality engraving. Something like a Henle score.


----------



## shnootre

I am curious how you did it - can you give the key strokes? I have never met a Sibelius user who could show me how to do that. It is impressive, though I would want to play around w it and compare - including the note insertion and rhythmic adjustment stuff. I have really tried to find corallaries in Sibelius for this Finale functionality and haven't. 

Also - and maybe you can get set me straight on this, it seems like w Sibelius you are hampered by not having a designated numeric keyboard. I am always on a powerbook, so this is a problem for me. Do I have this wrong too?



douggibson said:


> Sigh...... that's just simply not correct. There should be a rule that before you give a very specific reason why one notation program is superior than the other that the person posting has actually read the manual and worked with the program at a high level. There have been a number of times in this thread,people have said "XYZ...... just totally sucks, that's why this is better than that." and what is posted is simply not accurate.
> 
> Weird.... it seems to me a pretty neutral position to say the person using software the is the biggest factor.
> 
> I made you a quick video, about 9 seconds, where I enter 3 quarter notes and turn into a triplet. NO ERASING at all.
> 
> 
> 
> It's great you prefer Finale. It's a cool program.


----------



## Farkle

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I never said Sibelius can't do professional work. Theoretically you could make things identical in both. It's just that out of all of the horrible looking scores I've played (made by "professionals") the ones from Sibelius all stick out (all of which just use the stock settings). Having said that, most that I've played were made in Sibelius so perhaps I just don't have experience playing horrible looking Finale scores.
> 
> On the JKMS scores you can often tell which was used but they always look great regardless.
> 
> On parts, something about the staff itself throws me off. I'm not sure if it's the spacing of the lines itself or a more general sizing of it on the page. With Finale the staves are thin and long. Sort of elegant. In Sibelius you get these fatter staves (perhaps more space between the lines?) like you often find in children's books. I find that with things like clefs and time signatures the same is true with Sibelius being thicker and more blocky while Finale is thinner. This is, of course, without changing the settings.
> 
> In scores, the thing that's a dead giveaway that it's Sibelius is the bracketing of the staves. Again, the Sibelius is thicker than the Finale. I personally just don't like the Sibelius one. I prefer to just use the line brackets which makes this difference more irrelevant but most people don't change it. As soon as I see the Sibelius bracketing I brace myself for a bad looking score. Dynamics will be all over the place, "p" and "f" will be used as dynamics, and at some point all hell will break loose  If I can't tell from the bracketing then I usually take it to be higher quality engraving. Something like a Henle score.



Look, FWIW, you can customize the shit out of Sibelius (and Finale too, but that's not my point). Look at what FilmscoreAnalysis does on his youtube channel... he has changed the staff line thickness, the color of certain symbols, etc, to make it very readable and professional.



And, on a personal note, I find that if anyone wants to go pro with any software, then he/she should not be afraid to "get under the hood", and personalize and customize it. To that end, the Sibelius/Finale question to me feels kind of moot. If you don't like how it works, customize it, change it.

Mike


----------



## ptram

I did try to recreate a Henle Urtext score in Sibelius 6. I don't have the exact text font, and the music font (Helsinki) could be a bit more accurate (but by very little). Is it really so different to refuse the one for not looking enough like the other?


----------



## Phryq

Sibelius is waaay better than Finale, and I used (almost) nothing else for over a decade, but now with Reaper notation, I've switched. It's even more customisable (though not as pretty if you're printing). I have the same issue with not having a numpad (due to my own customisation) but you can turn your phone into a numpad, or as I intend to do, create an OSC / Midi controller for note-value functions.


----------



## Erick - BVA

Phryq said:


> Sibelius is waaay better than Finale, and I used (almost) nothing else for over a decade, but now with Reaper notation, I've switched. It's even more customisable (though not as pretty if you're printing). I have the same issue with not having a numpad (due to my own customisation) but you can turn your phone into a numpad, or as I intend to do, create an OSC / Midi controller for note-value functions.



I'll have to look into the notation features in Reaper. It's my DAW of choice, but I've avoided all things notation since I primarily play by ear.


----------



## Phryq

Sibelius19 said:


> I'll have to look into the notation features in Reaper. It's my DAW of choice, but I've avoided all things notation since I primarily play by ear.



Are you on OSX or Windows (or Linux)? 

Here's my action list, https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=177142[/url

It let's me use key commands very similarly to Sibelius, but likewise requires a num-pad. 2 days ago I tried Sibelius again, and was actually disappointed that some of my Reaper Hotkeys I'd gotten used to don't work in Sibelius (for example, I can time-select [ctrl-shift-drag] and press Ctrl-L to loop-play my selection.

Before Reaper-Notation I was rewiring and sending virtual-midi cables from Sibelius to Reaper, but having everything in 1 program now is very nice.


----------



## Erick - BVA

Phryq said:


> Are you on OSX or Windows (or Linux)?
> 
> Here's my action list, https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=177142[/url
> 
> It let's me use key commands very similarly to Sibelius, but likewise requires a num-pad. 2 days ago I tried Sibelius again, and was actually disappointed that some of my Reaper Hotkeys I'd gotten used to don't work in Sibelius (for example, I can time-select [ctrl-shift-drag] and press Ctrl-L to loop-play my selection.
> 
> Before Reaper-Notation I was rewiring and sending virtual-midi cables from Sibelius to Reaper, but having everything in 1 program now is very nice.



Thanks for the tip!


----------



## Rodney Money

Yes! Notation war hear me roar!


----------

