# Plunging.



## Brentishere (Sep 28, 2018)

After a quarter century of wishing, I’m just about to where I can commit to a real notation package. I tried the demos. Windows. I’m leaning toward Finale, but could find a way to justify Sibelius. I tried everything I could, but I couldn’t get Dorico to cooperate on my systems.
Of course, at $600 or so a throw, either one does take a bite. So, assuming Black Friday doesn’t come thru, that leaves a cross-grade of some kind. Both Avid and Makemusic say they’ll accept Notion as a suitable product to use, but I can’t imagine them ok-ing the iPad version (am I wrong?). Staffpad qualifies with the finale people; is there another way to lower the price? Not interested in cheating anyone, and if there is no other way, then there isn’t. Ideas?
–B


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## d.healey (Sep 28, 2018)

Musescore


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## studiostuff (Sep 28, 2018)

If you are an educator, or if you work preparing music at a church, I believe there is a substantial discount on Finale. At least I was able to get Finale (10-15 years ago) at a much reduced price while doing arrangements and other music activities for a church. 

That may not be the current situation, but I'd take a look. I definitely recommend Finale. Steep learning curve... beautiful, flexible output.


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## Brentishere (Sep 28, 2018)

d.healey said:


> Musescore


I looked at musescore. Perhaps I didn’t know how to find it, but I could find how to write in 15-tet and have it control 64-bit vsti’s.
Finale does this. Just does.
Myriad’s Harmony Assistant almost does this. Almost.
Sibelius? Well, I had issues with this particular acid test. Maybe if I threw enough time at it,
And, as I understand it, musescore doesn’t qualify for cross grade pricing.


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## d.healey (Sep 29, 2018)

Brentishere said:


> I looked at musescore. Perhaps I didn’t know how to find it, but I could find how to write in 15-tet and have it control 64-bit vsti’s.


You didn't state your purpose, if you need good playback nothing beats a DAW but for notation Musescore is excellent. Sibelius is pretty good for playback if you have a sound set for the sample library you want to use. Notion has built in support for a number of libraries but I don't know how easy it is to setup other libraries. I know nothing about Finale's playback.


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## Brentishere (Sep 29, 2018)

d.healey said:


> You didn't state your purpose, if you need good playback nothing beats a DAW but for notation Musescore is excellent. Sibelius is pretty good for playback if you have a sound set for the sample library you want to use. Notion has built in support for a number of libraries but I don't know how easy it is to setup other libraries. I know nothing about Finale's playback.



I’m trying to work with extended equal temperaments. Particularly 15 equally-tempered notes per octave (as opposed to the usual 12). Easley Blackwood came to the idea that this is where new harmonic musical progressions can be found and and exploited, and after tinkering with it for a long time in daws and synths and such, I have come to agree. 19-tone and quarter-tone just makes things sound bad, and frankly, I haven’t got the theoretical chops (due to a lack of time) to wiggle through 31 or 53; maybe they’re better, don’t know, haven’t heard it. Notation solves the sense-of-it problems that trying to just hear it and play it through the air and hope you don’t hit a wrong note that doing it with a daw would do.
So I would need a notation package that would meaningfully realize it (making d-sharp produce a different pitch than e-flat), and assist in sorting out the theory. You can do this with monophonic pitchbends, or by re-tuning the synth/vsti. Either way, I need the notation package to manage the remappings and/or the bends. Near as I can tell, Finale can do this. Not quite out of the box, but it looked close. Sibelius is a maybe on that. Couldn’t find it in Notion or Musescore or Lilypond, and Dorico was definitely a maybe-someday-have-faith.
And so my question was what was the most economical crossgrade path from a zero-point, as they don’t recognize the daws and notation packages I have that don’t quite fit the bill. I haven’t worked in a church in a decade, and I’ve been out of school for a very long time, and I doubt my personal theological meanderings would qualify.


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## Tacet (Oct 1, 2018)

Brentishere said:


> After a quarter century of wishing, I’m just about to where I can commit to a real notation package. I tried the demos. Windows. I’m leaning toward Finale, but could find a way to justify Sibelius. I tried everything I could, but I couldn’t get Dorico to cooperate on my systems.
> Of course, at $600 or so a throw, either one does take a bite. So, assuming Black Friday doesn’t come thru, that leaves a cross-grade of some kind. Both Avid and Makemusic say they’ll accept Notion as a suitable product to use, but I can’t imagine them ok-ing the iPad version (am I wrong?). Staffpad qualifies with the finale people; is there another way to lower the price? Not interested in cheating anyone, and if there is no other way, then there isn’t. Ideas?
> –B


The cheapest way to get Finale is to buy Staffpad for $69.99 then crossgrade.
You can get a competitive crossgrade on eBay for $ 119.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/FINALE-25-...704707&hash=item4b1a3ea21a:g:Fi4AAOSwstJZSuEr


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## Brentishere (Oct 10, 2018)

Finale 26 has been released. For us lesser mortals, it’s $600. Yes, there are cuts for students and theologians, coming in at $100 or $350, depending on which page you look at.
Cross grading from Sibelius or notion or staffpad no longer appear on the site. That may be subject to change in a near future. Who knows.
Upgrading from previous versions of Finale is $150.
Upgrading from Print Music 2014 ($120) or Songwriter (if you already have it) is $200.
There do seem to be 3rd party sellers for Songwriter for under $50; get them while they last.


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## wst3 (Oct 10, 2018)

I did upgrade a couple years ago to v25, so far I don't see anything in v26 to lighten my wallet by $150. But time will tell


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## Brentishere (Oct 10, 2018)

I’m downloading the demo, to see what’s what.


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## NoamL (Oct 10, 2018)

I used Finale for 10 years, tried Sibelius when I had to team up with someone else on an orchestration project, and never looked back.

I'm sure that people who use Finale for professional fast engraving have all kinds of time saving macros to make the program more usable. That just underlines the point that Sibelius is better out of the box.

A really good example - let's say you need to add a crescendo to the entire brass section over 3 measures. In Sibelius you just select the 3 measures across all the brass staves and press H. That's it. In Finale you have to open the special tools menu, click the crescendo button, click and drag beneath a staff to create a crescendo, get finicky with its position/alignment (especially if there are notes below the staff, the crescendo might not line up properly with the final dynamic), then copy that crescendo to the other staves, or redo the process for each staff.

Another huge advantage of Sibelius - you can select any amount of measures, and then use a very quick filter tool to narrow the selection down to _just_ the top note of each chord, or just the 2nd or 3rd or bottom voice, or just this or that layer - very good for orchestrators.

Get Sibelius!


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## chillbot (Oct 10, 2018)

100% thought this thread was going to be about how to notate plunger mutes.


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