NoamL
Winter <3
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.
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.
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