For the past six or so years, I've used Finale as a tool to help me in my field of music composition and arranging. The program has proven to be an invaluable asset to my career - though it is not without its quirks. This review is intended to hopefully give new people an understanding of what it does, how it does it, and whether or not it is a worthwhile investment. It's also intended to give people who already know something about the program some greater insight about its capabilities and its drawbacks.


WHAT IT IS:

Finale is a music notation program (others include Nightengale, Encore, or its current biggest rival Sibelius) - you use your computer to put music on to the page which can then be played back, printed out, or saved as JPGs or MIDI files. You can create any kind of music with it, from a simple melody for Christmas Carol singing to a full orchestral score to enter into a professional composition competition. Finale does not act that well as a sequencer (like Cakewalk, Vision, or Cubase).


HOW IT WORKS: (basic)

There are three ways that you can enter notes into the program: Simple Entry, Speedy Entry, and Hyperscribe.

Simple Entry is a way of entering in notes using a mouse. It's similar to using a paint program or a graphics program like Adobe Photoshop. You have a palette of note values (quarter note, half note, eighth note, etc.) that you click onto the proper place on the staff. If you click on a note you entered, it turns into a rest. If you click on the same beat but not on the same note, you can create a chord. You can use an eraser to erase notes or rests that you put in accidentally.

Speedy Entry is a way of entering in notes by "step recording" using a MIDI keyboard and a MIDI interface. If i hold down a note or a chord on my synthesizer and then press a number on my keypad, Finale will enter that note value onto the screen. The number you press on the keypad lets Finale know what rhythmic value you want to assign to the notes you play - pressing 5 is a quarter note, pressing 4 is an eighth note, and so on.

Hyperscribe is a way of entering in notes via a crude "real time" sequencer, again using a MIDI keyboard and interface. You assign a note or your pedal as the "metronome" and while you strike that metronome with a constant beat, you play the notes and the rhythms you want to appear on the page, and Finale tries to interpret what it is that you want.


I personally use Speedy Entry exclusively to enter notes into Finale. It's the fastest and most reliable (provided that you have a MIDI keyboard). The easiest thing to learn at first is Simple Entry, but using the mouse to enter in notes proves to be pretty slow - it's kind of like if you were typing a Word document using the mouse on an on-screen keyboard instead of using your keyboard. Hyperscribe is not something I have a lot of experience with because I find it to be unreliable, especially if you want to change back and forth between triple and duple rhythmic values (sixteenths vs. triplets). Once I got used to the Speedy Entry commands and short cuts, entering in notes became a breeze. But i think it is a plus for Finale to include all of these different tools of entering in notes to suit different users.


PLAYBACK

Finale gives you the ability to play back a crude MIDI representation of the notes that you've put in. The quality of the MIDI sounds is dependent on what type of sound card or synthesizer you have as part of your set up. You can set each staff up on a different channel (so you can get different sounds per staff). Finale can optionally scroll through the music while it's playing so you can follow along (in Finale 97 and 98, you can only do this in Scroll View, but in Finale 2000, you can also do this in Page View).

Finale's playback system can also accept MIDI messages such as volume control, velocity control, and others. So if you want a note to be loud, it will play it loud and if you want it to be soft, it will play it softly.


ADVANTAGES TO THE PROGRAM

Finale has a wealth of tools to help you make the score look the way you want it. Adding dynamics and articulations, writing lyrics or making your own special notations, formatting tools and music spacing guides are all accessible by the Master Tool Palette. The program has an amazing amount of flexibility - you can change anything you want. Most of the program's functions are self-explanatory, but if you ever get lost, a comprehensive on-line manual is available to you in .pdf format with a detailed table of contents and index.

Another important feature of Finale is its flexible back-up system. It is inevitable that every now and again the computer or the program will crash, or a file will become corrupt. Finale offers various back-up options, such as creating a back-up file every x minutes and creating a back-up copy when you save in case the disk you're using gets damaged or lost.

One of the greatest advantages to the program is what it calls "metatools" or shortcuts. It's easy to quickly enter in dynamics or expressions by programming your keyboard with shortcuts, and those shortcuts (as well as other tools that can be customized) can be easily transferred from one document to another - once you have a set up that is comfortable for you, you never have to set it up again.


DISADVANTAGES TO THE PROGRAM

To reiterate, Finale is mainly a notation program, not a sequencing program. It handles MIDI messages (such as dynamics) on a basic level - if you want a note to be loud, it will play it loud. But if you want variable and quickly changing MIDI data (go from soft to loud in the course of a measure), there are about four or five steps to get it to work properly, and each instance of dynamic change is always going to be different, so you can't create a "standard".

The program has a steep learning curve. Once you figure out what you're doing and you learn all of the shortcuts, the program is great. But when you're new at the program, it can take a long time for you to figure out how to make it look the way you want. It took me longer than it should have to transition from writing music being faster by hand vs. faster on the computer. The best way to learn the program is to dive into it with an expert you can call on in case you get stuck, or in a class. Otherwise it can be frustrating. The program is quirky and it is not the most straightforward.

When you have your score formatted properly and you want to print out parts, Finale saves each part in a separate file, and it can make some poor formatting decisions. This means that when you want to print parts, you need to go through each part and reformat it from ground zero, and if you make any changes to your score or to the part, you need to redo the whole thing again.

My biggest gripe to Finale, however, is the fact that it is not backwards compatible. If i create a file using Finale 98, I can open it up in Finale 2000 with no problem. But if I save a document in Finale 2000, I cannot open it in Finale 98. This is bad because most of the college students who use Finale might be using a public computer lab for a lot of their Finale work - but what if they have an earlier version at home? Or what if they switch colleges where that university only has an earlier version of Finale? The fact that newer Finale documents cannot be opened by older versions of Finale is a big marketing ploy by Coda to keep people buying upgrades that they may not need, and buying an upgrade is not that cheap.


THE FINAL WORD

There's a huge debate between users of Finale versus users of Sibelius as to which notation program is better. Sibelius can do this, can't do that, Finale does this better than Sibelius, Sibelius makes more sense.

I've never personally had a lot of experience with Sibelius, but from what I've heard, while it does handle some things better, it has the same amount of quirkiness that Finale does, only different. So for people who are looking for a notation program for the first time, choose what is better for you. If you're already a seasoned veteran of one program or the other, it may not be worth the extra energy to learn the quirks of one program when you are already used to the quirks of the other.

Personally, I could not live without Finale. It has become a central part to my life as a composer. I've used the program for about six years now and I've learned a lot of the short cuts and the quirks and how to work around its odd personality, so it is incredibly efficient for me. I think it's a great notation program, but i don't think it's meant for the casual composer - especially because of its heavy price tag. People who just want to dabble in composition might be better off getting Finale Notepad, which is the free handicapped version of the program.

Those that dabble in composition, realize that getting Finale will not work miracles for you. It will not "create" music for you any more than buying Microsoft Word will "create" for you a great novel. The creativity in any art form will first come from within. Finale is a designed as a tool for notation, not a tool for composition.

[sorry... small soap box there. ahem.]

A FRIENDLY POSTLUDE

I know how frustrating Finale can be for novice/intermediate users, having been there before myself. Therefore I offer my services for users of the program - if there's something that you can't figure out and you need help with, feel free to email me. If i have an answer to your question, i'll answer and help in any way I can.


And finally, the price I quote for Amount Paid is the Educational Discount. If you are not part of a high school or college staff or student, you pay a full price of $545

Recommended: Yes