Customer Reviews

Finale SongWriter 2010

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

They call it Finale Songwriter, and that's who it seems to be aimed at; I bought it to do charts for a friend who is a singer/songwriter, and I found it to be quite up to the task.

I got tired of updating the full Finale program, which I purchased back around 1995; the last update I bought was Finale 2001; updating every year was expensive, some $100 for each year's new update; and it was annoying, too, since each new version seemed like it had to be learned all over again; so I finally stopped getting updates and stayed with my 2001d version. Since I don't do much music charting, it was pointless to keep shelling out money for new updates.

Now, here we are in 2010; I'm using a newer Mac with OS X, and the few times I have to do notation, I have to run Classic Mode in order to use my ancient 2001d version of Finale, and already, the updates are requiring a later version of the OS than I have... so I checked out the various versions of Finale, and found this one; Songwriter 2010 is (I think) the last of the Finale programs that will still work with 10.4... and it's also the least expensive, so I thought I would check it out. There is a fully-functional 30-day trial version available to download, so I tried it out by charting a few of my friend's songs with it.

Even with Songwriter, there is a bit of a learning curve, since music notation is a bit of an involved, detailed process. But I found that all of the important functions are easily accessible, and once you get the hang of what menu they're under, it seems to flow pretty well. All the important functions are present; what seems to be missing is all the customizing capability of the full Finale, such as all the little variations of the Repeat signs. It has Simple Note Entry, which is just grabbing a note with the mouse and placing it on the staff; this can be streamlined quite a bit if you have a MIDI keyboard: you use the numeric keypad to select a note value, and play a note on the MIDI keyboard to place it on the staff. I was thrilled to discover that Songwriter also has the Hyperscribe feature, which starts up a metronome, and lets you play a part into the program in real time. All the important text functions and spacing and layout controls are available too, so you can get a chart looking just right. It is limited to 8 staves, but for ordinary song charting, I can't imagine needing more than 3 or 4.

In my opinion, Songwriter is more than adequate to most basic charting needs, and Finale has an upgrade policy if you should ever need more capability. Best of all, you can try the program for 30 days to determine if it will suit your needs.

For those people having trouble getting this to work - make sure that midi out from the computer goes to midi in on the piano keyboard. And vice versa.
I knocked off a star because there is no PDF manual - it would be great to print off a few pages to keep to one side while learning the program. Especially regarding keyboard short-cuts. I ended up cutting and pasting into a Word document from the help screens.

I bought my first computer, a Macintosh, in 1986-ish. I believe it came with (?) a music composition program that I had a blast with. I've pined for it ever since. When I discovered Finale Songwriter, I was in heaven. It's user friendly and sings (plays) your compositions back to you instantly. BUY it. It will satisfy the creative soul in you.

Not the most straightforward software that I have ever used. It takes some effort to learn the system. The "Quick Reference Guide" documentation could be better. As I continue to use it, I learn something new about the software almost every day.

For the money, you'll not find a better program. It's not a comlicated program even though it does complicated things, but it does take time and effort to learn it. But isn't that true with any multiple-function program? I've yet to run into anything it doesn't do (exception-temolo marking)that I want to do. I primarily use it to make transcriptions of music from several sources (jazz, orchestra, choral etc.) and arrange it and modify it for contert band.

I bought this for my son who will be majoring in music ed at college. He absolutely loves it. It meets all his expectations.

This is very good product. There is a learning curve, but the tutorials help with that. it's also good in refreshing your musical theory working on this software.

I bought this when it was on sale for $25, and I couldn't have asked for better software for my needs. I primarily use it to hyperscribe (play my own songs on my keyboard, which through a midi/usb cable ($5 on amazon) translates it to the software on my laptop), as well as write out songs I don't know yet, but want to hear how they sound before I commit to learning them. It literally takes less than five minutes to write a song on this thing... which for me is less time than learning the bloody thing on my fiddle only to realize that I don't like it. So I'm very happy...
Cons~
It does take awhile to learn all the features, naturally, but the user guide (online) is easy to navigate and I usually find what I need pretty fast... usually.
I wish it would help me figure out time signatures for songs... you must input the time signature and key before you begin writing.. and for me, especially when I'm inspired and just playing, I certainly don't yet know what the time signature is. Therefore, when I play it back, it comes out all wrong. But I'm not a pro, and maybe a pro would know such things.

I use this for re-writing scores for a men's chorus at church. Basically, I want to simplify my piano part to make it a little easier to play. Less mistakes on my part. It works very well, although a little hard to learn, (I still have many things to learn about it,) and it is time consuming on my part, but I still like it. I haven't had much luck with playing from my keyboard (midi) to the computer. It doesn't seem to get everything I play and jumbles up what it does get. Probably works O.K. with single notes, but that still leaves a lot of mouse entering on my part.

Finale Songwriter is the perfect software for me. I am a vocal musician, and I help teach kids. I needed a program that I could use to arrange music for two, three and four part harmony for kids who are just learning choral music. This program has everything I need including the ability to make sound tracks for the kids to use to practice. The program is intuitive and has good documentation.

I only wish that this program was sold at a discount for educators.