Finale 2004

by MakeMusic!

Product Features

• Set up your scores quickly using the pre-designed templates and wizards
• Enter notes quickly, with either the SimpleNote Entry tool, or by scanning it in
• Hear your music as you write it, with the Human Playback and SoundFont tools -- you can also save them as. WAV or AIFF files and burn them to a CD as you go
• Compose and arrange music more easily with rhythm section generators, instant drum grooves and Smart Cue Notes
• Improved MicNotator means no keyboard required for entering notes

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000DB4BG
• Item model number: codf241
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 15, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,845 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #80 in Software > Video & Music > Software > Music Creation & Sequencing
  • #99 in Software > Video & Music > Software > Notation & Composition

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Finale 2004 is here and is reinventing what it means to be best with a new interface, improved design, new scanning, new Guitar TAB features, and much more! Finale is the world standard for creating, editing and printing sheet music. Used by more educators, composers, students, performers and music ministers than any other notation program. INCLUDES SCANNING SOFTWARE, SmartScore Lite by Musitek! Available for Windows or Mac.

Share the experience of the world's largest community of composing musicians By understanding the needs of musicians, educators, composers and engravers, Finale continues to evolve and grow. The advancements that went into 2004 were based on two principles: natural ease and enhanced musicality. Now Finale takes full advantage of Mac OS X’s functionality, ease of use and great beauty. A new reality in Finale 2004. Complete with built-in USB MIDI.

Human Playback feature
Your music deserves to be heard with all the feeling, phrasing and nuance you felt when you wrote it. The new Human Playback feature will play your music as you would want it to be performed, even if you enter notes manually. And you can choose a variety of musical styles and customize the playback parameters, articulations, range, and much more. You want your music to look good. Now it can also sound great with the addition of SmartMusic soundfont, the same professional grade instrument sounds found in the award-winning SmartMusic Studio practice system. Add this to Finale 2004’s new Human Playback and the results are astounding.

Simple Note Entry
Quite simply, this tool has been transformed. Create music the way you do with paper and pencil – writing all the music as you go with one utensil. It is all the function of Simple Note as you knew it, plus the power of Speedy Note Entry, with additional control. It may become the way you get most things done in Finale. Click notes onto the staff or use MIDI to indicate pitch. Or input notes with the numeric pad and keys ‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’ ‘D’ ‘E’ ‘F’ and ‘G.’ Change octave. Enter rests. Add accidentals. Add notes in a chord to an existing note. Create triplets. Now add grace notes. Break and join beams. But entering notes is just the start. Enter articulations on the fly or ‘lock-in’ an articulation to place on several notes. Change the key or time signature simply with key commands. Re-pitch existing notes, regardless of their durations, using any of the note-entry methods to re-pitch these rhythms. Change layers or create multiple voice lines on the staff as you write or edit. Best of all, if you prefer certain key commands, change the defaults in Finale to whatever you like.

Take a Shortcut - FinaleScript.
This feature could save you days of work. Easily create your own set of commands that Finale will perform with a simple keystroke. Mix several repeated actions into one. Batch file process. Finale 2004 comes loaded with dozens of FinaleScripts that are ready to go and guaranteed to save you time.

We’ve got the beat.
Creating custom drum parts has never been easier. Select any region and apply a pre-created drum groove in the style and feel you want. Choose any MIDI file drum groove and add it to your list instantly. In fact, add any MIDI file, period and access it/enter it from this great new plug-in.

No MIDI required.
This revolutionary technology allows you to enter notation into Finale simply by playing your brass or woodwind instrument. Finale 2004’s new generation of MicNotator is now much more accurate and even easier than ever before. Pick up your clarinet and start making music!*Finale 2004 elevates the notation software experience—providing simpler and more intuitive interaction for unsurpassable results in creating, customizing and sharing printed music.

Never miss an entrance - Smart Cue Notes.
Give your performers an easier way to recognize their entrances after long multi-bar rests by having Finale automatically create cue notes. Tell Finale what decisions to use in creating cue note entrances, and it does all the work for you.

Everyone’s on the same page - Smart Page Turns.
Getting the music aligned in individual parts for natural page turns used to take careful evaluation and a fair amount of re-positioning measures and staff systems. Now, just tell Finale what to consider, and it does the page turn formatting for you.

Composers and Arrangers
Finale 2004 offers the friendliest interface ever. You’ll find the fastest score setup, convenient templates and simple, automated note entry and editing—all adding up to the satisfaction of seeing your music professionally presented and ready to share. And our new sound font and playback capabilities enhance the musical experience, ensuring that other Finale users hear your music as you intended.

Never practice alone - SmartMusic Enhancements
SmartMusic Accompaniment Enhancements. Last year, we provided the ability to save a Finale file as a SmartMusic accompaniment. Now you can also add wait for note, reset Intelligent Accompaniment® mid-song, display repeats, rehearsal marks and more. The solo can also now display in SmartMusic for the soloist to read. Or use this feature to practice a part within an ensemble piece. Improved interface. Multitibral SmartMusic Accompaniment Generation. Create SmartMusic Accompaniments containing many instruments primed for Sound Font playback in SmartMusic. Create SmartMusic Accompaniments with Performance Markers. Now, you can use expressions to indicate performance markers such as pauses, rehearsal marks and repeats, for SmartMusic Accompaniments saved from Finale.

Now turn your Finale file into an audio CD!
Press one button and save your Finale files into an audio format for recording onto an audio CD. Hear all the nuances of your music through the fabulous sound font from SmartMusic and our Human Playback feature.

Awards

Electronic Musician - 2002 and 2001 Editors' Choice Award

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What can I say? It's Finale!, December 10, 2003

By 

William (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finale 2004 (CD-ROM)

Finale 2004 is, by far, the best music notation software available. I have been using Finale since version 3.0 and I can easily say that 2004 is the biggest upgrade that I have seen for any notation software. I have tried Sibelius and some other so-called alternatives, but none of them have yet been able to catch up to the technological advancements of Finale.

I have a full-time job making engravings for composers, college professors, orchestras, choirs, independent music teachers, and their students. I also like to work on my personal compositions and arrangements when I have the time. Finale 2004 is the only tool that I currently use. I am surprised how many musicians there are that either: a) don't want to buy Finale and engrave the music themselves, or b) aren't computer literate enough to use Finale.

You need to be somewhat computer savvy to use this program effectively; being passionate about music isn't enough. Everything you could want to do is in there, but it is just a matter of finding it. What I really love about the program is that it is tool-based, yet it works like a word processor. This leaves lots of room for personalizing the look of your music and even loading your own customized set of music fonts. The flexibility is amazing!

I personally think that it is very user-friendly, but I can understand why others might not think so. If you are working at becoming a professional composer or engraver, then Finale is the only way to go. If you don't know much about computers and you are just trying to make something simple for your local community band, then you might want to steer clear of Finale. It also helps if you have worked with other MIDI applications before. Finale is not sympathetic to the ignorant. But everything you would want to know is in the user manual so it is technically possible to begin the program knowing nothing, but it would take some dedication.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Design oversights continue to plague this version of Finale, February 7, 2004

By 

Robert Puff "RPM Seattle Music Preparation" (WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Finale 2004 (CD-ROM)

Let me start by saying something nice about this version of Finale, the grand daddy of desktop publishing music notation programs. I finally can use Finale on the OSX operating system. Naturally, I was very excited to give it a test drive when it finally arrived.

PROBLEM: In the new Expression Designer of Finale 2004, one can't globally RESET individual system baseline offsets with a simple commmand. If I manually change these on a per system basis, and then do a SAVE AS for a second homophonic part - now the auto-aligned text is in the wrong place. Naturally, I want to quickly reset the baseline for the entire piece back to zero, so that the settings I've created for positioning with the Expression Designer mean something.

But I can't. This has been an ongoing issue with chord symbols for several versions of Finale, and also with Lyrics. Finale's Lyric tool has a way to reset these on an individual basis, but this isn't possible with the chord symbols, and now, isn't possible with this new text expression addition either.

That said, the new ability to mix fonts and styles in the expressions is very useful.

PROBLEM: There still doesn't seem to be a way to save Smart Lines as a library. Did I miss something? I can share Staff Styles, Text Expressions, Articulations and other customizable elements as a library, why not Smart Lines? Particularly since custom smart lines have been part of Finale now for several versions. I can't believe I'm the only user who has asked for this functionality. Frankly, it is incomprehensible that MakeMusic! hasn't included it without anyone asking, as obvious as it is.

PROBLEM: Finale 2004 still copies EVERYTHING by default using Mass Edit, including double bars, time signatures, key signatures etc etc. Each time I open Finale, I have to go to the mass edit menu and deselect what I don't want to copy, again and again whenever I open the application.

I want my "what to copy" settings to "stick" or have a choice to save this as a user preference when I quit. I have lived with this inconvenience forever. I don't want to copy barlines. ever. I don't want to copy Staff Attached System text (like metronome marks and Tempo text such as Adagio) ever. I don't want to copy key signatures. ever. I don't want to copy time signatures. ever. I have other tools to create these objects in Finale very quickly if I need them. This absolutely needs to be a working preference for the individual user. Just because it's always worked one way, doesn't mean it's the best way.

PROBLEM: I'm sure most Finale users have already heard more than enough about the PDF creation bug in Finale 2004 for OSX, and many of us have already tried the official workaround. I've found it's quicker to reboot under OS9 and use Finale 2002 than use MakeMusic's workaround, which I will continue to do until their maintenance upgrade comes out. Those of you with a computer than doesn't boot under OS9 will just have to jump through the hoops. Sibelius seems to have no trouble producing usable PDF files, although in defense of Finale, Sibelius has been out on the OSX platform long enough that the programmers really know what they are doing on it.

PROBLEM: No EPS Export. Rumored to be resolved very soon in a maintenance upgrade.

PROBLEM: Still no RECENT ITEMS menu for Mac users? It's in the Windows version of Finale, and has been forever. It's in Sibelius, and has been forever (on both Windows and Mac, I might add). And, a recent items list is such a standard feature of just about every professional level application, I'm stunned that the programmers at MakeMusic! haven't figured out how to do this.

PROBLEM: And finally, my Page Setup settings are lost when I open any older Finale document - I have to reset these (the Maestro Font Default page size is reflected in these older docs that are opened, so at least there is a workaround for this).

All in all, I waited a long, long time for an OSX version of this application, and I must say, my impression of Finale 2004 is lukewarm. Finale still has the edge over its competitors in several areas: file management, e.g. naming extracted files coherently, slur and tie handling, and some other esoteric engraver tweaks, but with applications like Sibelius making quantum leaps in quality with every upgrade, MakeMusic! is going to have to do better than this.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finale 2004, December 3, 2003

By 

David Morehead (Romeoville, IL.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Finale 2004 (CD-ROM)

You will not learn Finale in a short time. It is an extensive program with many features. But, Makemusic has provided many flash tutorials to make the learning curve a lot less steep.

I have been a Finale user for 15 years! Makemusic listens to people's suggestions and includes them in each upgrade.

I find Finale a little cumbersome in some areas but in some other areas is is nothing short of amazing.

The forum on their website has many friendly, knowledgeable people always eager to help newbies and Finale veterans if you have a question you just can't figure out by yourself.

Once you invest some time in the program you will be astounded how simple some things are. It inspires me to write music because it can play anything you can write flawlessly. Also, it is a great way to do raw sequence and then import it into a dedicated sequencing program for fine-tuning.

Anyone that doesn't like the program has not put any time into learning it. If you invest some time you will reap the benefits!

It does need some work in some areas. I don't like the current method of chord entry. But, it may be fixed in the next release. Also, there are a few little annoyances that have lingered forever and still need fixing.

As long as Makemusic continues to listen to their customers, Finale has the potential of always being the best. In the mean time I write music all the time and really enjoy using the program!

Davemorehead.com-web site
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