The Finale Primer: Mastering the Art of Music Notation with Finale [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Arnold Schwartzman (Author) "To create a new document you must click on the word File in the top menu bar and hold down the mouse button..." (more)
Key Phrases: Staff Tool, Speedy Entry, Setup Wizard (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Finale is the leading scoring program for professional music engravers because it boasts powerful MIDI and transcribing capabilities as well as publication-quality output. But because of its awesome scope and power, negotiating the learning curve can make you feel like you're scaling Mt. Everest without oxygen. The Finale Primer by Bill Purse makes the trek to the notational summit feel like a walk in the park...An excellent shortcut to learning the software." -- Guitar Shop, January 1999

Product Description
This is the first step-by-step guide to using Coda's Finale, the world's number one software program for creating simple or complex music notation. This easy-to-use, practical book flattens Finale's robust learning curve and helps musicians and composers understand and maximize the program's invaluable capabilities in editing, reformatting, and reorganizing musical material. Finale is a powerful "electronic scribe" that helps you with all music preparation -- whether copying and replicating an existing piece of music or creating an original work. Written by a pioneer in interactive CD-ROM, MIDI files, hard disk recording and music score publication, the book is designed to help you use the Finale manuals more efficiently, especially when tackling particularly difficult challenges in the exacting art of music notation. Providing hundreds of easy-to-read screen shots and illustrations, The Finale Primer outlines navigational basics and reinforces notational concepts with drills and projects at the end of each lesson. These quickly build skills that lay the essential groundwork for score notation and prepare you for further mastery of the program. Topics range from exploring the Finale toolbox to creating a lead sheet, printing the final score, and special guitar notation. Covers Finale for both Macintosh and Windows.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 253 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; illustrated edition edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879305398
• ISBN-13: 978-0879305390
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,489,667 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hooked on the software but the book........., December 2, 2000

By	Liz (a music educator) (Nassau, The Bahamas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Finale Primer: Mastering the Art of Music Notation with Finale (Paperback)

I began to read with great anticipation but was sorely disappointed. There were too many errors in the 2000 edition, which apparently had been revised in a hurry to catch up with the software upgrade. Many of the existing shortcuts were either inaccurate or, in the case of the new ones, omitted altogether. The author also geared much of his commentary towards Mac users and referred all unexplained problems back to the Final Manual. Very sketchy - and I still have not figured out how to set up the percussion so it sounds like the instruments I want. A complete waste of money.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Superb software, lousy book., June 19, 1999

By A Customer

The Finale Primer is a waste. If you purchased Finale 98, the book that comes with it is nearly identical, so I now have virtually the same book twice. Also, it is very poorly indexed and cross-referenced, resulting in much frustration as I try to find assistance on various topics. You are much better off saving your money and using the original manual and HELP screens.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too little - too basic and incomplete, July 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Finale Primer: Mastering the Art of Music Notation with Finale (Paperback)

This book spends too much time explaing computer operation (pull down menus, command keys) and not enough on Finale. Too often as it gets close to having some depth it says "but this is beyond the scope of this book, read your Finale manual." The one page index is worthless. The book does things like wastes 4 pages on a windows/mac keyboard comparison chart and yet does not show how to setup notating a drum kit. If this is your first piece of software, maybe it would be helpful, but if you think it gives insight and tricks beyond your manual, forget it. I feel cheated. I found some mistakes in the book and certainly the title "mastering" is an overstatement.