Need to print out musical scores? Dedicated scoring software provides more bells and whistles than the basic scoring functions included in most MIDI sequencer packages.

Music Notation and Printing Software

Finale 4.0

by Charlie Morris

This is a powerful music scoring/transcription/publishing package. It allows you to design and print musical scores of great complexity. The music may be created within the program, or imported from a MIDI file. You can create any arrangement of staves, clefs, key and time signatures you wish, and use almost every musical symbol known to man. Notes, rests, dynamic and articulation markings, lyrics, even chord symbols complete with guitar fretboard diagrams. Trills, arpeggios, sforzandos and fermatas and all their friends are here, as are user-created slur markings, and even drawing tools for creating lines, rectangles, ellipses and so forth.
February 25, 1999

Although most MIDI sequencers allow you to display and print scores, they don't pretend to address the finer points of publishing. Anyone who works with printed music a lot will appreciate the more sophisticated scoring tools of a dedicated package, as well as the complete library of symbols. Finale supports up to 64 MIDI channels, and channels and ports may be freely assigned to any staff, or indeed any voice. Any MIDI information can be included in a file, and it may be displayed on the score in a number of ways. You can embed MIDI messages in the file independently of whether they are noted on the staff. You can have: MIDI messages such as Program Change or Volume Change that affect playback, but are "invisible" on the printed score; expression markings that appear on the score only, and do not affect playback; or you can notate a MIDI message with a musical symbol or text of your choice. You can even have dynamic or articulation markings in the score that generate MIDI messages with values you define. You can print lyrics in any format and any font you wish. The trick to printing lyrics is that each syllable corresponds to a note on the staff above. Finale handles lyrics for you intuitivelly. All you have to do is type in hyphens between syllables, and each syllable becomes attached to a note. For rests, and syllables that extend over more than one note, (melismas), you hit the spacebar. If the notes get moved around later, the lyrics stick to them like glue, and each syllable remains perfectly centered under its note. To make the program faster, Finale displays your score in a rough-and-ready fashion while you're working on it, just as word processors do. When you get ready to print it out, you need to go through a few steps to prepare the score for the best quality output. Finale gives you extensive options as to the page layout, the spacing of the staves, lyrics, markings, etc. You can also have the program calculate the measure layout, making sure the measures are uniform, and justified with the margins of the page. Another issue that must be addressed is the spacing of the notes on the staff. The on-screen staff uses linear spacing. That means that every measure is shown the same length, and a whole-note gets the same amount of horizontal space as four quarter-notes. Published music usually employs a non-linear spacing scheme, which looks much better. Each measure is only as wide as it needs to be, so a whole note would get less space than four quarter notes. Finale allows you to work with your score proportionally spaced, and then convert it to the more professional-looking non-linear spacing just before printing. You can even choose looser or tighter spacing, or tracking, as DTP folks might call it. Any symbol, word or musical element can be set in any font. The musical font that comes with Finale is called Petrucci, and it is included in both TrueType and Type 1 PostScript versions. You may substitute any musical font for Petrucci. A font called Seville, also included, gives you a large set of guitar fingerboard symbols. There are also several companion fonts available, which add special symbols, or allow you to freely mix text and musical symbols. All the usual Windows features are here. You can have several windows open at once (different scores or different parts of the same score), and cascade or tile horizontally or vertically. There is a way to write macros to automate common tasks. Keyboard shortcuts are numerous, and the manual provides charts that show what keys to use for every symbol available. Online help is extensive, including context-sensitive help with the F1 key, and a series of tutorials. Finale comes with no less than three manuals, all thick and well-organized. Naturally, Finale lets you play your files back, and adheres to the convention of using the spacebar as a Play/Pause button. You may also "scrub" by dragging the mouse across the score. This is a very powerful program aimed at professional users. Composers, Arrangers, Music Publishers, and anyone with serious charting to do will find this package capable, easy to use and flexible.