Scoring Notes – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Finale, the legendary music notation software program, has been discontinued 36 years after its groundbreaking release in 1988 from Coda Music Technologies. MakeMusic, the company that now owns Finale, has partnered with Steinberg to sell its Dorico application at a specially discounted price directly to Finale users. Jason Loffredo joins Philip Rothman and David MacDonald in a comprehensive discussion about the facts, the business analysis, and the way forward for customers.

More on Scoring Notes:

• MakeMusic ends development and availability of Finale; partners with Steinberg to sell Dorico directly [updated]
• Finale version 27 review: SMuFL and MusicXML 4.0 support
• Finale v27 and the SMuFL shuffle
• Finale version 27.1: SMuFL burrows deeper
• Finale version 27.2 adds new jazz template, native Apple silicon support
• Finale version 27.3 adds eight powerful JW tools, fixes some linked part issues
• Finale version 27.4 supports macOS Sonoma, true black printing, other fixes

Jason Loffredo’s “Conquering Finale” video tutorial series

The 2024 conference of MOLA: An Association of Performance Librarians recently concluded in Cleveland, Ohio, and by all accounts it was a rocking success.

The conference began with the second annual Tech Fair, a gathering of librarians, product specialists, and vendors, with demonstrations and exhibits bookended by panel discussions about technology as it relates to the performance librarian. The remainder of the four-day long conference featured plenary sessions, breakout groups, and lots of excellent spontaneous sharing of knowledge and experience about a crucial role in the music-making process.

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald recap the conference with a podcast episode recorded in person from Cleveland, with a summary of the tech fair and the rest of the event: from the intricacies of percussion setup to licensing, copyright, and commissioning agreements, and much more.

And, if you like your podcasts in video format, we have a special treat for you: A video of this podcast episode, recorded live.

More from Scoring Notes:

• MOLA 2024: Cleveland rocked
• MOLA morsels: Conversations from the 2024 conference

Videos from the MOLA 2024 Conference:

• MOLA 2024: Welcome!
• MOLA 2024: Putting Technology Into Practice in the Music Library
• MOLA 2024: Notion’s Chris Swaffer
• MOLA 2024: Avid’s Justin Tokke, product designer for Sibelius
• MOLA 2024: Steinberg’s John Barron, product specialist for Dorico
• MOLA 2024: The Cleveland Orchestra’s Michael Ferraguto
• MOLA 2024: Alastair McKean, MOLA President 2023-2024
• MOLA 2024: Conference and Tech Fair Wrap-up

With the Muse Group acquisition of Hal Leonard, and Dorico, MuseScore, Sibelius, and Finale all freshly updated, 2023 is going out with a bang. We gather round the fire and discuss all the news, as we get ready for the year ahead in music notation software and related technology.

More on Scoring Notes:

• Muse Group acquires Hal Leonard
• Dorico 5.1: Filling the gaps
• MuseScore 4.2 adds more guitar features and improves scores with parts
• Sibelius 2023.11: Sonoma support, more system object positions, better Keypad
• Finale version 27.4 supports macOS Sonoma, true black printing, other fixes

Black Friday is one of the best times of the year to get new stuff at low prices. But in the world of music notation software and related technology, it can also be a chance to reflect on the way you work and create, and to acquire the tools that will complement your skills.

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald summarize the best deals we’ve found to that end, review some of the newest features that make spending holiday cash a worthwhile investment — and offer up a few of our favorite low- and hi-tech stocking stuffers.

Also: Check out Scoring Notes on Monday, November 20 for a comprehensive post with details on all the deals mentioned in this episode, and much more.

Whether it’s a squiggly line, a complex curve, or something that totally defies description, sometimes your music requires notation that’s more creative than the ordinary music symbols we’re accustomed to seeing. That’s when it comes time to dive into the use of graphics in music notation, and how to work with graphical files in the software. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk about how to create those graphical symbols and bring them into your notation software without sacrificing quality, as well as how to create complex graphics by just using the notation tools. We also cover exporting graphics out of notation software and into other programs, and discuss the “slices” feature in Dorico, which allows you to retain persistent score excerpts that you can export as graphics over and over again, changing them along the way.

More from Scoring Notes:

• Graphic notation workflow with Sibelius and Adobe Illustrator
• Creating custom line ends in Sibelius with SVG files and Illustrator
• Use graphics as symbols in Sibelius, and define them as custom articulations
• Using tone clusters in Sibelius
• Lines and line style editors in Dorico
• David MacDonald video — Graphic Notation Workflow with Sibelius and Adobe Illustrator

To celebrate Halloween, we’re looking at scary things we see in the music notation software and score preparation process, and see if we can sweeten the experience with some tricks and treats. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss the spookiness of using the mouse and how you can better become a jack-o-lantern of all trades by focusing more on keyboard commands and other shortcuts in Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico. We also look at a frightening situation that happens when laying out your music and investigate how to fix it. So don’t be afraid — we won’t ghost you as we lead you unscathed out of the haunted house of software skeletons and onto the pumpkin patch to score some tricks and treats.

More on Scoring Notes:

Finale:

• Quick tip: Dismiss all open dialog boxes in Finale
• Supercharge your Finale workflow on Mac with Keyboard Maestro
• FinaleScripts for faster scoring in Finale
• Articulation metatools in Finale

Sibelius:

• Use keyboard shortcuts to apply text expressions in Sibelius
• Quick keyboard access to your Sibelius plug-ins
• Add custom shortcuts for Keypad features in Sibelius

Dorico:

• Customize keyboard shortcuts in Sibelius and Dorico
• Assigning MIDI commands

Notation Express:

• Stream Deck profile for Zoom; Notation Express updated for Dorico 3.5
• Notation Express released for Musescore; updates to Sibelius and Dorico
• Notation Express for Dorico 3
• Notation Express XL is available for Sibelius and Dorico
• Notation Express demo available
• Notation Express is now on iOS with Stream Deck Mobile

Learn about several simple but incredibly useful applications that will help you be more productive with tasks related to managing music files on the computer. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss file renaming apps such as Renamer and Name Mangler, which perform the important function of quickly changing the filenames of many documents at once using various settings, saving you the tedium of manually renaming them and helping keep you organized. Then, we explore the suite of PDF batch processing apps available from Notation Central, including PDF Batch Scale, Batch Stitch, Batch Booklet, and Music Binder. These tools do just as their names would suggest, making quick work of manipulating PDF files so that you can make sure that your music is distributed and printed exactly as you expect.

More on Scoring Notes:

• Name Mangler and Moom productivity apps
• Quickly scale many PDFs with PDF-BatchScale
• Make booklets and 2-ups with PDF-BatchBooklet
• PDF-MusicBinder and PDF-BatchStitch utilities for music printing

Product links:

• Renamer
• Name Mangler
• PDF-BatchScale
• PDF-BatchStitch
• PDF-BatchBooklet
• PDF-MusicBinder

In music scores, a house style is the collection of dozens or hundreds of rules and preferences governing the look of the music — everything from note spacing algorithms, to font choices, to the thickness of lines, and lots more. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss why these elements matter in the course of preparing a piece of music and talk about which types of text fonts pair well with music notation. We also explore the “tyranny of the default” settings in scoring software programs and get specific about how to manage house styles in Sibelius, Dorico, and Finale.

More on Scoring Notes:

• Horizontal note spacing in Sibelius
• Spaces and the units of measurement for music notation
• House style fonts and families in Sibelius
• Importing only certain elements of house styles in Sibelius

John Hinchey is one of the most experienced arrangers, orchestrators and professional music preparers working today. He’s created thousands of charts and shows for musicians, touring companies, theme parks and everything in between. On this episode, John relays his experience producing shows for cruise ships to Scoring Notes hosts Philip Rothman and David MacDonald. We’re expecting you to learn from John how to prepare your charts so that what you put on the page ensures smooth sailing for the musicians. John also lets it flow with a boatload of tech tips and product recommendations, so you’ll want to come aboard – there’s something for everyone on this friendly shore.

More links:

• John Hinchey’s web site
• John Hinchey on Avid Blogs

Many of us study and perform scores from our iPads on a regular basis and have prepared scores to be read from screens. Scoring Notes readers and listeners often ask us to provide recommendations for best practices when preparing a score with the expectation that it will be read from a screen and not paper. This is an excellent question, and one whose answer today may likely change in the coming years. David MacDonald and Philip Rothman discuss the pros, cons, challenges, and opportunities in reading and preparing music on a screen, and delve into the benefits, pitfalls, and technical considerations you should know about if you want to make your music pixel-perfect.

More on Scoring Notes: Preparing music scores for screens — the challenges and opportunities