Scoring Notes – Details, episodes & analysis

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

Stephen Taylor is here to talk all about his adventure entering the entire score of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring into Dorico. Steve is a professor of composition and theory at University of Illinois School of Music and co-director of its modern ensemble. He’s had a long and varied history composing music and studying scores, and an almost equally long history using music notation software — starting first with early versions of Finale and Sibelius before moving on to Dorico. Not only has he copied The Rite of Spring, but he’s done the same with other masterworks of Shostakovich, Schubert, Mahler, and other composers. He tells Philip Rothman and David MacDonald how copying scores into programs like Dorico can be an effective way of both learning the music and the notation technology. That’s what we’re all about on Scoring Notes, so the only sacrifice you’ll need to make is a little bit of your time to hear what Steve has to say.

More on Scoring Notes: Dorico and The Rite of Spring

Teaching paperless composition lessons using the iPad, Apple Pencil, and several apps like GoodNotes and PDF Expert is here to stay. We can all wax nostalgic for the days of pencil and paper or even printing out your entire composition each week. But with today’s technology and a little bit of planning, David MacDonald shows Philip Rothman how to create a process that works seamlessly for student and teacher alike. Even if you’re not an educator, you’ll still want to take advantage of this lesson plan, as it’s easily adaptable to any collaborative environment, like a composer giving notes to an orchestrator, or a conductor sharing markings with a performer. Whether the apple in your hand is a shiny electronic device or it’s the organic kind you give to your teacher, you’ll walk away with A-plus knowledge.

More on Scoring Notes: Paperless composition lessons with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

Doug Gibson joins Philip Rothman and David MacDonald to discuss guitar notation. Doug is a Scoring Notes contributor who has reviewed the guitar features of Sibelius, Dorico and Guitar Pro, and he has a special perspective on this particular aspect of music notation software. As a guitarist, educator, composer, orchestrator, and music preparer, Doug has been on every side of the process of creating guitar music. He shares his process of transcribing and notating music, gives us his opinions on what the various software platforms get right, and tells us his wishes for what could be improved. If you’ve ever wondered what TAB notation really is or how to voice a 13th chord, you’ll get tuned up by hearing what Doug has to say.

More on Scoring Notes:

Dorico 3, 3.1, and 3.5: Guitar notation

Guitar Pro 7.5 review

We’re talking all about optical music recognition software, or what you might call “music scanning apps”. John Hinchey is back on the show, and he has written a review for the Scoring Notes blog that covers four of these leading apps: PlayScore 2, ScanScore, PhotoScore Ultimate, and SmartScore 64 Pro. On the podcast, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk with John about his approach to working with these apps and how he evaluated them. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each program, and how you can incorporate them into your own work. John’s also prepared a step-by-step checklist of the items to look for once you bring your music into the scanning software, and he tells us what to do to get the music in top shape, whether you’re preparing the music for playback or exporting it to MusicXML for use in your favorite music notation software.

More on Scoring Notes: A review of optical music recognition software

Jason Loffredo is a composer, arranger, orchestrator, copyist, keyboard player, and music director. He’s an expert in all things musical theatre and has worked on some of Broadway’s top productions. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk with Jason about the ins and outs of the musical theatre world as it pertains to preparing music for those shows and the special circumstances that arise when he turns to music notation software. And speaking of software, Jason tells us all about his extensive video tutorial series called Conquering Finale, which we’ve started to cross-publish on the Scoring Notes blog. We discuss how Finale and how Jason’s video series is organized, what led to him creating it in the first place, and what you can expect to learn from it, whether you’re new to the program or you’re a long-time user.

More on Scoring Notes:

• Nailing navigation in Finale
• The Conquering Finale series on Scoring Notes

Conquering Finale tutorials:

• Conquering Finale web site
• Conquering Finale YouTube channel

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss the essential elements of score preparation and production that make a difference in not only the perception of your music, but how it gets rehearsed and, ultimately, performed. Everything from rehearsal marks, placing cues, laying out your music, and page layout can be expertly fine-tuned by music notation software — but only if you know what results you’re looking to achieve in the first place.

Learn more on the Scoring Notes blog:

• Score preparation and production notes
• Cues in Dorico
• Check Redundancies plug-in in Sibelius
• Going keyless in your score
• Keyless instruments in a keyed score
• Don’t extract parts
• A few brief thoughts about the size of music paper

For decades, Emily Grishman has been one of Broadway’s most sought-after copyists, and her list of credits includes the most acclaimed music and theatrical productions. Philip Rothman talks with Emily about her career and how the means and manner of producing music has changed along with advancements in the music notation software she uses every day. Learn what Emily has to say about the world of music copying, the process of getting the music from the composer’s pen to the player’s stands, and the tools she uses to achieve superior results.

Plus: the secret to being an expert in your music notation software of choice, everything you ever wanted to know about bar numbering schemes… and what not to do when working on a horror film score.

Further reading: Women Who Wow Us: Emily Grishman

Emily Grishman profile on Maestra Music

On Scoring Notes: Scoring Express templates for Sibelius

Scoring Express Theatre & Studio templates at Notation Central

Photo credit: Jamie Maletz