Sooner or later, every musician (or aspiring musician) needs to put his or her thoughts down on paper. For some people a plain old pencil and some staff paper is enough. Other people, like me, require a more high tech approach. Enter the Finale music notation software programs. There are several good music writing programs available from different companies, however the gold standard among them is still the Finale Music Notation Software by <ahref="http://www.finalemusic.com">MakeMusic.com. Luckily, Finale comes in many different varieties for almost any budget.
Speaking of budget, how does FREE sound? Finale has a companion program for beginners and students called Finale Notepad. This version of the software is available free of charge if you register on MakeMusic's web site. Notepad is nowhere near as full featured as the full version of Finale and is limited to eight staves (instruments). Other limitations include a lack of MIDI support and no guitar notation. However, for the price you can't beat it, and it will allow you to read and edit music created in any other version of Finale. For example, if you are a teacher or composer you can create music for all of your students, supply them with a CD or a download link, and they can open, edit, and play back the files on their home computer. Finale Notepad is great for anyone that is new to music notation and wants to get used to it before spending any money.
Once you have outgrown Notepad's rather limited functionality you do not yet have to shell out the full $600 for the professional version of the Finale software. MakeMusic has other versions of Finale tailored to the home consumer. The pricing structure begins with
Finale Songwriter priced at under $50.00. This version is a significant step up from Notepad and allows much easier entry of notes using a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI device. Easy transposition of notes, chord symbols, and an automatic harmony generator are just a few of the features not found in Notepad.
For a few dollars more you can step up to
Finale PrintMusic. Easier setup, easier entry of notes, and many other additions make the $70 price tag much easier to swallow. PrintMusic comes with several additional ways to enter the data into the computer for editing. If you have a microphone attached to your computer you can literally play your instrument into it and as if by magic Finale will then decipher the sounds and translate them into musical notation! With PrintMusic you can also use your scanner to enter existing scores. Be forewarned, both the MicNotator and the scanning capabilities of the Finale products have improved greatly over the years but will always make mistakes. If you are going to use these features try to make sure you have one of the
recommended scanners and purchase one of the Finale Instrumental Microphones. My experience has been that the notation features function much more accurately when using the recommended equipment.
Finale also has a versionspecifically for guitarists that clocks in at $100. Yet another version called Finale Allegro is $200 and is as close to the professional version as you can get without paying the
full version price tag of $600. So if you are itching to start composing your first symphony download Notepad, take it for a spin, and then consider Finale's other products as your needs grow.
