{"id":205,"date":"2007-03-12T14:47:35","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T14:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/sakufu\/2007\/03\/12\/adventures_in_m\/"},"modified":"2007-03-12T14:47:35","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T14:47:35","slug":"adventures_in_m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/2007\/03\/12\/adventures_in_m\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in music notation, or what crap will you pull now, Finale?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent this past weekend getting familiar with Finale, and I have to say, it’s one of the most antagonistic user experiences I’ve ever encountered. I often felt it went out of its way to prevent me from accomplishing anything. I got curious about how Finale managed to earn its clout as the premier software for music notation. How can so many users settle for such hostile interface?<\/p>\n

I did a search for "finale sibelius<\/a>" to see what kind of discussion I’d find. One thing Finale seems to get credit for is minute control over all aspects of a score, and folks who use it value that thoroughness over any need for an intuitive interface. I also get the impression that Finale users just settle for what they have because it gets the job done.<\/p>\n

This post<\/a>, however, details the shortcomings I discovered in Finale on my first try. The author also compares Finale with Sibelius<\/a> and found Sibelius easier to work with.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I installed a Sibelius demo over the weekend, and I have to say I liked what I saw. The documentation that came with the demo version was too basic for the kind of work I wanted to test, so I’m not getting a great sense of how it would work for me. But the things I could<\/em> do were far more easier in Sibelius than Finale.<\/p>\n

However much I felt covetous for Sibelius’ shiny interface, a few things give me pause. The sound with the splash screen is just tacky. Using a JAVA applet to deliver documentation is overkill. And the terms of the competitive cross upgrade<\/a> seem pretty extreme. Finale doesn’t ship a printed user manual, so I’m not sure what pages I would submit as proof of ownership. I’m also not comfortable sending my installation discs if I’m not going to get them back.<\/p>\n

For the time being, Finale can get the job done, so I’m in no rush to drop the cash for Sibelius. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever run into a situation where I dread<\/em> having to work in a particular application. Every time I launch Finale, I wonder what new ways it’s going to fuck with me. A relationship with software shouldn’t have to be combative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every time I launch Finale, I wonder what new ways it’s going to fuck with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technophilia-aural"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkjq-3j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}