A follow-up to my last post, now that the news has had some time to settle The future of Finale’s parent company is in question. Sibelius’ main development branch is closing down. Both of these facts have shaken up the music notation world as of late, and regardless of what happens with these applications, one thing is clear: users are losing confidence in MakeMusic and Avid. I’m posting here for a couple of main reasons: updates, and alternatives. As far as I know, there has been no real update on MakeMusic’s. Noteflight Learn provides communication tools such as discussion forums, score commentary, and annotations, allowing students and teachers to have an ongoing dialogue. Teachers can review an individual student's assignment and listen to their performance recording to provide meaningful feedback. Avid has stated a few times (including and ) that they intend to continue supporting Sibelius, but wants them working closer to their other software devs in CA. There is a (of sorts) that’s popped up, and if you’re worried about the future of Sibelius, I encourage you to visit, read, and consider signing their petition and/or taking other action as you deem appropriate. However, in the event of disaster on both fronts (Finale and Sibelius are both axed), I also want people to know that there are alternatives. Of course, in this worst-case scenario, you can likely continue to use your software – just don’t expect updates. But you also have a few other solutions that you can check out at no cost: • MuseScore – cross-platform, open source, and free. Not without its bugs and quirks, but the development team recently released a minor version update (1.2), and in my experience it is a very stable program. • Noteflight – cloud-based notation that uses a Flash engine. Some downsides, such as requiring access to the internet to use it, but this web app is fairly sophisticated. To access all of the features, there is a subscription fee, but a basic account is free to try. • Lilypond – this is perhaps the most complex, but most powerful, solution. If you are a coder (or understand markup / code), you may just get into this. (Confession: I’m getting into this.) It’s different not doing things with a GUI, very different. Adobe audition cc 2018 11.1.0.184 mac os x 7. But, the music you can produce with it is crisp, clear, and just really nice. – DEFINITELY read their Manual. As I mentioned, I’m in the process of learning Lilypond, but am on hold for the moment thanks to a web development project. I teach MuseScore as a Finale alternative already, and we will be test-adopting Noteflight this year for its ability to integrate with our Blackboard LMS (a very cool feature). I really have nothing bad to say about these applications, other than that Finale / Sibelius are definitely more sophisticated, just because they’ve been around longer. Who knows where any of these three products will be next year, in 5 years, or beyond – but if Finale and Sibelius become dead weight and don’t see any more significant upgrades, it’s only a matter of time before something else steps up to fill the void. Anyway, that’s it. More news on this, as well as my experience with Noteflight and Lilypond, eventually. 13 comments on “ The World of Music Notation is Changing” • ericdano Teaching Noteflight seems stupid. Adobe is basically dropping Flash, so the future of things running flash is in question.more so than the state of Sibelius or Finale. MuseScore looks the best alternative, but I think the panic attacks people are having are a little premature. People were all up in arms about Avid buying Sibelius. And since they bought Sibelius, they have continued to refine the program through what, 2 big versions? I think if worst comes to worst someone will buy Sibelius. Makemusic though, that is a unknown. They were, once upon a time, the innovator in notation. Now, they seem to be aping Sibelius and adding “fluff” to Finale for more mass market appeal. And they were charging yearly for a “new version” which was really little more than a rebranding of existing features that never worked right (how many times have they re-introduced slurs?) and bug fixes. A lot of their focus seems to be more towards SmartMusic and fluff intergration for Finale. They haven’t really advanced the state of notation since they introduced Linked Parts (which was after Sibelius introduced them). They have HAD several things they could have done, like opening up SmartMusic file generation in Finale to use user generated audio but.no. Or a killer iPad app for Finale or a SmartMusic app for iPad So.I’m more concerned with MakeMusic than Avid/Sibelius. Avid has ProTools to support it’s bottom line, and it’s still the De Facto standard. I think Avid really needs to reprice the software though, since Logic 9 is $199 and does 99% of what ProTools does.and sometimes does it better. MakeMusic though.they really aren’t making money, and there isn’t anything really for them to “fall back” on to prop up the notation business.cuz that is the business. I would think that the same company that bought most all of M-Audio’s stuff off of Avid would be eying MakeMusic. I think that would be a good thing as that company also owns Akai and others.might be a good save for MakeMusic.
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