Finale Printmusic 2007?

[TheSorrowsPain]

Everyone,

Is Finale Printmusic a good notation software? It is cheap and I read that it produces professional sheet music much like Finale and Sibelius. I just want the opinion of you guys because I really need to buy me some notation software before I enter college. Thanks for the help.

Peace,

C. Winston

[Boneman]

Why not try the student version of sibelius?

[Bassoonery]

I use an older version of Printmusic and works fine, but if I could afford any version of Sibelius I would definitely want it. Sibelius is more user friendly but the final scores are similar quality and there aren't really many things Printmusic can't do that I can think of - just less well-known. For college (is it uni?) you might want something more professional like Sibelius if you can though. I bought mine off someone who was going to uni and had bought a new Sibelius.

Having said that, mine's an old version and the 2007 might be better. And there's always the freebie Notepad if you really want to go cheap!

[stevel]

Originally Posted by TheSorrowsPain

Everyone,

Is Finale Printmusic a good notation software? It is cheap and I read that it produces professional sheet music much like Finale and Sibelius. I just want the opinion of you guys because I really need to buy me some notation software before I enter college. Thanks for the help.

Peace,

C. Winston

If you want full features, and can afford the academic pricing, go with Finale 2007 unless your college specifically requests Sibelius.

Sibelius has a less steep learning curve, but there are some advanced notation features it just doesn't have. If you think you're only going to need the "normal" notation elements, then Sibelius would also be fine (also has an academic price).

Usually things like Allegro Printmusic, and so on, are just like the full versions with some features not included or disabled. For instance, many times, the diffrence between a lower verision and the full version is that the lower may only allow you to use 32 staves in a score, while the full version is unlimited. If you think you'll never need more than 32 staves, the lower one may work!

You can always upgrade Finale later, and both I believe offere competitive upgrades (I know SIbelius gives you a price break if you switch from Finale).

I still prefer Finale, but Sibelius is negligibly not as complete. So either would be a good choice.

Steve

[odot]

mmhhh, a lot of people switch to SIBELIUS for it's simplicity ... and the joy to make everything looks nice and sharp ... with FINALE 2007 you have to tweak some more features to get nice and clean PDF file, except you're using a MAC !!! well, i think you shoud try overture 4.02 ... it's very easy and it still growing up !!! anyone would like to have some nice musical fonts like golden age, partita, cyberscore, etc ... just PM me ...