Composer Charles Griffin with the Griffin Ensemble (Photo © Charles Griffin)
The American composer Charles B. Griffin has decided to switch to Sibelius after using Finale for more than 15 years. Griffin’s works have been performed in his hometown of New York, all over the US, and in other countries around the world including central and southern America and Europe. He has also worked as a professional copyist on projects for the likes of Jessye Norman and Yo Yo Ma.
On his blog, Griffin writes:
I would typically let a year or more go by in between [Finale] upgrades before purchasing one myself. The most recent break was between Finale 2006 and now Finale 2010. For which I completely regret dropping $200… In the four years that passed by, they managed to move several menu items or tools to unfamiliar places, and beyond that, I fail to see much difference between them.
In fact, one day when I spent quite some time hunting down some tool that had been moved, in frustration I went to Sibelius’ website, and there I had that “cool!” moment. I was impressed with two things in particular: self-adjusting graphic elements and integration with Rewire…
In Finale, one spends a great deal of time simply moving stuff around. Actually, control over the look of crescendos and decrescendos had been better in earlier versions of Finale. But the incorporation of Rewire into Sibelius was really the deciding factor.
ReWire allows you to synchronize the playback of your score with another application, typically a sequencer or DAW, so that you can easily combine elements from your notated score with audio running in your sequencer. Griffin concludes:
Since my next commission is for [an] electroacoustic piece, this time with flute quartet, I decided to use all that time I would spend navigating around Finale’s shortcomings to learning Sibelius instead.
It’s great to continue to see people who have been using Finale for so many years giving Sibelius a fresh look. There are many reasons to switch, and even if you find that you don’t want to leave Finale behind altogether, it can never hurt to develop facility in both programs.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not subscribe to this blog via RSS or email?
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Comments on this entry are closed.