Finale vs Sibelius

[J.Harris]

Question for all you composer/arrangers out there. Finale or Sibelius? What's your opinion regarding learning curves, workflow etc...? I would be doing arrangements for quintet, brass band and perhaps a small amount of orchestral work.

[Levaix]

Sibelius is more intuitive, IMO. The first version of Finale was released in 1988, and Sibelius was originally for Acorn computers and didn't get a Windows version until 1998. The problem with Finale (still IMO) is that as the older program, it had certain quirks in its design. People learned those quirks and got used to it, so drastically altering how it does things would alienate those users. I think since Sibelius came out later it was free to "mess with the formula" a little bit.

All that being said, I haven't tried either in a few years. They both have free versions to try out, just see which one you like better.

EDIT: I still haven't gotten around to trying Notion, but it has some really good reviews and the price is right. http://www.presonus.com/products/Notion-5" target="_blank

[swillafew]

I used Finale for a long time and switched to Sibelius. Finale had great accommodations for unusual or experimental notation. Sibelius is more straightforward for traditional purposes; at least that's my take on it. Sibelius is serving me well now.

[Art Hovey]

I used Finale for a while about 10 years ago. I started making a word file of all the non-intuitive tricks that I needed but couldn't remember. (This was just for small-ensemble stuff, nothing far out.) That file was growing longer and longer when I heard about a trade-in offer from Sibelius.

Since switching over I have had to look things up a few times in the manual, but have not needed to resort to a cheat sheet. There are a few minor bugs that I have learned to live with, and I was surprised to find them still there when I upgraded from V.4 to V.6. I am still using V. 4 most of the time because it loads more quickly, but I go to Version 6 for big projects.

[bwtuba]

Here is a recent post that may be of some interest:
http://www.sibeliusblog.com/opinion/mol ... -sibelius/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

[DonShirer]

bwtuba's citation is quite comprehensive.

I switched to Sibelius several years ago for it's intuitive interface. It's "magnetic layout" has saved me much work when laying out scores. Recently Finale has improved several features that used to bug me.
I would hazard that Sibelius is still easier for the casual user. Pros who want to produce commercial-grade scores (especially in "modern" notation) may find it preferable to use the more detailed adjustments available in Finale.

[Uncle Markie]

I started with the Copyist on the Atari 1040, used Finale for a several years and then switched to Sibelius - and will stay with it. Quicker, and much more intuitive. I understand a lot of the LA guys now use Sibelius, including Alf Clausen who does all that work for the Simpsons shows. I do band scores mostly.
Mark Heter

[tbn.al]

I have used Sibelius since version 1. I have tried a couple of times to use Finale to no avail. It just doesn't work for me. Most of my use is rescoring church stuff to fit our instrumentation. Sibelius and photoscore work very well for that.

[PMeuph]

might be pertinent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe6b84_TygE

Meh, The Select tool is a default in Sibelius, meaning you can transition between let's say dynamics and note input without having to go click another button... Further, Sibelius has the use of arrows and command+arrow to move up or down by a step or an octave. It makes life easier when entering music that is repetitive or very motivic...

probably not pertinent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hNuZWniiCI

Nice tune!

Somewhat pertinent as you get to hear the music of Sibelius every time you open the software, and who wouldn't want that.

Sibelius 7:

http://youtu.be/h3ZvVXMpH14?t=5m31s" target="_blank

[PaulTkachenko]

I work with both (Sibelius 6 and Finale 2014).

I prefer Finale as I find it much quicker.

[Carroll]

I am a professional music copyist. The piece I am working on right now has some of the orchestra in 6/8 and some in 2/4. There are also lots of unmetered sections. There are lots of instances where the composer wants rhythms beamed across bar lines. He likes to include rests in barred groupings. I know Finale can handle this. I am not sure Sibelius can. Besides, the composer's publisher only wants Finale files.

If I was doing simpler stuff, or stuff just for me...I might look at Sibelius.

[PaulMaybery]

Lots of valid controversy and opinion. Much of it stems from the familiarity one has with either program and the nature of the work.
I have used Finale well over 20 years and for much of that time, I would work every day for many hours. Yes, I became very comfortable with it. I also became extremely quick in using the "Speedy" note entry with a midi keyboard and the "qwerty" with a numeric pad. Two monitors also proved helpful with the tools on one and the document on the other. I could enter music at the same speed that a musician playing that part could play it. That was what still keeps me in the FInale camp. A few years back I began working for Keith Brion and Naxos recordings on preparing around 20 rather large band scores from Sousa's manuscripts. For some good reasons, Keith insisted on Sibelius as does our publisher, C.L. Barnhouse. I realized very soon, that I was way too slow on Sibelius with note entry and was never going to get up to the speed that I was used to with Finale. Yet, I love Sousa and a chance to work editing his unpublished manuscripts was a priviledge. I was not going to throw in the towel. My solution was to do the note entry and initial layout in Finale. Then convert the Finale score into an XML file, export it and open it in Sibelius. About 98% ot the entries transferred over. A few problems with divisi parts. But fixing them took only a few minutes. I do love the "Magnetic Layout" in Sibelius. It does save time. Page formatting, as soon as I learned the tricks, was also pretty slick. But now the Sousa project has reached its conclusion. Will I keep using Sibelius? A most definite "NO." While some of the features are pretty slick and arguably a tad easier than Finale, for me it all boils down to note entry, and on that issue alone, Finale wins hands down. I have also learned many tricks on customizing the fonts, lines, curves etc which make the score much more compelling visually and I believe aids the players in reading it. A few years back I was cranking out about a score a week for concert band or brass band. That is a lot of notes. I still do 30 or 40 scores each year and that involves making the whole arrangement/orchestration, not just copying someone else's work. Perhaps had I some 20 years experience with Sibelius, I would opt to use it. Go with what you are comfortable with. They all pretty much look the same in the end product.

[Tubaryan12]

I like musescore, and it's free.

+1

I never learned tenor clef and was in no rush to learn in time for my first concert this year. I entered the parts as written and then a simple clef change and all was set.

[PaulTkachenko]

I've used Finale for Turkish music notation (nonstandard accidentals and key signatures).

Sibelius struggles with that.

Probably not that important for most here, but it's nice to have that flexibility..

[bighonkintuba]

Free as in free beer,
and much more importantly, free as in freedom:
https://fsf.org/" target="_blank
http://musescore.org/en/about/gpl" target="_blank

I like musescore, and it's free.

[balchb]

FWIW - you can only create SmartMusic files in Finale.

XML conversion is a pain if you have to work with someone using .sib.

I've used Finale since college and completed many arrangements and Master's projects with it. One you now how to work around Finale's quirks, it's a good program. If you want published quality, Sib is probably a better option. I can never seem to finish a document and simply print without having to change a bunch of stuff with layout, etc.

[PaulMaybery]

In Finale, I have created my own templates as to what is referred to as a "house style." Usually I thicken staff lines, crescendi, note stems, slightly enlarge articulations and more. Once all of those are set, then I am good to go for as many scores as I would like to create from that template. The newer versions of FInale, have in my opinion a much better default setting in that regard, and the music fonts are a bit bolder and seem to "pop" visually a bit better. I've also thought it a fun exercise to try to mimic the "house styles" of various publishers such as Oxford, Novello, Hal Leonard etc.

On a different subject, I believe the issue with XML files was greatly improved with both Finale 2012 and Sibelius 7. The seem to read each other a bit better. There were regular problems, such as with divisi parts, where up and down stems were in 2 or more layers in FInale. When they opened after import in Sibelius, the layers were more or less abandoned and things somewhat confused, also stem directions were often altered. On those projects I would simply avoid using layers and just use a separate staff. Experience eventually taught me what problems to anticipate and then to work around them.

Finale has a lot of ways to customize things, but it does have a huge learning curve if you are going to pursue all of that tweaking. For me, learning a notation software is akin to learning an instrument. There are so many nuances to using it artistically. Just because someone thinks one is better than the other does not mean you should switch. Some like the violin others the flute, to presume that one can just pick up a new instrument and be automatically up to speed on it is absurd. Use that with which you are the most fluent, expressive and confident. You should be in control of the software, not it of you.

[balchb]

My issue with XML is the score manager so I can export SmartMusic and have the correct sound. Still can't figure out percussion.

[Tom B.]

Finale has a free downloadable plugin called Dolet 6 which is supposed to read and write XML files. I haven't used it yet, because I've had no need to do so. I am not a power user, and usually forget how to do a few things between infrequent Finale sessions. As mentioned by someone previously, I use two monitors with the user manual on one and the program on the other. It definitely speeds things up. I use note entry with a midi keyboard extensively. Because I've been using the program for over 10 years, I don't intend to switch.

[PMeuph]

Bottom line seems to be this:

If you plan on arranging Xenakis, go with Finale(or MS Paint ) .

If you plan on arranging something pre-Stravinsky* (in terms of rhythms, notation, layout) go with Sibelius.

*Could include most pop music/film music of the last century.
______

Full disclosure: I used Finale when I was in Undergrad, I never really mastered it, but I was/am good at it. I can still enter good looking parts, or as I've done a lot this year, worksheets, exercises and lesson plans for theory.

On my computer, I use Sibelius. Again, I'm not an expert, I probably use the program 1-2 hours a weeks. Last week, I photoscores a trombone quartet arrangement and imported in sibelius to transpose it down a 3rd. This week, I'm writing out a brass ensemble version of a popular euph solo. Both are easy in Sibelius.

I tackled a Kagel piece this year in Sibelius. (For an acquaintance). It proved to be extremely challenging. Sibelius' magnetic layout is great, except when they are 40 billion extra markings on the page. Then it became a struggle to fit everything on the page. Plus, a lot of workarounds have to be figured out.

m. 365 - That's a change to percussion with the clef hidden. The bottom line is in a separate layer, and the noteheads are custom made in the notehead editor...
m. 375 The "octuplet" should be 32nds, but since Kagel had written it like this, the measure had to be stretched (be given an extra beat) without the time signature change.