Instructional book in finale? (best practices?)

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jzucker
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Post by jzucker » Sun Jun 11, 2017 11:06 am

I have a couple instructional books (sheets of sound for guitar) that I have written in finale and using adobe indesign for the layout. I would love it if I could do the whole thing in finale since indesign is a pain in the !@#$ to work with.

Any best practices for doing this? How have folks found finale for doing this type of thing?


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John Ruggero
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Post by John Ruggero » Sun Jun 11, 2017 12:16 pm

At this point, I have always found Finale's text editor too primitive for instructional books and such and have always done what you describe: import Finale into InDesign, which works very well. MM recently mentioned that they are working on improvements to the text editor at their Feature Request site, but I doubt that it will be enough to produce professional-level text output.

Dorico may have better capabilities of this type; at least that is what is promised.
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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Sun Jun 11, 2017 12:35 pm

I went to your website and saw a few sample pages from your volumes 1 and 2. Unfortunately there were only a few pages with musical examples and text, so it's a little hard to visualize what your books look like in the larger sense. If you could post a few typical pages here, it might help us get a feel for the kind of look you want to achieve.

Finale is capable of nice, clean design but if you think InDesign is a pain in the !@#$, using Finale for page design is just a different pain in the !@#$, just as irritating. In your use of InDesign, I assume that you've set up master pages, paragraph style sheets and character style sheets that conform to an overall design for your book. Finale doesn't have that capability, it's not a page design software.

Again, post some samples if possible.

N.
N. Grossingink
Educational Band, Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble a specialty
Sample: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pFF5OeJDeLFGHMRyXrubFqZWXBubErw4/view?usp=share_link


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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Sun Jun 11, 2017 1:22 pm

jzucker wrote:I could do the whole thing in finale since indesign is a pain in the !@#$ to work with.
Both apps require learning their methods and workflows in order to get the most out. But InDesign is vastly superior, more consistent, more adaptable, more coherent -- and most importantly of all, it's built for the express purpose of DTP work.

Make the music examples in Finale; save them as PDFs, and then lay them out on pages with InDesign. I would no more attempt to write a book in Finale than I would try to notate music in InDesign.

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MikeHalloran
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Post by MikeHalloran » Mon Jun 12, 2017 8:42 pm

BuonTempi wrote:
jzucker wrote:I could do the whole thing in finale since indesign is a pain in the !@#$ to work with.
Both apps require learning their methods and workflows in order to get the most out. But InDesign is vastly superior, more consistent, more adaptable, more coherent -- and most importantly of all, it's built for the express purpose of DTP work.

Make the music examples in Finale; save them as PDFs, and then lay them out on pages with InDesign. I would no more attempt to write a book in Finale than I would try to notate music in InDesign.
You can substitute just about any other layout program for In Design in the above comment and it will be equally true.
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jzucker
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Post by jzucker » Fri Jun 16, 2017 2:17 pm

The workflow you describe is exactly what I do. I export in PDF, import into a graphic frame in indesign and yes, I have master pages and styles setup but it's still painful to go back into finale and correct mistakes, have to re-export and then re-import back into indesign.

Ultimately, I don't think it matters in a jazz guitar instructional book whether the keening is correct. Anything I can do to make the workflow easier makes it more likely I will produce more material. Using indesign to write a jazz guitar instructional book is kind of like using a Ferrari to drive the 5 miles I go to work everyday.

Here's an example from one of my books.
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Fri Jun 16, 2017 2:50 pm

jzucker wrote:have to re-export and then re-import back into indesign.
Just over-write the original illustration, and then use ID's Links palette to update the link to the file.

If you think you might be able to make the adjustment in Illustrator, you can right click on the PDF, and select "Edit With" and choose Illustrator. The amended file will be automatically incorporated.

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