Upgrade or Switch to Sibelius?

meninoferoz · Post by **meninoferoz** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 12:22 pm

I am studying at a school with a very well known composer who uses Sibelius and he is pushing me to move to the dark side (a.k.a. Sibelius). The majority of the school students and faculty also use Sibelius.

I currently use Finale 2012 and can do what I need the program to do, with the occasional bugs which I now tolerate. I find Finale extremely capable as well. Although it seems Sibelius can do some things faster, and the learning curve is easier, Finale seems to be more capable, even if extra steps are required for tasks.

How much difference is Finale 2012 with the latest version? Would it be wise to upgrade or switch to Sibelius?

N Grossingink · Post by **N Grossingink** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 1:46 pm

meninoferoz wrote:I am studying at a school with a very well known composer who uses Sibelius and he is pushing me to move to the dark side (a.k.a. Sibelius). The majority of the school students and faculty also use Sibelius.

These are good reasons to seriously consider adding Sibelius to your toolbox. You could then share files easily with others. It sounds like you already have some idea of how Sibelius works, and you'd have plenty of people to get tips from.

N.

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 3:30 pm

I can understand your dilemma. I have considered switching many times. Since I have decades invested in learning Finale I have stayed with it. I think Sib is leaving Finale in the dust and a switch may be inevitable. I try the free demo Sib offers fairly often usually when they do an update or upgrade.
It seems MM is resistant to changes or any real advancing features. I even get resistance right here on this forum. The suggestion of a real text editor for instance got put down handlely.
This pretty much sums it up, if you want fast than Sib is probably the best. If you want through or the fact anything that can be done (if you can figure out how!) in music you want Finale. it does it all.

Djard · Post by **Djard** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 6:49 pm

I tried Sibelius and did not like the laborious approach to writing notation: the floating palette is annoying and does not even offer all the elements, which must be accessed elsewhere. No question that developers of music notation software do not consult knowledgeable composers or arrangers.

However, if Finale does not fix its myriad of well-aged bugs, especially its proclivity to lock up when editing complex polyphonic notation, one may have no choice but to consider another other program if it comes along, and if it accommodates writing concert standard music. I'm not holding my breath.

miker · Post by **miker** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 7:42 pm

As much as I hate the "me, too" concept, I think it's important, here. If most (all?) of the students and faculty are using Sibelius, it behooves you to do the same, for simple reasons of in-house conformity.

It means you have to learn a new program, but in the long run, it will be better for you while in school. After you've completed the course of study, you can decide which app suits your needs. With, I might add, more knowledge than many who swear by one or the other!

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:49 pm

"However, if Finale does not fix its myriad of well-aged bugs, ...."

Maybe the competition from the newest Sibelius release and now Dorico making big noise, MM will see the light abd do what they need to. Here's hoping.

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:50 pm

"...Sibelius release and now Dorico..."

Not to mention some of the freebies out there now!

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Tue Oct 24, 2017 5:33 am

No reason to mention the freebies. They are lacking the features needed to be useful in a classroom.

A long time ago, my daughter was the only Finale user in her class at University College Dublin. Like most schools in the British Islands, they were a Sibelius shop. She was a composition major there for senior year and had no intention of learning Sibelius for one year only. She managed ok and said it wasn’t really a problem.

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Tue Oct 24, 2017 2:01 pm

MikeHalloran wrote:No reason to mention the freebies. They are lacking the features needed to be useful in a classroom.

Oh, my friend, there is reason. Even the freebies will influence how MM procedes. And, that will impact the classroom. But dealing with MM for as long as I have, perhaps not. We'll see, won't we?

BuonTempi · Post by **BuonTempi** » Tue Oct 24, 2017 3:05 pm

meninoferoz wrote:How much difference is Finale 2012 with the latest version? Would it be wise to upgrade or switch to Sibelius?

Why not do both? You can cross-grade from Finale to Sibelius at a discount, and still keep Finale 2012 and upgrade to the newer version at a later time, depending on which app you prefer.

Sibelius is not without its own quirks, limitations, workarounds and long-standing bugs. You may find that it just gives you a different set of benefits and a different set of problems.

ebiggs1 · Post by **ebiggs1** » Tue Oct 24, 2017 8:50 pm

"Sibelius is not without its own quirks, limitations, workarounds and long-standing bugs"

Amen, brotha ! They are just a different species of 'bugs'.

miker · Post by **miker** » Tue Oct 24, 2017 9:25 pm

And no one will argue that. But the question was not, “which is better?” But rather, “which is better for me while at school?”

So let’s try to stay on topic!

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Wed Oct 25, 2017 2:02 am

miker wrote:And no one will argue that. But the question was not, “which is better?” But rather, “which is better for me while at school?”

So let’s try to stay on topic!

Exactly!

Had my daughter asked me to spring for a Sibelius license while she was in Ireland, I would have approved the debit to her student account or ordered the crossgrade on my credit card (heck, there may have been a campus site license for all I know). I wouldn’t have argued for a second.

She decided that it was ok to remain with Finale and that ended the discussion.

jzucker · Post by **jzucker** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 1:21 pm

ebiggs1 wrote:I can understand your dilemma. I have considered switching many times. Since I have decades invested in learning Finale I have stayed with it. I think Sib is leaving Finale in the dust and a switch may be inevitable. I try the free demo Sib offers fairly often usually when they do an update or upgrade.
It seems MM is resistant to changes or any real advancing features. I even get resistance right here on this forum. The suggestion of a real text editor for instance got put down handlely.
This pretty much sums it up, if you want fast than Sib is probably the best. If you want through or the fact anything that can be done (if you can figure out how!) in music you want Finale. it does it all.

Yes I agree. The installed user base "likes what they know" so they are resistant to changes which would make things much easier. I have been using 2014.5 and have resisted going to 25 because 1) I refuse to pay for engineering technical debt and 2) There is no compelling feature that targets what I'm interested in.

I find that Finale is incredibly klunky and requires way more clicks and tool selections than it should to make it more efficient. Things like it not remembering where the current input cursor was when you switch between simple editt and measure tool and back for example. Stuff like that just makes it cumbersome. The fact that you have to switch tools to do everything and when you do, it does not intelligently take you to the right place or allow you to move from one measure to the next in the selection tool using the arrows or even deselect.

ZERO thought was given to allow you to keep your hands on the keyboard during musical input. The act of having to continually click on tools and measures is laborious and time consuming. It's a user interface disaster.

I bought sibelius about 10 years ago but at that time, found that it had some limitations for the kind of work I do (jazz guitar instructional books) and I went back to finale.

I'm considering trying out musescore. At this point, I do not see Finale as growing in terms of either features, reliability or financially so I wonder if I'll even be able to open my musx files in 5 years?

motet · Post by **motet** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:14 pm

Not to defend Finale's UI too vehemently, but I work on a chunk of music at a time--enter all the notes, then all the slurs, then all the articulations, then all the expressions, then all the hairpins. This keeps tool switching to a minimum. If I had to break my momentum while entering notes every time I had to add a dot or a forte, I think, even with the best UI, this would slow me down.

Simple entry, though, does have a mechanism for entering expressions and articulations without leaving the Simple entry tool. Have you looked into that?

The last time I looked at Sibelius, note entry was slow enough when compared to Finale as to cancel the benefit of a better UI. When someone comes up with faster note input, I will consider switching (I have communicated my ideas on what that might be to Mr Spreadbury at Dorico and he seemed to take it seriously).

jzucker · Post by **jzucker** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 5:18 pm

I think everyone tries to work like that but invariably you end up needing to make corrections and when that happens, your nice orderful list of efficient ways to use the program go out the window.

And yes, I know how to use meta-tools but for example, there is no way to align articulations in finale so you have to use a plug-in and that screws up the workflow up too. Everytime you leave entry-mode, finale loses it's mind. After 20+ years, why can't it remember where you left off. That simple feature would save so much time. Instead, there is release after release featuring better and more playback features which is something I could care less about. I know it's important to some but just not to me.

Another thing is that finale's midi input and quantization is horrid.

And the simple edit and speedy edit seem to have been developed by 2 different teams. Why can't they unify the accelerator keys ?!? For example, the = sign creates a tie in speedy but a # in simple. In speedy, a 2nd note in the measure with an accidental automatically removes the accidental but not in simple. Entering in articulations is different too.

AGAIN - Yes, you can make it more efficient by changing the way you work but the UI is HORRID in Finale and they've done almost ZERO work the last several releases on it.

motet wrote:Not to defend Finale's UI too vehemently, but I work on a chunk of music at a time--enter all the notes, then all the slurs, then all the articulations, then all the expressions, then all the hairpins. This keeps tool switching to a minimum. If I had to break my momentum while entering notes every time I had to add a dot or a forte, I think, even with the best UI, this would slow me down.

Simple entry, though, does have a mechanism for entering expressions and articulations without leaving the Simple entry tool. Have you looked into that?

The last time I looked at Sibelius, note entry was slow enough when compared to Finale as to cancel the benefit of a better UI. When someone comes up with faster note input, I will consider switching (I have communicated my ideas on what that might be to Mr Spreadbury at Dorico and he seemed to take it seriously).

Djard · Post by **Djard** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:00 pm

I just took a peak at the Sibelius forum and noticed their users suffer from the same problem as we do, and that is software engineering that does not consult professional composers and arrangers.

Understandably this thread is turning into a support group for victims of lost time and the abuse of contending with an unstable and oftentimes illogical GUI.

I conservatively estimate that at least half of the time I spend composing music with Finale is spent on fixing a problem or seeking a workaround when scoring complex phrases. But I have not forgotten that while Finale is bug-ridden, it is still an amazing program.

jzucker · Post by **jzucker** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:12 pm

Djard wrote:I just took a peak at the Sibelius forum and noticed their users suffer from the same problem as we do, and that is software engineering that does not consult professional composers and arrangers.

Understandably this thread is turning into a support group for victims of lost time and the abuse of contending with an unstable and oftentimes illogical GUI.

I conservatively estimate that at least half of the time I spend composing music with Finale is spent on fixing a problem or seeking a workaround when scoring complex phrases. But I have not forgotten that while Finale is bug-ridden, it is still an amazing program.

Agreed, which is why i never switched to sibelius even though I bought it. I just wish they'd pay attention to the user interface and actually do some UI testing.

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:23 pm

Encore has the fastest UI for the way I work. It’s pretty useless in every other way and its printed output looks like amateur hour. Plus, it only supports note export via MIDI or MusicXML — no lyrics or expressions. I enter notes only, then export to Finale. Frankly, Simple Entry isn’t much slower but, as long as Encore functions, I’ll use it that way. Even if Encore were to upgrade to being useful again, I’d still use it for the simple stuff only and leave the heavy lifting to Finale.

I bought licenses for Overture and Notion looking for something better than Encore or Finale for the quick and dirty. Each has its strengths and weaknesses but neither will get me to switch — unless I need a Movie Window again and Finale 2014.5 no longer works on my Mac (despite the cautions from MM, still doing ok in High Sierra as long as I leave the toolbars alone).

jzucker · Post by **jzucker** » Sat Oct 28, 2017 11:38 pm

thanks for the info Mike. Have you tried musescore or Sibelius?

MikeHalloran wrote:Encore has the fastest UI for the way I work. It’s pretty useless in every other way and its printed output looks like amateur hour. Plus, it only supports note export via MIDI or MusicXML — no lyrics or expressions. I enter notes only, then export to Finale. Frankly, Simple Entry isn’t much slower but, as long as Encore functions, I’ll use it that way. Even if Encore were to upgrade to being useful again, I’d still use it for the simple stuff only and leave the heavy lifting to Finale.

I bought licenses for Overture and Notion looking for something better than Encore or Finale for the quick and dirty. Each has its strengths and weaknesses but neither will get me to switch — unless I need a Movie Window again and Finale 2014.5 no longer works on my Mac (despite the cautions from MM, still doing ok in High Sierra as long as I leave the toolbars alone).

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Sun Oct 29, 2017 12:52 am

I find MuseScore worth every penny it costs with a workflow best described as ridiculous. But it’s free! Yea, I know... It should be for as bad and limited as it is.

Then there’s LilyPond for the hobbyist engravers who think the end all is that thick, 19th C. Copperplate look. Nothing there for me. Like MuseScore, it cannot be used one-handed. I admire what they’re doing even if I want no part of it. I’ve a huge collection of 19th C. sheet music but no desire to make anything I do look like it.

Sibelius is too slow and over-complicated. I didn’t like Igor either. Looks good but so do so many others these days. I could upgrade to 8 for under $200. No thanks. I really prefer Finale.

Dorico isn’t ready for prime time but I understand its appeal. Perhaps someday, when it’s ready, a future version might interest me but the current one does not.

I’ve owned quite a few others over the last 30+ years, most discontinued so I won’t name names.

jzucker · Post by **jzucker** » Sun Oct 29, 2017 1:47 am

Thanks again Mike. For a jazz musician who writes out lead sheets and writes jazz guitar instructional books, is there any reason for me to upgrade from 2014.5 to 25?

motet · Post by **motet** » Sun Oct 29, 2017 3:18 am

>Igor Engraver

It's long-dead, I think. I tried to use it back in the day but it was terrible in terms of crashing. The cool thing was it was written in Lisp, a 60-year-old language that's the basis for most AI programming (not that there's anything AI-ish about Igor). I got fed up with the crashing and that's when I bought Finale.

I have a friend who's a small music publisher and he still uses Score (along with Sibelius).

MikeHalloran · Post by **MikeHalloran** » Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:44 pm

jzucker wrote:Thanks again Mike. For a jazz musician who writes out lead sheets and writes jazz guitar instructional books, is there any reason for me to upgrade from 2014.5 to 25?

I can’t answer that since I’m not you. You should download the demo and see if any of the new features work for you.

The good news is that you have tremendous amounts of control while the bad news is that you have to exercise tremendous... This is true for both Finale and Sibelius.

You’re laying out instruction books. Nothing else gives you that much control except LilyPond (does LP even work with a jazz font?). There are graphic front ends for LP but you will have to re-think your work flow and I have no idea if it can do everything you need. I predict that you’ll find MuseScore useless but it is free so check it out. I’m only guessing and freely admit it. You’re not doing AV scoring so I expect that Notion 6 won’t do it for you. Dorico won’t give you the control you want and it’s not quite ready (I could be wrong on that). Likewise, Overture 5 is a work in progress—I bet that it, too, isn’t ready.

I am on the constant quest for a notation app that thinks and works like I do. For the last 9 years, I have the added burden of a handicap that forces me to do it all one-handed. Finale works for me and quite well but I share many of your frustrations with it. I have this thing where 30 Days eval is rarely enough which is why I have these other current licenses.

jzucker · Post by **jzucker** » Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:54 pm

I liked sibelius but found the note entry to be tedious. I don't use a jazz font so that's not an issue.

My books have dual staff with standard notation and tab so dorico won't work since they don't support tab. Sorry to hear about your handicap. Have you considered utilizing one of the mice that have 12 function buttons? I'm wondering if that would equalize things and save me time?

MikeHalloran wrote:
jzucker wrote:Thanks again Mike. For a jazz musician who writes out lead sheets and writes jazz guitar instructional books, is there any reason for me to upgrade from 2014.5 to 25?
I can’t answer that since I’m not you. You should download the demo and see if any of the new features work for you.

The good news is that you have tremendous amounts of control while the bad news is that you have to exercise tremendous... This is true for both Finale and Sibelius.

You’re laying out instruction books. Nothing else gives you that much control except LilyPond (does LP even work with a jazz font?). There are graphic front ends for LP but you will have to re-think your work flow and I have no idea if it can do everything you need. I predict that you’ll find MuseScore useless but it is free so check it out. I’m only guessing and freely admit it. You’re not doing AV scoring so I expect that Notion 6 won’t do it for you. Dorico won’t give you the control you want and it’s not quite ready (I could be wrong on that). Likewise, Overture 5 is a work in progress—I bet that it, too, isn’t ready.

I am on the constant quest for a notation app that thinks and works like I do. For the last 9 years, I have the added burden of a handicap that forces me to do it all one-handed. Finale works for me and quite well but I share many of your frustrations with it. I have this thing where 30 Days eval is rarely enough which is why I have these other current licenses.

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