Sheet Music Publishing and Beyond!

Makemusic Finale 2007 has come a long way from its first appearance in the late 80's and offers much more than simple notation capabilities. You can transcribe, compose and arrange music and create professional scores and more using this application.

Finale is both Mac and PC compatible and for this review, I used Finale 2007 installed on a Macbook Pro running Mac OS X10.4.9. Without doubt, Finale is one hundred percent notation software with the score representing the workspace. However, it has an impressive list of features up its sleeve to assist musicians to tackle projects ranging from transcribing music to creating educational material to film scoring.

Finale Workspace

The Finale installation pack comes as a set of 2 CDs. CD 1 installs the application and all required components, while CD2 installs the additional features like Garritan Personal Orchestra. The installation is simple and straightforward with step-by-step guidance from the installation wizard. The complete installation requires approx 1.6GB of disc space. You need a minimum of 512MB RAM, but 1GB or more will make things smoother when you use GPO heavily. Finale 2007 requires Mac OS 10.3 or later and for Windows, Win2000, XP and later.

Finale 2007 incorporates ample MIDI capabilities including support for MIDI controllers and synchronization. I plugged in an EMU X-Board 25 and it appeared in the MIDI set-up window immediately. Simple enough.

Finale MIDI Set-up

Finale is an extensive application and might seem intimidating when you approach it first. No doubt you need at least an intermediate level of music theory and notation knowledge to unleash its true potential. Needless to say that you need basic computer skills to operate Finale since there are many options and preferences to set and an array of keyboard tricks to streamline the workflow. There is a well-designed set of getting started videos and tutorial projects bundled into the application to get you going as soon as you install Finale.

During launch, you are greeted by the Launch Window with a number of "Wizards" to assist with project se-tup.

Finale Metatool Assignment