[Dixielandjazz] John Farrell and MIDI

[Bigbuttbnd@aol.com]

John:

You might want to give the program FINALE a try instead of Encore. Finale has 
the capability for you to pat your foot while playing (and recording). You 
can change tempos, feel, etc and as long as you pat your foot to the tempo 
you prefer Finale will follow you and notate the music correctly. You still 
have to play to a 'metronome' of sort, except YOU get to choose when and 
where and how much it speeds up or slows down! You control the metronome on 
the fly by tapping your foot. (Of course, you're tapping on something like a 
foot controller, but you can tell Finale "I'm going to tap quarter notes or 
8th notes or whatever you prefer!)

Finale is ususally considered THE music notation program and virtually all 
commercially published music these days is produced on Finale. It's a little 
more difficult to get around on Finale compared to Encore... but the 
flexibility it provides may be worth the learning curve in your case. Finale 
also will record all of your dynamics as you play them (if you play them on a 
touch sensitive keyboard). And those dynamic marks and expressions can be 
transposed, edited, rearranged, etc. and the dynamic markings will follow the 
notes wherever you move them (if you so choose).

>From your description of your workflow it sounds to me like Finale will do 
ALL of the things you're now using 3 programs to do. Check into it if you 
haven't already.

Rocky Ball
Atlanta