[Dixielandjazz] Sibellius or Finale or Encore?

[Andy.Ling at Quantel.Com]

First some background

I use Sibelius and have done since it was first written for the Acorn
computers

I have never used either Encore or Finale, but have talked to people
that have.

> I still need a bit of help on the question of which direction to go in 
my
> next music composition software upgrade. Encore 4.2  indeed does not 
work on
> my new rig with Win XP. If I buy the new Encore for $400, I basically 
get
> the same capabilities I already had, but it works in XP. I have tried 
Finale
> before, but only a scaled down trial version, and I didn't like it. That 
was
> about 4 years ago. Never tried Sibellius.
> 
> Questions:
> 
> 1.  I have my entire Dr Jazz Band repertoire in Encore files as well as
> other material I use to teach. Do either of the other two read Encore 
files?
> 

I don't think Sibelius imports Encore files directly. (You can send me
one and I'll try if you like). It supports lots of file types :-

Finale, Allegro, PrintMusic, Finale ENIGMA, NIFF, MIDI, ASCII Tab

So you could at least export as MIDI and import that.

> 2.  What significant improvements might there be in Sibellius or Finale 
over
> Encore?
> 

>From what I can tell, Sibelius and Finale have similar facilities in terms
of Music engraving. My feeling is that Sibelius is easier to use, but I
guess you get used to anything in the end.

These are both "Top end" scoring packages designed for publishing music.
They will generate pretty much any type of music notation you can think
of and lots you never imagined existed.

Sibelius then has lots of other facilities like "Flexi-time" record that
improves the reading of your music keyboard playing. It has integration
to a "Optical Music Reader" which is like OCR for music. It also has
auto arranging facilities and a scripting language that lets you automate
things. It also has a web publishing interface.

You can download a demo version from their web site 
(http://www.sibelius.com/)

The only downside I guess is the cost.

> 3. Can any of them save files to PDF or a graphics format that can be
> emailed to players?
> 

You can generate PDF files from any program that can print. All you need
is something like PDFCreator that adds printer to your print menu. Then
you just print to that and it generates a PDF.

Sibelius can save music as a graphic and supports EPS, TIFF, BMP and WMF

> 4. Is there any place to buy any of these programs at a significant 
savings
> off the retail price?
> 

I guess a web search would tell you that. Sibelius are pretty good to 
their
customers. I have been offered several upgrades over the years for fairly
reasonable prices to the point that I have a top of the range bit of
software that does far more than I need, but that I have really paid for
in instalments.

Something that might be worth looking at is Finale NotePad. This is 
available
for free download from Finale and is a cut down version of the full blown
program. If it does what you want then it is definitely the cheapest 
option.

HTH

Andy Ling