MusicXML files actually contain more engraving details than Finale files. A lot of how Finale displays music is determined by the program, not saved in the file. MusicXML files save all this information that Finale files don’t contain.
So not only would building a Finale converter be a huge amount of work, it would be a complete waste of time. It would make conversions worse, not better.
Remember to check your Dorico preferences if you want to preserve Finale formatting information that Dorico will generally discard by default.
I’m actually peeved because already there are people (not on any specific “groups” or anything, mostly friends of friends of friends via Facebook) who are pulling out the ol’ “Dorico can’t do what Finale did/does.”
I asked someone for a list of things that could be included in that, to see if any were worth suggesting here on the Dorico forum.
As usual, the comments were of the type “Finale uses such and such a menu to do such and such. While Dorico does it automatically.” And I REALLY don’t get how that is a “things Finale can do that Dorico can’t”.
And of course there was the jewel: “In Finale you just choose your tool, while in Dorico you have to switch from Write mode to Engrave mode.”
Again, a false equivalency.
The only legit complaint I’ve seen today is that for folks who like to work in galley view, Dorico’s approach to instrument changes—having additional instruments attached to the player, only showing current instrument in Page view, but showing all instruments in Galley view—means that using a lot of instruments per player results in an unwieldy amount of staves. Filtering, of course, can help, but requires frequent adjustment and makes it hard to scan through the whole score. If there is a solution to that, please let me know so I can pass it on.
I suspect simply working in page view, maybe creating an extra score layout with super wide pages, is the real solution.
All the chaos aside, at the end of this landmark day for music notation (in US Eastern time), I’m feeling very grateful to @dspreadbury and team for meeting this moment. The application is so well organized/featured and a pleasure to use, and after becoming the running joke among my friends for suggesting Dorico every time the legacy notation apps glitch, I feel vindicated and excited about collaborators joining the party. Thank you!
Perhaps not surprising you’d not heard of Sibelius at that point as it was only available on the Archimides computer until 1998.
I remember installing Finale on my sister’s old laptop, with its 4MB of Ram, and sitting with those huge manuals, the reference and the encyclopedia, trying to make sense of it.
One other thing I’ll miss that came a little later but still when we were all using print manuals was the Finale Visual Index. Perhaps only of limited use in the heat of notation, but I always thought it was a nice little bit of engraving.
It may not be feasible for all users, but using a hi-res multi-monitor setup has all but eliminated any issues with galley view and write/engrave mode switching for me.
Add a MIDI keyboard and a Stream Deck, and productivity will go through the roof.
Especially in the light of the fact, that Dorico initially was conceptionalized around a non-touchscreen (Apple-) laptop usage scenario…
What Dorico does for me in comparison to Finale is take off my hands at least 80% of the fine-tuning for cosmetic issues down to the pixel. A lot of my Finale work was tweaking scores here and there, and while Finale’s UI for graphically moving notes here and there in a measure is far more intuitive than Dorico’s, I still take Dorico’s overall product any day over Finale, which I used for thirty years until today (26 August 2024).
I’m reading lots on the fb forum about people not being able to access their previous work.
Can anyone actually confirm if Finale users can still use the current version of the software, on their current machine, indefinitely? It feels like everyone thinks we’re going to be hit by an asteroid and there’s only so much time they have to transfer projects.
For those, who would like to know how long the crossgrade offer will run. Jason Wick, MakeMusic’s director of product development:
We’ve partnered with Steinberg on this special crossgrade offer for a limited time. Without getting too specific about the terms of our agreement, I can tell you that people have time to check out Dorico and its 60-day free trial if they like
As Microsoft is end-of-lifing Windows 10, 8, and 7 in October 2025, and you can’t install Windows 11 on a machine that Microsoft deems not up to spec, there will likely be a lot of users buying new PCs in October 2025, only to realize they can’t activate Finale on it. (Steinberg may want to go ahead and put another crossgrade deal on the calendar for then.)
Well, Parallels is the de facto leader. It costs some money, either by subscription or one-time payment.
UTM is a popular free utility. It can emulate Intel on Apple Silicon (though not quickly), or even old PPC classic Mac OSes; I don’t know how good it is at virtualizing Sonoma, but it’s a possibility.
I purchased Finale in 1991 and remember loading all of the floppy disks with great excitement. I also remember the three manuals, and being an avid reader of manuals, I couldn’t wait to get started. I had a really hard time with the software, and was so happy to discover Sibelius quite a few years later, and of course, after Dorico I couldn’t be more happy. Like others here, I do feel for users of Finale. Some of you might remember when Opcode went out of business, and users of their sequencer (Vision and Studio Vision Pro) had to quickly find an alternative. I chose to go with Logic by Emagic, and what a steep learning curve that was! Nevertheless, Finale users will soon discover new and exciting things that they never thought were possible, and like many here, will probably wonder why they didn’t switch to Dorico sooner.
I’ve thought of a solution to this, for any folks transitioning over and looking to use Galley view without seeing every instrument for every player, and without having to toggle filters to see the active instrument for each player at any moment of the score.
Create a duplicate score layout called Wide Score, or Galley Score, whatever you want. In Page Setup, change the width of the page to something wild like 8000mm. In Staves and Systems – Casting Off, disable “fixed number of systems per bar” if it’s active. Voila. Galley view, with no extra instruments and more page-view-accurate vertical spacing. I may start using this myself.
