No other music notation software offers Finale's level of control, letting you decide both what and how you create. From any previous version.

• • • Key Features Inspired musician uses NotePad to create original music. The application can score of up to eight instruments such as lead sheets, choral music, guitar tablature. Notes, rest, lyrics and other markings can be entered within the application. NotePad goes beyond translating your notes, it also gives a very high-quality built-in sounds. In addition to that, you can choose different instruments and voices that you might need for your composition.

It can also help you share your work of art by printing and exchanging a variety of electronic files. You can modify your composition as much as you want while you can listen to it.

Therefore, you can play and edit MIDI files. Pros • You can listen instantly the notes you just composed. • NotePad is an easy to use application as far as we are talking about its interface.

• The application is very entertaining. Cons • Music fonts only include maestro. • The software is much appropriate for expert as requires a minimum of knowledge about music arts. Shablon vizitok avon.

Hi Susan, a few random thoughts to either help you decide or just muddy the waters more. I like Finale a LOT. I find the Finale / Sonar combination to be quite effective. I do wish Cakewalk would adopt MusicXML because I think that might improve the process of moving back and forth, but MIDI works well as it is.

I have not yet upgraded to 2009, mostly cause I'm too busy to deal with another install, partly because I'm still getting used to the new tool model in 2008, and partly for financial reasons. I try very hard NOT to move back and forth. If I start in Finale then I get the composition as close to finished as I can, clean up the manuscript, and then export as MIDI so that I can render it in Sonar. OR, I work in Sonar until I'm happy with the piece, and then export as MIDI and import into Finale to create the manuscript. Reversing the process, even once, usually creates a mess that takes more time to resolve than you can imagine. Keep in mind (I'm sure you know) Sonar does a great job of recording the events that make up the performance. It doesn't care about 64th notes, it'll use them and all sorts of tuplet mechanisms because it doesn't have to make pretty printer output!

In fact it really only knows ticks. Finale, on the other hand, is all about the written representation, and when you use Human Playback the program plays with the ticks without disturbing your carefully created notation. Since I upgraded to 2008 I've had mixed results exporting the Human Playback version of a piece, which is better than 2007, where it just was awful. It's worth a shot if you like the Human Playback interpretation. And Sonar will play it back exactly almost the same way.

Which is handy! The audio track in Finale is way more useful than I ever imagined. I originally figured it would be good for transcribing, but I've done a handful of pieces in Finale only using the audio track for live guitar and Finale for everything else. The Garritan libraries are remarkable.

They aren't perfect, and the Finale versions aren't quite up to the standards of the full versions, but few people will be able to tell the difference once you render your work. Amazing shortcomings. The saxes in JABB are almost impossible to use well.

I'd say impossible, but I have heard one or two demos where they sounded good. My work with them is awful, and so too are the rest of the demos I've heard. The Solo violin and cello in GPO are passable. They'd be great if Garritan had never released his stand-alone solo instruments (no longer on the market). But once you've heard stuff rendered with the stand-alone solo instruments you really can't go back. The drum kit in JABB is OK, and it you work really really hard at it you can make it better than OK, but there are so many other tools out there that are way better right out of the box that it really isn't worth the effort. The exception to this rule us the JABB brushes.

I can hear the martini glasses clinking in the background! The basses in JABB require a bit of effort, and I still end up using the Scarbee or Seyer basses in GS3 or the basses in Dim Pro most of the time, but do check them out. As long as you don't go nuts the guitars in JABB are useful.

Since I have not yet upgraded to 2009 I can't address the other libraries. But really, you are buying it as a scoring and composition tool, so I wouldn't put a lot of weight on the included libraries. Since they re-arranged the tools last year I'd have to say that most tasks are much easier, quicker, and more intuitive.