Post #1 - February 7, 2025
Music Notation Journey
Over the years I have used six different music notation programs. In college in the late 1980s I got hooked on notation programs using a Mac program called "Professional Composer". It had its limitations, including oddities such as one I called "flying articulations" - whenever a note was above the staff, the articulations would appear quite a distance above the note. I did not like that look, so I would export each page to a graphics program and readjust the articulations and move/recreate elements that rendered on top of each other. It is surprising that I stayed with notation programs considering that and printers that printed at several minutes per page. Eventually, the publisher discontinued the program sometime in the mid 90s and replaced it with another offering, "Composer's Mosaic." BTW - I sometimes read charts by other arrangers from that time period and can still identify the parts written using Professional Composer.
Mosaic was a good program that I used both at home and my second teaching job, where one of my classes was a small orchestra with an unusual instrumentation. At work we had much better printers, but most of the computers, including the ones I taught computer classes on, were Windows 95 or 98. So I got in the habit of exporting my work files to PDF. In the late 90s, I got burned again, the publisher discontinued Mosaic prior to the release of Mac OS X. I continued using Mosaic for a couple more years until it was time to replace my mid 90s Mac.
Around 2002 I needed a new computer. I opted to get Windows XP because my wife was more familiar with Windows. I did not care either way because I needed to learn a new notation program anyway. I had started a new job about a year earlier as a Technology Facilitator for another school district and had to be familiar with both operating systems anyway. I bought "Finale Print Music" and starting using the free "Finale Notepad" when I was away from my computer. Writing for larger groups, I found the need to get the full "Finale" program. So for about the last 20+ years, I used Finale - until the end of August this past year.
At the end of August, it was announced that they were discontinuing development of Finale effective immediately. I fretted over that for a couple days, then decided to move on. I do not have powerful enough equipment to run virtual machines. So I decided to switch to Dorico. I figured it would be better to start learning a new program when I did not have urgent deadlines (and while they had a good crossgrade price). I started by writing a short quartet arrangement and got some frustration out of the way.
From time to time, I am going to blog post my thoughts on my transition from Finale to Dorico.
