My Final(e) Pick - Finale PrintMusic® 2009

Well, I bit the bullet and made my selection.

I was really hoping that I would be satisfied with Finale's $9.95 NotePad® notation software (in keeping with my frugal tendencies..) and while it did notate the basic tunes, I found that it was missing a few key features that I wanted in a notation software. I was able to find these features in Finale's $99.95 PrintMusic® product, which if you shop around you can actually find for about $80. Amazon actually has PrintMusic® available on their site as well. They seem to have everything, don't they?

The features that I found lacking in NotePad® which I absolutely didn't want to be without were:

• The ability to have a pickup measure;
• The grace note feature, and;
  
• The ability to change keys within the score.

Now that I have my 'paid for' version of PrintMusic®, I am discovering even more cool features. One is the ability of the MIDI playback to play your score back with what they call 'human playback'. Human playback plays your score in different rhythm styles (jazz, latin, pop, reggae, rock, etc.) and you can determine how much 'swing' you would like to apply (either none, light, standard, or heavy). Unfortunately, there is no 'human playback' choice for old-time fiddle. Not that I thought there would be. lol. However, if I set it for 'rock' and the 'swing' level at either 'standard' or 'heavy' it does approximate the old-time syncopation.  That is, as much as a MIDI playback can!

In the end, I wish the software wasn't quite so pricey, but I have consoled myself with the fact that I very seldom need to purchase software and that I will be much happier "down the road" with this upgraded version. Especially as I continue to discover how much this software can really do. Isn't it great when you can rationalize treating yourself to something?