There are some ridiculously cool things coming from Finale and the MakeMusic folks very soon and -if I’m the first to tell you about them… well, you heard it from me and MusTech.Net first!
MakeMusic/Finale will be offering their Finale NotePad 2012 version FREE! … and it’s bigger and “badder” than before! The NotePad 2012 version will include Unicode font support (think writing in multi-languages) and aspects of their new “ScoreManager” interface for simplified control of the playback audio.
The free version of Finale Notepad 2012 is set to be released on February 15, 2012 (very soon!) To find out more about this upcoming release version, please read this post at the Finale Blog.
To make things even cooler, MakeMusic has also announced an upcoming “score viewer” app that will allow users to play, view, and print their Finale-based notation via the iPad! Find more about this iPad app at this link. Very cool things coming indeed!
Sounds exciting, but I had really hoped that the eventual iPad app would at least allow some basic editing features…
Has anyone ever spoken to someone at Avid about why there isn’t a “Notepad” version of Sibelius? I used Finale to compose/arrange a long time ago, but I appreciated Notepad when I was in HS was learning about music theory and harmonization. I think it would be a smart business decision for Avid to offer a free version of Sibelius and generate sales through upgrades in addition to crossover sales from Finale.