Finale

Finale

Finale is a music notation program used by composers, arrangers, musicians, and publishers to create, edit, audition, print, and publish musical scores. It offers advanced engraving capabilities and integrates with other audio and video production software.
Finale image
notation composition publishing engraving

Finale: Music Notation Program

Finale is a music notation program used by composers, arrangers, musicians, and publishers to create, edit, audition, print, and publish musical scores. It offers advanced engraving capabilities and integrates with other audio and video production software.

What is Finale?

Finale is a music notation software developed by MakeMusic. First released in 1988, Finale allows users to create, edit, view, print, and publish musical scores by mimicking the process of writing music notation by hand. It is widely used by composers, arrangers, musicians, music publishers and educators for a variety of musical purposes.

Some key features of Finale include:

  • Intuitive musical score creation with mouse, keyboard, or MIDI device input
  • Support for both common and complex Western musical notation
  • Powerful score layout and formatting tools
  • Integrated midi playback to audition compositions
  • Capability to extract parts from full scores
  • Tight integration with other audio and video production suites
  • Publishing and printing capabilities
  • Extensive music fonts, symbols, instrument libraries and templates
  • Availability across Windows and Mac platforms

With over 30 years of development, Finale continues to be trusted by professional and hobbyist musicians alike for music notation. It faces competition from other scorewriters like Sibelius, Dorico, and MuseScore.

Finale Features

Features

  1. Notation editing
  2. Score layout and printing
  3. Playback and audio export
  4. VST and AU plugin support
  5. Music scanning and OMR
  6. Publishing and sharing

Pricing

  • Subscription
  • Educational discount

Pros

Powerful engraving and layout tools

Intuitive interface

Support for complex notation

Integrates with DAWs and VSTs

Built-in audio engine

Available educational pricing

Cons

Steep learning curve

Expensive for casual users

Limited MIDI implementation

No Linux version


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