Finale 26 Sale—Should I Upgrade?

[mikehalloran]

That post you quoted is from over a year ago. I just went to the Finale Music site and it says that everything is 33% off. (Future lookers, the date is Nov of 2021, the version of Finale is 27)

Upgrade is $149 from MakeMusic. Normally, sale is $99 (33%) but I'm not seeing the offer anywhere. Maybe on Friday?

https://www.finalemusic.com/

$119 from Sweetwater

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/search ... le+upgrade

27.1 solves a number of problems and I'm finding it better over Monterey than Big Sur as is 26.

I'm one of the beta testers for 27.1 over Monterey.

[mikehalloran]

Upgrade is $149 from MakeMusic. Normally, sale is $99 (33%) but I'm not seeing the offer anywhere. Maybe on Friday?

https://www.finalemusic.com/

$119 from Sweetwater

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/search ... le+upgrade

27.1 solves a number of problems and I'm finding it better over Monterey than Big Sur as is 26.

I'm one of the beta testers for 27.1 over Monterey.

If upgrading on the MakeMusic.com web site, use the promo code MUSICYOURWAY at checkout to get the $99 price.

[mhschmieder]

Thanks Mike. I didn't receive that code for some reason, but it worked just now.

I had forgotten to upgrade, as I couldn't remember if V26 users got an automatic upgrade. At $99, I decided now is the time, based on people's feedback that this is the best update in years.

It did take a few launches, as usual, before it stopped crashing, at which point I was able to get access to the authorization command.

I did get one fatal error dialog though, saying Symphony could not be loaded due to resource temporarily unavailable, then the same for SILIKA (from Kush Audio, correctly installed and authorized via iLok). And I checked the box for uninstalling Finale v26, hoping for a cleaner installation of v27.

The change list for v27.0 going forward, is quite impressive, and definitely a bigger step up than the last few updates were.

[mikehalloran]

27.1, the current version, fixed a number of issues. My daughter is visiting from Texas and just asked me if there was a BF sale on Finale upgrades. Dad to the rescue again!

She did this orchestration of the Müller Gloria from the 12th Mass in Finale 25.5 (Wenzel Müller is the composer formerly known as Mozart on most published versions of this piece). I reassigned the instruments to NotePerformer—love the 8th note bowing and the tympani—then added the voices in DP 11.01. Reverb is Eventide SP2016, my go-to for choir.

[mikehalloran]

…
Technically it is very hard to do such work because of internet connection problems PC performance! Great job! And people are awesome!!! Thank you namesake!

Hard? Not so much, really. Time consuming? Oh goodness yes.

Make a set of guide tracks in DP. My wife plays the accompaniment and then plays 4 vocal parts under my direction. I edit and mix these for my singers. 1 hour or so. Upload them to Dropbox.

After a few online rehearsals with my wife playing her Yamaha P125 live, we record a Zoom session where everyone lip syncs to the guide tracks—I play them from AppleMusic(iTunes) aka Computer Audio so that I don't have to deal with the Zoom audio driver. This is the only audio on the video and it will be discarded later.

The singers then record to the guide track—the best ones get it close but none get it spot on. They upload their vocals to Dropbox.

My daughter has emailed me the Finale file that she made in 25.5. I open in 27.1 and fix the orchestra (change from GIFF to NotePerformer and rebalance the strings and tympani). Hmmm... she did this at 132bpm instead of the 128 I asked for—easy fix except that the guide tracks were a little north of 126 (oops). So I change to 126, export as .aif (.wav exports from Finale 25–27.1 have a problem on the Mac). On import to DP, I have automatic conversion in Preferences which changes it (and everything else) to 48/24 wav. Time Stretch in DP to match my guide tracks. About 1.5 hours.

I load in the vocals and edit these in DP to line up the consonants. Every voice, each syllable. I do not mess with pitch and, on this track, the dynamics came from the singers and Finale. A 40% wet setting Vintage Room on Eventide SP2016 and bx_limiter TRUE PEAK to tame some of the soprano peaks, both on the Master. Bounce to disk. This took about 25 hours.

I open the Zoom recording in Premiere Elements and notice that one singer had severe internet problems and I was too far off-sync. So I make two copies of the Zoom recording — loading in the same video onto three tracks slows things way down but duplicates do not. I load all 3 videos into PE, crop myself and the singer whom I also have to edit and Time Stretch to get close. I have deleted all audio. When satisfied, I now load in my DP mix and sync to my conducting track which is close enough that all singers appear to be in sync (more or less). 1/2 hour. Normally, I don't have to sync video tracks so this takes about 10-15 minutes. Export and share to the church uplink. Done.

In the church, everything is Mono which I have to take into account when I mix. The YouTube mix is balanced a bit differently which takes about 15 minutes to adjust in DP, re-export and add to the previously edited video.

All in all, easy but I can't wait to be rehearsing and performing live with my choirs again.

[labman]

Hard? Not so much, really. Time consuming? Oh goodness yes.

snip

Super cool Mike