MakeMusic, Inc.  

Finale v27 is Here

Envision, create, and share music your way with Finale v27. Easily arrange or compose publisher-quality music notation that plays back with world-class sounds, and share your creations with the world. From lead sheets and guitar tabs to band charts and orchestral scores, Finale empowers you to create anything you wish. What’s more, Finale accommodates your workflow, so you can also create any way you wish.

Finale v27 incorporates new sharing features, SMuFL support, bug fixes, and under-the-hood enhancements resulting in improved performance. Many enhancements in this upgrade focus on helping you more quickly and easily envision, create, and share exactly the notation you desire.

Features added in this release include:

• Interactive music sharing functionality

Finale now enables you to quickly and easily share your notated documents with anybody. Without leaving the app, you can upload and share privately or publicly.

• Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) support 

SMuFL is a growing comprehensive standard that organizes musical characters into a common layout so music fonts are displayed correctly in every notation application that supports it. Spend less time searching for or creating musical symbols and more time making music.

• Revised instrument list

Our revised instrument list ensures your notation looks great the first time—no matter which instruments you’ve chosen—and that you hear the correct sounds when playing a document. We’ve also added to the list of instruments you can use when starting a new document or editing an existing one.

• MusicXML 4.0
  The latest version of MusicXML provides even more control when transporting your compositions. With more information than ever now being captured in a MusicXML file, you’ll be able to efficiently and confidently send files between practically any modern music software.

• And More...

We’ve tackled a lot of known issues, such as unexpected installer behavior and unusable display scaling on Windows, crashes due to macOS quirks, and problems with printing and PDF export.

Share Your Way

While Finale has long been the leader in creating readable music notation, sharing your music with other users has not always been easy. With Finale v27, sharing is a breeze. Building on the basic sharing features that launched last year in SmartMusic, we’re excited to announce powerful new sharing features launching with v27. 

With sharing in Finale, you can:

• Upload and share music with others without leaving Finale
• Store and manage uploads in a centralized location that is accessible anywhere
• Enable your recipients to play your shared music along with accompaniment and practice tools in SmartMusic

Sharing in Finale is more than just a new product or service: it’s a revolution in how you connect with other musicians that enables your music to be sent, practiced, and performed more efficiently than ever.

Marco Herrera-Rendon, Software Engineer at MakeMusic, had this to say about the new sharing features: “Sharing in Finale allows you to quickly share your work with performers, students, and collaborators. I’m excited to expose Finale users to a whole new set of music-making tools that sharing in Finale will make extremely easy to use.”

Those music-making tools are made possible by the innovative web-based notation rendering engine that powers SmartMusic. In the past, SmartMusic was optimized primarily for students and teachers; now, musicians of all kinds can take advantage of its many practical benefits thanks to the sharing integration with Finale. Chief among these, SmartMusic’s Practice app enables interactive playback that empowers your recipients with a more engaging practice experience through real-time feedback and accompaniment.

Want to get a jumpstart on enabling the sharing features? Create a free SmartMusic account today and you’ll be ready to start sharing when v27 launches.

With the upcoming launch of Finale v27, we wanted to share another exciting feature that will be available with the new version: Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) support.

If you’re not familiar with SMuFL, SMuFL fonts organize musical characters into a common layout so that any notation program knows where each type of musical symbol can be found in the font. This makes it easier to collaborate with people that use a different music notation software, and also makes it much easier to change the music font in your document.

“While I love the power of the Shape Designer, Stem Connection Editor, Font Annotation dialog, and various other tools in Finale, it’s nice to not have to visit those areas as much anymore,” said Finale developer Chris Cianflone.

Giving Finale the smarts to understand SMuFL fonts opens up a whole new world of workflow improvements. SMuFL support:

• Adds nearly ten times more characters to Finale’s default music font, reducing the need to create your own symbols.
• Minimizes the time spent proofreading and making corrections after switching music fonts.
• Expedites the selection of musical symbols in a comprehensive music font.

To realize these enhancements, we’re doing more than merely making Finale capable of using SMuFL fonts. We’re also including updated SMuFL-compliant versions of the MakeMusic fonts that you’ve come to rely on for decades—Maestro, Broadway Copyist, Jazz, Engraver, along with a newly-added handwritten font—each with an expanded range of characters and delivered in a modern format for maximum compatibility.

Additionally, Finale becomes the only music notation software that allows for both SMuFL and non-SMuFL fonts. With this new feature, Finale v27 is set to become the leader in collaborative creation of effortlessly-readable music notation. 

We know that SMuFL is part of the future of digital music notation, and we see this as phase one of our SMuFL-related improvements. As such, we’re committed to expanding these features in subsequent v27 releases. 

Some additional features that will be available in future updates include:

• Comprehensive availability of SMuFL fonts in all tools, dialog boxes, libraries, and plug-ins involving font characters
• Conversion of documents using legacy fonts to SMuFL fonts
• Recognition of markings containing characters from SMuFL fonts for Human Playback
• User interface tweaks to streamline access to musical symbols
• Improved support for third-party SMuFL fonts

One of the advantages of making SMuFL support pervasive throughout Finale is the unprecedented level of musically-authentic potential that a standardized approach promises. We’ve got lots of ideas for new and improved features built on SMuFL-enabled semantics in the near future, which means you’ll be able to get your work done faster than ever. 

Finale v27 launches with a meticulous reworking of its instrument database that will help you make music your way, even more efficiently. The changes we’ve made are designed to be practically invisible—Finale gets the details about each instrument right the first time without any manual input. You may notice that you can create documents and add instruments to existing ones more easily and more reliably than ever however.

Our improved instrument list:

• Reduces the amount of manual configuration needed for instrument setup.
• Minimizes the likelihood of not hearing any sound at all when playing your document.
• Expands and improves our support for a wide variety of drums and percussion.

We’ve also ensured that the best possible sounds are selected for playback from the comprehensive Garritan Instruments for Finale, the included virtual instrument library built from recordings of actual instruments, so you can get a realistic feel for your music each time you listen to it.

“The goal is to have you entering music as quickly as possible by taking care of as much of the tedious set-up as possible for you,” said Finale QA Developer Greg Angel. “To that end we have added some instruments to the database and carefully corrected some errors in how others were configured. Users will be able to spend more time composing and less time setting things up.” 

Deliberate attention has been paid to the diverse world of percussion. Now, no matter what instrument you choose in the Setup Wizard, you will be starting with a layout that enters the correct noteheads at a logical location on the staff and plays back to an appropriate sound level. We hope to greatly reduce the number of times when you have to configure your score in the Setup Wizard or Percussion Layout Designer to achieve that magic combination of readable notation and accurate playback.

We want Finale to continue to earn its place as the trusty old tool in your toolbelt, but one that can learn some new tricks, too! When you depend on professional results and efficient workflow, Finale is ready. With these updates, you can rest assured that your composition will be reproduced accurately during playback so you can spend more time making music your way.

Finale v27 Está Aquí

Con cada nueva versión, Finale acumula beneficios significativos incluyendo nuevas funciones, correcciones y más. Haz clic en el video aquí abajo para ver una demostración de las poderosas nuevas funciones que se estrenan con Finale v27.

Las nuevas funciones de Finale v27 incluyen:

Funcionalidad interactiva para compartir música
Finale ahora te permite compartir tus documentos de notación con quien desees rápida y fácilmente. Puedes cargar y compartir privada o públicamente sin tener que salir de la aplicación.

Soporte para Diseño de Fuente Musical Estándar (SMuFL)
SMuFL es un estándar comprensivo en crecimiento que organiza caracteres musicales en un diseño común para que las fuentes musicales se muestren correctamente en cada aplicación de notación que lo soporte. Pasa menos tiempo buscando o creando símbolos musicales y más tiempo componiendo música.

Lista de instrumentos mejorada
Nuestra lista de instrumentos revisada asegura que tu notación aparezca genial a la primera —sin importar qué instrumentos hayas elegido— y que escuches los sonidos correctos al reproducir un documento. También hemos agregado instrumentos a la lista de aquellos que puedes usar al iniciar un documento nuevo o editar uno en existencia.

MusicXML 4.0
La última versión de MusicXML te brinda aún más control al transportar tus composiciones. Con toda la información que ahora puede capturarse en un archivo MusicXML, podrás mandar archivos entre prácticamente cualquier software musical moderno de manera eficiente y confiada.

Correcciones de Errores
Hemos hecho frente a muchos problemas conocidos, tales como comportamientos inesperados del instalador y escalas de visualización inservibles en Windows, fallas debidas a peculiaridades en macOS y problemas imprimiendo.

Just like creating a playlist in your favorite streaming app or listening service, SmartMusic Playlists allow you to curate music any way you want—whether that’s creating a playlist with your next concert’s repertoire, a set of warm-ups and scales, or letting students create their own “mixtapes.”

Playlist Examples:

• Repertoire for your next concert or program.
• A set of titles for a listening assignment.
• Daily warm-ups, scales, and sight-reading exercises.
• Custom content created in Compose.
• Coming soon: Playlist sharing!

Each playlist allows you to enter a playlist name, a custom author name, an image (like an album cover or program cover), and a description of what the playlist contains. This description area can be used for a variety of different things such as:

• Pedagogical information about the pieces or assignment instructions.
• Program notes for the concert.
• Descriptions of why each piece on the playlist is important.
• What story is being told by the playlist.

For step-by-step instructions on how to create a playlist and add titles, visit our blog.

What is Print?

Print is the game-changing SmartMusic feature that provides academic users with the ability to print individual parts directly from the repertoire library, ensuring that there’s a practice solution in place for every educational setting and setup—from the cloud to the classroom, and the mic to the music stand.

Who is it for?

Print add-ons are available on bulk orders (20 subscriptions or more) and for a minimum of 20 users. Each add-on grants an individual user the license to print titles for their personal use. Printed music cannot be distributed or shared with others—just like photocopies.

What problems can Print solve?

• Lost or forgotten music can easily be replaced.
• Reduced screen time.
• Practice can continue without a device or internet access.
• Development of internal assessment skills, complementing SmartMusic’s algorithmic assessment.
• Students can take notes on their music.
• Replace your repertoire budget for just $15.99 per user and choose from thousands printable of titles.

To learn more about SmartMusic's Print feature, visit smartmusic.com/print.

Trusted by districts such as Los Angeles Unified School District and Prince William County Public Schools, GG4L’s School Passport 2.0 integration platform is the fastest and safest way for schools to share login information with edtech platforms like SmartMusic.

Single sign-on integration with SmartMusic will be available for the following LMS platforms:

• Google Classroom
• Schoology
• Canvas
• Moodle
• Sakai
• D2L
• Blackboard

To learn more, visit smartmusic.com/sso.

Here at SmartMusic, we’ve always prided ourselves on having the largest online music library available. Our current Interactive repertoire library boasts hundreds of methods and thousands of ensemble and solo titles offered across all instruments—now entirely accessible by all paid users, and available for assigning and in the practice app for assessment. Still, the #1 request we receive from our users is to offer more music. We understand this need, and we aim to deliver.

Our Digital Sheet Music Library is a new PDF library available to all paid users and is discoverable outside of the assignment and assessment loop, supplementing our current library of Interactive titles. It includes thousands of titles for all instruments, ensemble types, and skill levels, while also greatly expanding our choral repertoire offering and introducing full scores to the SmartMusic repertoire library.

Plus, as of August 1, 2021, we've made the entire Digital Sheet Music Library available for Print to users with Print add-ons. To learn more, visit our blog.

Sight Reading Builder

SmartMusic Teacher and Performer subscriptions include access to Sight Reading Builder.

Students need an endless supply of fresh sight-reading examples to improve their reading skills. Sight Reading Builder empowers teachers to generate an infinite number of sight-reading exercises, customized for their students’ specific needs. With it, you can:

• Quickly create content for individual students, common ensembles, as well as create custom ensembles.
• Select from ten predefined difficulty levels, or individually specify key signatures, time signatures, articulations, rhythmic patterns, ranges, and more.
• Assign Sight Reading Builder content as an assignment and SmartMusic will generate a new exercise each time a student loads that assignment. Students can start an assignment as many times as they wish before submitting it, and they will always read a brand new exercise.

Learn more at smartmusic.com/srb.

Compose

Compose is SmartMusic’s built-in music notation app that allows users to import, edit, create, assign, and share their own music. Teachers can create original notation from scratch, import notation files made previously, or share content to SmartMusic directly from Finale v27.

Content from Compose can easily be assigned to students and opened in the Practice app with full SmartMusic accompaniment for assessment. Students can also access Compose to explore their own creativity, complete composition assignments, and share creations with their teachers and peers.

Learn more at smartmusic.com/compose.