MakeMusic on Thursday announced the release of Finale 2010, a major new release of its flagship music notation software for Mac OS X and Windows. Finale costs $600 for new customers, and upgrades are priced starting at $120.
Finale 2010, announced in May, enables musicians to compose, arrange, notate and print sheet music. It lets you enter notes using MIDI-attached instruments or using your keyboard and mouse. It can also scan and transcribe compositions played on brass and woodwind instruments.
For the new release, MakeMusic has simplified and automated commonly used features in Finale. Percussion notation has been improved, and the creation and sequencing of rehearsal marks has also been automated. Chord entry has been greatly simplified, according to the developer, even when attaching chords to emopty measures. The process requires fewer keystrokes.
More than 350 sounds from the makers of Garritan Personal Orchestra are now included. New organ, guitar, bass, handbell, synthesize and brush kit drum sounds are included. Support has also been added for VST and AU effects and instrument plug-ins.
More than 350 worksheets have been added to the release; these are aimed at music educators who are teaching music to K-12 students. The worksheets are printable and help teach students basic elements of music.
Other new features include a new “Broadway Copyist” music notation font, improvements to scanning, expanded graphic import and export support, additions to linked parts and more.
System requirements call for a G4 or better, Mac OS X 10.4 or later, DVD-ROM, 800 x 600 pixel resolution, 512MB RAM, 600MB hard disk space.