If you follow Scoring Notes regularly, you know by now that the support period for Finale will end in less than two weeks. This means that Monday, August 25 is the last day that MakeMusic will officially provide technical support for Finale.
This doesn’t mean that Finale will suddenly cease to work or anything of such a dramatic nature. Indeed, it’s likely that you’ll be able to use Finale for some time to come. Still, it’s prudent now to take steps to make sure that your Finale files are well-catalogued, archived, and updated if needed.
At NYC Music Services, when we launched the Scoring Express Chamber and Theatre & Studio templates for Finale just three years ago, and the Scoring Express Jazz templates for Finale a year later, we didn’t foresee that the end of Finale would come so soon.
Still, we must recognize that since Finale will soon no longer be updated, the Finale versions of Scoring Express have come to an end as well.
So, effective today, the price for Scoring Express for Finale — all three versions, plus the bundle — are permanently reduced from their previous prices.
Therefore, the new prices are as follows:
- Scoring Express for Finale – Chamber: $49.99 (previously $69.99)
- Scoring Express for Finale – Jazz: $49.99 (previously $69.99)
- Scoring Express for Finale – Theatre & Studio: $54.99 (previously $79.99)
- Scoring Express for Finale – Bundle (all three versions): $119.99 (previously $159.99)
From a quality standpoint, the Finale templates are on par with the versions already available for Sibelius and Dorico, and include professional Finale templates for stand-alone use, plus corresponding manuscript papers, document styles, and libraries, so you can use Scoring Express to start a new score from scratch or beautify an existing score.
Scoring Express for Finale
In case you weren’t already aware, Scoring Express is a collection of professional templates for Sibelius, Dorico, and Finale, based on the same templates we use at NYC Music Services, an industry-leading music preparer. We need the music to have a unified look, no matter what program is being used.
Composer and expert music preparer Joseph Trefler created the Finale versions. “I use Scoring Express religiously in my own work,” Joseph said, “whether I’m engraving a musical, a piece of concert music, or anything else. In addition to simply looking fantastic, Scoring Express is crucial in allowing me to work quickly and produce consistent results. Nothing slows me down more than when the file I’m working on doesn’t have all the lines, text styles, or engraving rules settings (in Finale-speak: smart shapes, expressions, or document options) I need. Any time I need to copy, say, a custom line from one file to another or add the correct headers to a document, is time I could have spent elsewhere. Over the course of a large project like engraving a musical, that can add up to many hours of extra work! That’s why we’ve baked all those elements into each Scoring Express template — so that everything you need is already there and ready to go.”
Even though we won’t be updating the Finale versions of Scoring Express any more, we fully expect that Scoring Express for Finale will work for as long as Finale works, even as we enter the era of no official support from MakeMusic.
This could be a good time for you to pick up these templates, whether you plan on continuing to work in Finale for a long time to come, or if you want to update your Finale files and create archival PDFs with the latest settings and styles soon, before moving onto another program.
Don’t forget, we have Scoring Express for Sibelius and Scoring Express for Dorico, so you can maintain a consistent house style for all of your scores, no matter which application you use!
The Sibelius and Dorico versions of Scoring Express will continue to be fully supported with regular updates, and will remain at full price.
The Finale version of Scoring Express will have limited support; if you have installation problems or other issues not related to the functioning of Finale itself, we will be here to help. But, if something goes awry in Finale in the future that is out of our control, we may not be able to assist. The permanently discounted price reflects this approach to Scoring Express for Finale in the future.
Even so, I’m really glad we made the Finale versions of the templates, and I still think they can provide excellent value for a long time, even owing to the unique circumstances. A modest investment in Scoring Express for Finale now could save you lots of time, so consider picking them up.
