It turns out that while a majority of musicians in North America use Finale (I'd say 70-80%), most (if not all) musicians in England use Sibelius. I have yet to meet a composer in England who uses Finale.
I was very surprised by this. I have become accustomed to the regular debate in composers' circles - the Finale users are sure their program is best and are not going to change, and the Sibelius users are the same! I have stubbornly refused to even consider using anything other than Finale since I started composing seriously in 1997. There are the yearly upgrades (which I only do every second year), which are not cheap and there are often numerous changes that can slow down my productivity... But, I was not going to change programs, the updates were keeping me busy enough.
However, as I continue to engage in the music community here in Cambridge, I am finding that sharing music and files is not as easy from Finale. I can convert the files to PDF for sharing, or to XML (which is a format both programs recognize), but I started to wonder if learning Sibelius may not be a bad thing... and I have some extra time, while I am on Sabbatical...so why not?
So in the middle of composing my piece based on a Bonhoeffer prayer for the Gent's, I downloaded a month-long trial of Sibelius. The first 12 hours were extremely frustrating as I wanted to do a final good copy without learning the program first. I kept trying to do things like I would in Finale...this does not work... But I laboured away and after a few days I had a finished copy of "A Prayer" (that I sent to the Gent's) in Sibelius.
Since then, I have started working through the Tutorials (I should have done this before attempting a good copy of a piece!) So far I have only completed the first tutorial, but I have already been surprised by the program. I will reserve my judgement until I have been through more of the Tutorials (and I may need to do some Tutorials of Finale so I can update my knowledge of my default program!) But if you are interested, the following are screen shots of the programs:
Finale first - This is the piece I a currently working on for piano - I often have multiple documents open at once, one is my sketches, ideas...etc (The top), the bottom is in scroll view.
Finale 2 - This is the first bit of the piece "A Prayer" I wrote for the Gents. I often work in scroll view. The most important tool in Finale is the "Main Tool Palate" (See top right of screen in the above shot and bottom of screen below) and the "Playback Controls." All these can move and I often move them depending on what I am working on, and what part of the screen I want to see...
Sibelius - This is the basic view for Sibelius. The ribbon on the top, is similar to the Main Tool Palate in Finale, but it can't move...and the bottom "Timeline" can. But I do find it somewhat constricting... And if you notice, the basic view in Sibelius is page view... In Finale you can choose your default view...and you can in Sibelius as well, but everything is set-up immediately as page view...there are pros and cons to this...
I've taken a scone picture of Sibelius so you can see some of what they call "Panels." There is now a "Keyboard" at the bottom, and the "Navigator" that shows you where you are in the document. I thought those were really cool, and useful tools...although I do use a small midi keyboard anyways.
I am now at the end of my month-long trial, and will have to decide tomorrow whether to buy Sibelius or not...thankfully there is a price for users who are "Upgrading from other software programs" (probably mostly Finale users), although it will still cost me $200USD.
I have found out, from the first tutorial, that there are ways to change some of the basic tools in Sibelius to closely match Finale...this is a bit of a plus for me. And I figure it can't be a terrible thing to know and be able to use both Finale and Sibelius...it will just be $$$ to keep them both up-to-date!
Anyways - another fun sabbatical project (I guess I am having fun with this...)
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