Links to the rest of the world

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Finale is the most well-connected program you can imagine. It can share its images with graphics programs, its lyrics and text blocks with word processing programs, and its music with sequencers, or other notation programs. With the Finale Showcase, you can even post your files on the Finale music website <www.finalemusic.com> and share with friends across the globe.

One of the most useful examples of Finale’s cooperation with other software is its ability to handle standard MIDI sequencer files. These special files contain MIDI playback data. Most sequencer programs (Digital Performer, Sonar, Cubase, and so on) can generate and read them, and so can Finale. That means that you can create your music in your favorite sequencer; when it’s polished and ready to be notated, save it on your disk as a MIDI file and open it with Finale; it will turn into standard notation. When you attempt this process, you’ll discover that Finale offers literally dozens ofseveral options for separating and recombining the music on the various tracks of the sequencer file. If you want, Finale will even retain the velocity, rhythmic “feel,” and controller information from the original sequence. See MIDI Files in the User Manual for more details.

Note, too, that Finale 2010 can read files created in other music notation programs from MakeMusic, including SongWriter, Finale, Allegro, Finale Guitar, and NotePad. Files created in earlier versions of Finale, as well as any of MakeMusic’s notation programs, can be opened in Finale directly, even in the opposite platform. For example, files created in PrintMusic! 2004 for Windows can be opened in Finale 2010 for Macintosh. You can also read older cross-platform files, including those from Allegro, Finale Guitar, PrintMusic, and NotePad. IMPORTANT: None of MakeMusic's older products can read Finale 2010 files directly. To share your files with others who do not own the most recent version of Finale, have them download Finale Reader 2010 which is available for free at www.finalemusic.com/reader and will open any file saved from Finale 2010. Also, you can use the Music XML utility to save files in XML format which can be opened by older Finale versions (back to Finale 2000) using a special third-party Dolet Music XML plug-in (developed by Recordare®) installed to the plug-ins folder. See also Importing in the User Manual for more details.

In addition to the plug-ins available with Finale 2010, there are also a number of additional plug-ins available created by third-party developers that can improve efficiency and automate tasks. For example the TGTools and Patterson Plug-ins Lite options under Finale’s Plug-ins menu are samples of the full TGTools collection available at www.tgtools.de and the Patterson Plug-in collection available at www.robertgpatterson.com. There are also a number of other plug-in available. See www.finaletips.nu for a list of several.

In addition to third-party plug-ins, you can also use music fonts created by third-party vendors. A wide variety of music fonts are now commercially available and can be used with Finale. See Fonts in the User Manual.

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