Customer Reviews:
 Great in some ways, awful in others March 1, 2008
donmusic (Tennessee)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
First of all, if you don't know anything about music notation, then this program will frustrate you, though you may still get some satisfying results. A variety of options for articulation are useless unless you already know what all the articulation symbols mean because there's no explanation in the terrible instruction manual. User is bound by time signature, so if you want to insert an extra beat or change time, you really have to know what you're doing.
Second, don't be taken in by the boasts of "human playback" which supposedly allow for more natural sounding playback with options for swing, etc. These features are worthless, and I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. In "human playback" settings you will have to suffer through the most awfully nauseating digital reverb imaginable, and you can't turn it off. Furthermore, the "swing" feature swings about as much as my 11 month-old niece, and that's an insult to her infant talents. Apparently in the world of Finale Songwriter, "swing" means merely playing out-of-time at random points, sounding like an beginner with poor coordination rather than a skilled musician playing in the pocket. Limit six or seven instruments unless you buy an upgrade. User can(must) insert notes one-by-one with mouse or keyboard, and there are options for cutting, copying and pasting like a word processor. Some instruments, like the cellos, sound phenomenal. Others, like the trumpets and guitars, sound no better than a child's toy keyboard. Lots of options for things like transposing instruments.
Infuriating alert sounds will stab you in the ears if the program doesn't like what you're doing, and you never know when that's going to happen. Your mouse pointer may be just slightly off, such that your chords are ruined and you have to start over, or it may BEEP at you for trying to insert too many notes into a measure, which is extremely unpleasant if you're wearing headphones or have the volume up, as SONGWRITERS are apt to do. Or you may try to insert a "drum groove" called "4-4 Rock (12-8Feel)" into a document in 4-4 and get a loud beep and an alert message saying you can't do that because your time signature is off. These jarring alerts hurt ears, break concentration, and really grate on nerves when you're deep in musical thought.
All-in-all, it's worth about what I paid for it. Keep the price in mind and don't expect anything more than what you're paying for, and expect about half of what is boasted on the box. Recommended if you just want an inexpensive way to hear your rough musical sketches, as long as they're not too complex, or if you just want to be able to print out your scores from your PC, though whether or not this program is any less time-consuming than pen & paper is questionable. Don't expect to be able to make professional-sounding recordings with this product.
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