Decision time

It’s been ten months since MakeMusic pulled the plug on its Finale program, the industry standard for music layout/publishing. I’ve been in a state of shock since then, because although MakeMusic told us that Finale would work “until it didn’t,” it only took one month for Apple’s system upgrade to kill it entirely.

Because of that, I haven’t upgraded my laptop since September while I struggle to adapt to this new hellscape.

Quick recap: The two main contenders for replacing Finale were Dorico and MuseScore. Dorico offered a half-price sale to Finale owners, and MuseScore is open source. I downloaded both and have struggled to get either one under my fingers.

Recently, though, I ran both through the test of importing some of the .musicxml files I’d exported from Finale, and MuseScore did a much cleaner job. There were a couple of things I needed to fix, but they were mostly easy. (The one weird thing that’s going to take a while to fix is so unimportant that I have just shrugged my shoulders and decided that if anyone actually asks to perform the piece, I’ll fix it then.)

So here’s where I am: I am going to use MuseScore to compose a Little Waltz, and if it doesn’t make me scream and run into the streets I’m going to declare it the winner. I can update my laptop, say goodbye to Finale, and embark on what’s left of my compositional career.

Oy.