Finale SongWriter

List Price: $49.99 Discount Price: $41.99

Features:

• Click notes onto the staff and hear the pitches -- drag them up and down to find the pitches you want
• Play a MIDI keyboard and see the music appear instantly -- or import and export MIDI files, adding your own lyrics and verses
• Type a chord name to hear how it sounds and see its guitar fretboard - Try any tempo, transpose to any key and add automatic harmonies
• Print great-looking sheet music - Add chord symbols and fretboard diagrams, with up to 6 lyric verses; Add dynamics, slurs, articulations & transpose to any key

Accessories:

PC World

Customer Reviews:

I realy dislike this program [Posted on 2007-10-31]
I tried to put in a simple piano accompianiment. The automatic features were so overriding that I could not do the simplest things. If a beat contained a quarter note in the upper of the baseline but two eighth notes for the bottom, it assumed that the second eighth note went with the upper line and would not budge. It would not let me put a whole note in the bottom of the baseline combined with a moving part above it. I would have had to written each line as a separate score, making it -- no longer piano accompaniment. Seemingly the only notation it would allow was locked chords or what it predicted would happen. It also would not let me tie a whole note to another note in the next measure.

Maybe these things are possible but buried in a terrible manual, which doesn't seem to realize that laptops don't have numeric keypads.

I think it would be a particularly bad teaching device because it would encourage students to write only only in very staid, ultra-conventional ways.

Finally, there's no way to email them that I can find. Perhaps there is but they have buried the information. That also is not user-friendly.

I expect a much better user interface experience from Mac software [Posted on 2008-01-12]
I'm spoiled by Mac software that follows Apple's UI guidelines. This software is, frankly, ugly. My wife was disappointed that you can only play one handed to input your notes. Getting both hands in requires more effort and coordination.

If you're a beginner you may not truly have the need to get notes to paper. If you're more advanced, I think you could spend more money and get a better product.

DNA's Opinion [Posted on 2008-04-25]
Finale Songwriter---The ideal solution for those who wish to produce
music manuscripts with that professional appearance. Would have had 5 stars --- BUT --- it would have been good to know about the import duty
and to have paid off all expenses in one transaction. Still, I suppose we must support our Lords and Masters in the style to which they have become
accustomed.

DNA

Songwriter [Posted on 2008-05-19]
It was shipped promptly and arrived in no time. The Product works great and i am satisfied.

Good... if simple [Posted on 2008-09-26]
I purchased this program recently and have been using it to arrange original compositions. For the price, it is truly a good value and has some nice features; however, do not be fooled by the "guitar chord diagram" feature. It only has 1 choice of fingering, so if you want your "C MAJ 7" to be played at the 8th fret... too bad. It only shows it in the open position; so various voicings are out of the question. I just leave that feature alone now.

The built in soft-synth is nice, better than what most computers have already in them and it gives you a taste of what you want to hear.

My only other gripe about this program is the fact that you cannot save your final work as a .pdf file or word file. So, you're stuck printing the document and making copies for your friends who don't have this software or who don't wish to use the internet to hunt it down.

Overall, it's a good piece of software for the price and does what it says for the most part. I would reccomend it if you don't want to purchase the more expensive programs.

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