Finale 27 : sortie prochaine (infos)

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MakeMusic annonce dans son blog la sortie prochaine de Finale 27 (en anglais, et apparemment, ce serait dans plusieurs semaines).
Avec :
• Fonction de partage avancée
• Compatible avec le standard de police SMuFL
• Améliorations de la lecture
• MusicXML 4
• Améliorations de l'expérience utilisateur et nettoyage de bugs.

Tout cela est encore fort vague. MakeMusic annonce que plus de détails seront distillés dans les prochaines semaines. Ils seront répercutés ici.

"Advanced sharing functionality
Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) support
Playback improvements
MusicXML 4.0
Quality-of-life updates and bug fixes"

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Comme annoncé, MakeMusic dévoile petit à petit les fonctionnalités de Finale 27 dans son blog.

1. Partage de fichiers via SmartMusic (compte gratuit)
 
Finale 27 intégrera une fonction de partage de fichiers, ce qui devrait faciliter les échanges entre musiciens et autres personnes impliquées, sans quitter Finale. Et il serait possible de placer des fichiers dans un endroit centralisé et partagé. Et de faire jouer les fichiers avec l'environnement "Practice" de Smartmusic sur le web.
Apparemment, il faut disposer d'un compte (gratuit) SmartMusic. Ce compte peut être créé dès à présent ICI.

Voici le communiqué (en anglais) :

"Share Your Way
While Finale has long been the leader in creating readable music notation, sharing your music with other users has not always been easy. With Finale v27, sharing is a breeze. Building on the basic sharing features that launched last year in SmartMusic, we’re excited to announce powerful new sharing features launching with v27.

With sharing in Finale, you can:

Upload and share music with others without leaving Finale
Store and manage uploads in a centralized location that is accessible anywhere
Enable your recipients to play your shared music along with accompaniment and practice tools in SmartMusic
Sharing in Finale is more than just a new product or service: it’s a revolution in how you connect with other musicians that enables your music to be sent, practiced, and performed more efficiently than ever.

Marco Herrera-Rendon, Software Engineer at MakeMusic, had this to say about the new sharing features: “Sharing in Finale allows you to quickly share your work with performers, students, and collaborators. I’m excited to expose Finale users to a whole new set of music-making tools that sharing in Finale will make extremely easy to use.”

Those music-making tools are made possible by the innovative web-based notation rendering engine that powers SmartMusic. In the past, SmartMusic was optimized primarily for students and teachers; now, musicians of all kinds can take advantage of its many practical benefits thanks to the sharing integration with Finale. Chief among these, SmartMusic’s Practice app enables interactive playback that empowers your recipients with a more engaging practice experience through real-time feedback and accompaniment.

Want to get a jumpstart on enabling the sharing features? Create a free SmartMusic account today and you’ll be ready to start sharing when v27 launches."

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2. Support du standard de polices SMuFL
 
Le blog de MakeMusic donne plus de détails sur le support du standard de polices SMuFL dans Finale 27. Ce système est appelé à être commun à tous les programmes de notation musicale. Il organise les caractères musicaux dans une structure commune, ce qui permet à tout programme de notation musicale de savoir où trouver un type de symbole. Et le nombre de symboles est fortement augmenté, ce qui évitera aux utilisateurs de devoir créer manuellement (visa le Créateur de formes / Shape Designer) des symboles jusqu'ici indisponibles.
Avantages : une collaboration plus aisée entre des personnes qui utilisent des programmes différents, et le changement d'une police dans un document sera grandement facilité.
Makemusic précise que des fonctionnalités supplémentaires concernant ce standard seront ajoutées dans les futures mises à jour.
Et que Finale serait apparemment le seul programme de notation musicale à permettre l'utilisation de polices SMuFL et non-SMuFL.
MAJ : Finale 27 sera livré avec des versions SMuFL des polices habituelles. Leur nom sera précédé de "Finale" : Finale Maestro, Finale Engraver, Finale Jazz, etc...
Ces polices SMuFL offriront plus de 1.000 symboles.

"With the upcoming launch of Finale v27, we wanted to share another exciting feature that will be available with the new version: Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) support.

If you’re not familiar with SMuFL, SMuFL fonts organize musical characters into a common layout so that any notation program knows where each type of musical symbol can be found in the font. This makes it easier to collaborate with people that use a different music notation software, and also makes it much easier to change the music font in your document.

“While I love the power of the Shape Designer, Stem Connection Editor, Font Annotation dialog, and various other tools in Finale, it’s nice to not have to visit those areas as much anymore,” said Finale developer Chris Cianflone.

Giving Finale the smarts to understand SMuFL fonts opens up a whole new world of workflow improvements. SMuFL support:

Adds nearly ten times more characters to Finale’s default music font, reducing the need to create your own symbols.
Minimizes the time spent proofreading and making corrections after switching music fonts.
Expedites the selection of musical symbols in a comprehensive music font.
To realize these enhancements, we’re doing more than merely making Finale capable of using SMuFL fonts. We’re also including updated SMuFL-compliant versions of the MakeMusic fonts that you’ve come to rely on for decades—Maestro, Broadway Copyist, Jazz, Engraver, along with a newly-added handwritten font—each with an expanded range of characters and delivered in a modern format for maximum compatibility.

Additionally, Finale becomes the only music notation software that allows for both SMuFL and non-SMuFL fonts. With this new feature, Finale v27 is set to become the leader in collaborative creation of effortlessly-readable music notation.

We know that SMuFL is part of the future of digital music notation, and we see this as phase one of our SMuFL-related improvements. As such, we’re committed to expanding these features in subsequent v27 releases.

Some additional features that will be available in future updates include:

Comprehensive availability of SMuFL fonts in all tools, dialog boxes, libraries, and plug-ins involving font characters
Conversion of documents using legacy fonts to SMuFL fonts
Recognition of markings containing characters from SMuFL fonts for Human Playback
User interface tweaks to streamline access to musical symbols
Improved support for third-party SMuFL fonts
One of the advantages of making SMuFL support pervasive throughout Finale is the unprecedented level of musically-authentic potential that a standardized approach promises. We’ve got lots of ideas for new and improved features built on SMuFL-enabled semantics in the near future, which means you’ll be able to get your work done faster than ever. Stay tuned!"

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3. Liste des instruments revue et corrigée
 
Toujours sur son blog, Makemusic annonce une méticuleuse révision de la base de données des instruments.
En réalité, ces changements sont conçus pour être pratiquement invisibles. Finale paramètrera d'emblée tous les détails de chaque instrument, sans qu'il soit nécessaire de recourir à une intervention manuelle.
La création de nouveaux documents et l'ajout d'instruments à des documents existants se fera plus aisément et de manière plus fiable.
On n'aura quasiment plus affaire à des instruments ne générant aucun son.
Prise en compte d'une large palette de batteries et percussions, de leur notation adéquate (tête de note correcte, placement correct sur la portée), de leur son en lecture, à un niveau correct.
Bref, une configuration rapide et automatique qui devrait faire gagner du temps et permettre aux musiciens de s'attaquer immédiatement à la phase d'écriture.

"REVISED AND CORRECTED INSTRUMENT LIST.
Finale v27 launches with a meticulous reworking of its instrument database that will help you make music your way, even more efficiently. The changes we’ve made are designed to be practically invisible—Finale gets the details about each instrument right the first time without any manual input. You may notice that you can create documents and add instruments to existing ones more easily and more reliably than ever however.

Our improved instrument list:

Reduces the amount of manual configuration needed for instrument setup.
Minimizes the likelihood of not hearing any sound at all when playing your document.
Expands and improves our support for a wide variety of drums and percussion.
We’ve also ensured that the best possible sounds are selected for playback from the comprehensive Garritan Instruments for Finale, the included virtual instrument library built from recordings of actual instruments, so you can get a realistic feel for your music each time you listen to it.

“The goal is to have you entering music as quickly as possible by taking care of as much of the tedious set-up as possible for you,” said Finale QA Developer Greg Angel. “To that end we have added some instruments to the database and carefully corrected some errors in how others were configured. Users will be able to spend more time composing and less time setting things up.”

Deliberate attention has been paid to the diverse world of percussion. Now, no matter what instrument you choose in the Setup Wizard, you will be starting with a layout that enters the correct noteheads at a logical location on the staff and plays back to an appropriate sound level. We hope to greatly reduce the number of times when you have to configure your score in the Setup Wizard or Percussion Layout Designer to achieve that magic combination of readable notation and accurate playback.

We want Finale to continue to earn its place as the trusty old tool in your toolbelt, but one that can learn some new tricks, too! When you depend on professional results and efficient workflow, Finale is ready. With these updates, you can rest assured that your composition will be reproduced accurately during playback so you can spend more time making music your way."

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4. MusicXML 4.0
 
Annoncé pour dans une semaine (donc vers la mi-juin 2021), Finale 27 inclura MusicXML 4.0, la nouvelle version du standard de fichiers de notation musicale MusicXML, développée par Michael Good.
De nombreuses améliorations (50 !) sont introduites, dont la liste (en anglais) est reprise ci-dessous. Gestion des conducteurs en Ut avec parties transposées, lecture en swing importée/exportée,etc...
Il y a aussi une page, beaucoup plus technique, avec davantage de détails.
Evidemment, il faut que les autres programmes musicaux suivent l'exemple de Finale et mettent en oeuvre cette version à 100 % afin que les échanges de fichiers soient optimaux.

"We are officially one week away from the launch of Finale v27! With the launch nearly here, we are pleased to announce that MusicXML 4.0, the recently-released version of MusicXML, is fully supported by Finale v27.

If you’re unfamiliar with MusicXML, it is the standard interchange format for music notation applications. Just as .mp3 files have long been associated with sharing recorded music, MusicXML files are synonymous with sharing digital sheet music.

With the release of MusicXML 4.0, more information is being imported and exported in MusicXML files than ever before, saving musicians time when collaborating with users of any major music notation software.

Notable improvements in MusicXML 4.0 include:

Concert pitch scores with transposed parts are now exported and imported.
Swing playback is now exported and imported.
Roman and Nashville chord styles are now exported and imported.
Measure numbering that use a top or bottom staff are now exported and imported correctly for use with linked parts.
Staff scaling and line spacing are now handled separately during export and import.
Linked parts in compressed files are now supported in a standardized way that all applications can use.
These are just a few of the updates included in MusicXML 4.0. For a full list of updates, visit this site.

“MusicXML 4.0’s support for concert scores, linked parts, and swing playback are big steps forward in exchanging sheet music between applications,” said MusicXML creator and VP of MusicXML Technologies Michael Good. “Version 4.0 adds over 50 new features since MusicXML 3.1 was released in 2017. Finale v27 supports many of these new features, and we expect other applications to follow over the next year to make exchanging music notation work better for everyone.”

MusicXML was first released by creator Michael Good in 2000, and it quickly revolutionized the digital notation landscape. It is the only open-source interchange format for music notation developed at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) by an inclusive community of musicians and software developers. Supported by over 250 applications, MusicXML enables creators to collaborate in singular fashion. The new features provided in MusicXML 4.0 aren’t just for users of Finale. Users of any music notation software will benefit from the launch of version 4.0."

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5. Improvements & bug fixes
 
Améliorations et nettoyage de bugs, liste ci-dessous (en anglais).
Les icônes de la palette d'outils ont été revus pour plus de clarté.
On notera beaucoup de correctifs liés à l'impression. D'autres nettoyages sont promis dans des mises à jour ultérieures (e.a. compléter la reconnaissance des commandes de Human Playback dans la police Finale Maestro).
Par contre, pas d'annonce de révision de certains outils qui en auraient bien besoin (créateur de formes, d'accords, etc...).

"With every new version of Finale, we strive to bring powerful, large-scale features that will make a notable advance in your music creation process. However, we also address smaller issues that build up over the years and can cause major frustration.

As a result of your feedback, we have addressed several important bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements (no, Finale won’t do your laundry now).

Bug fixes in v27.0 include:

The tool palette icons have been improved for clarity.
The Human Playback Samba and Reggae styles now interpret the swing setting correctly.
Navigating to a measure on the next page in Speedy Entry on Windows now works with all methods of advancing the entry caret.
Many outstanding issues with missing characters in text fonts have been resolved in the new versions of those fonts.
The contents of the Font Annotation dialog box are now positioned correctly when resizing the dialog box on Windows.
Parts of any number of pages can now be printed accurately in reverse order with any page range specified, including N-up and tiled printing.
The print progress bar is more accurate on Windows.
Page range selection for tiled printing has been fixed.
Selecting Left Only or Right Only now properly restricts the printed pages for any page range.
Reverse order printing no longer fails when any part has more pages than the score.
The Windows Print dialog box no longer has a restriction on the number of characters in the page range field, especially helpful for booklet printing.
The inoperative Collate checkbox has been removed from the Windows Print dialog box.
“As a longtime user of Finale myself, I am excited that during the v27 lifecycle we are addressing bugs that have been around for some time that I know are a source or frustration,” said Finale Produce Specialist Dave Cusick. “Fixing these small issues will provide a much more fluid and enjoyable experience creating music for all of our users, myself included!”

We hope that these modifications, while seemingly minor, improve workflows, alleviate some of the annoyances that are a part of using any software, and enable you to realize your creative vision. But don’t take this as the end of the story: in future releases for v27 (and beyond), we are committed to addressing even more bugs to provide the best possible music notation experience for our users."