attn Klaus - Norse Song in Finale Notepa


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Posted by Kenneth Sloan on September 07, 2002 at 21:53:29:

Occasionally, someone asks about music composition tools. On a price-performance basis, Finale Notepad does pretty well - because it's FREE.

My younger son, Peter (14, alas, he's a trombone player) was assigned "Norse Song" by Schumann at his last piano lesson. While playing it, he said "this would make a good piece for brass quartet". So...I pointed him at Finale Notepad (his older brother just absconded with the family copy of full Finale) and told him to take a shot at arranging it.

His first effort can be found at:

ftp:ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/sloan/Music/NorseSong.mus

Instrumentation is 2 trombones, euph, and tuba. Designed to be easily played by yoru average high school pickup ensemble.

Alas, one drawback to Finale Notepad is that you can't (I can't figure out how to) output
the piece in some printer-friendly format (such as PDF). So, to play with the file, you need a current version of Finale, or Finale Notepad. Another drawback is that you can't (I can't figure out how to) print separate parts. But, that's the sort of thing that can be handled by the full Finale package maintained by the school...

Perhaps Klaus can provide comments on how to do this better (or even comment on the arrangement). Note that right now it has "just the notes" with no articulation nor dynamic markings.

It took about an hour, from start to finish.


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