The Summer Sale ended together with August, but summer itself is only now finally giving in, albeit very slowly, to the colder, murkier and rainier weather of autumn. In Sweden we have had an unusally warm September, and although you can see the leaves reddening on some trees, much of the over all foliage where I live is still dark, late-summer green. Remarkable! I believe that various weather and climate monitoring services, like the European Copernicus, say that their statistics show the summer of 2024 to over all be the warmest ever measured.

What also ended with August, is the product line, the development and support, of Make Music’s notation software Finale. I have used Finale since around 1996-1997, and I am so used to it and its functions that the news of its cancellation shocked me. Over the years I have developed routines, settings, short-cuts and processes that have made me very fast in editing full scores that produce many separate parts, that I now wonder how long it’s going to take me to get used to a new notation software. The cancellation of Finale came as a total surprise to me, and I guess many, but with the cancellation I got a deal and an offer to migrate my notation work to Dorico, which I, after some agonizing consideration, in the end did.

Finale was the first and only notation software that worked properly as a typewriter and “blank-sheet” editor at the same time, and its functions to adjust literally everything and anything, made layouts, once adjusted, visually the most clean to be had. I am fully aware of that every software – and for sure, Finale had its quirks and flaws – has its lifespan, and that at some time every software’s possibilities to develop, adapt and adjust inevitably come to an end, and I hope that the transition to Dorico will be smooth and dynamic. That I quickly and easily can develop the same speed in editing and layout as I had with Finale. Still I will, most likely for sentimental reasons, miss my old notation buddy.

Good bye, dear Finale! We’ve had a really good and long lasting run, we two, and you have been an invaulable asset to my note work. Thank you for everything!