An excellent combination of tools for composing, arranging, notating, sharing, and hearing music.

Finale 2010 Academic is a specially priced version of Finale's popular, ever-evolving music notation software. Finale helps students express their creativity and love of music by offering tools for music composition, arrangement, notation, and even to print engraver-quality sheet music. Ÿinale 2010 Academic Edition features many timesaving and intuitive features your students can use for years to come.

Launch Window
Finale 2010's Launch Window saves you time by putting all of Finale's power at your fingertips. Choose to create exercises, scan existing sheet music, or work from provided templates. You can also create a score with an unlimited number of staves from scratch with Finale's Setup Wizard—which configures things like instrument transpositions so you don't have to.

Don't like manuals? Finale's QuickStart Videos guide you through the process of putting your music on the page.

Finale also includes comprehensive help that is contextual, interactive, and searchable. Quickly get the answer to any question, whether you want to know how to indicate a non-standard time signature, need to create a marking whose name you're unsure of, or are just curious what that checkbox does.

Educator Tools
Finale 2010's easy-to-use, time-saving features help you customize music curriculum to meet the individual needs of all your students. First off, only Finale can create accompaniments for SmartMusic, the acclaimed music learning software for band, orchestra, and choir. It also comes with hundreds of ready-made, educator-approved, customizable worksheets so you can print them out or distribute them via e-mail to be opened and printed with the free Finale Reader. There's also an Exercise Wizard that helps you create custom exercises or lessons—for your entire ensemble—in minutes. The exclusive Studio View is perfect for teaching and practicing composition and arranging using the language of music notation.

Full compatibility with downloadable MakeMusic software lets your students—at home or on school computers—complete tests or assignments created in Finale 2010. Finale Reader lets students open, view, print and play any Finale file.

Templates
When creating a full score, a worksheet, quiz or even a dissertation, the easiest way to start is simply to open a pre-created template from the Launch Window. Select from more than 60 pre-made templates (including SATB, orchestral and band scores, solfege, and more) then let Finale 2010's Setup Wizard do the rest, adding text (including title, composer, copyright, arranger and lyricist) as well as key/time signatures, pickup measures, tempo markings, and the number of measures.

Setting Up Your Score
Finale 2010's Setup Wizard helps you get up and running quickly. Simply answer a few questions: What instruments or voices do you want? What key? Time signature? Music font? Tempo? You can even select from pre-defined ensembles or create your own.

Finale will then set up your score, complete with staves in correct order, instrument transpositions, tempo marking, staff groupings, in an intelligent page layout that automatically adjusts system position, size, and space between staves to reduce white space on the page. You can also choose from a wide variety of personal document styles, specify the number of measures in your score, and insert text for the title, composer, arranger, lyricist, copyright and a subtitle.

Entering Notes
With Finale 2010 you can enter notes with your keyboard and/or mouse, use a MIDI keyboard or other MIDI device in combination with your keyboard and mouse, or play a MIDI keyboard and watch the music appear on-screen in real time. You can also use the exclusive MicNotator to play notes into a microphone (that is hooked up to your computer) using a brass or woodwind instrument, scan existing sheet music, or import MIDI, MusicXML, Smartscore, or Finale family notation files.

HyperScribe Enter notes in real time as you play a MIDI keyboard. You can play along with a click, provide the click as you play (for example with a sustain or other foot pedal), or enter the pulse later. You can also record your live vocal or instrumental performance. Recording first and second endings with HyperScribe is seamless—Finale skips over the first ending on the second pass allowing for smooth transitions. Another way it works is to specify a playback tempo before you record or Finale can record at the tempo you use when playing your MIDI keyboard. HyperScribe also let's you record continuous data including the sustain pedal.

Adding Markings, Lyrics, and More
Finale makes entering, creating, copying and moving dynamics, tempo indications, and other text and markings intuitive and powerful. New in Finale 2010—transparent selection handles so you can easily see the articulation or marking that you are editing.

Some of the other improvements of Finale 2010 is that you can enter chord symbols by typing in their names or playing them with a MIDI keyboard. or change or delete notes without changing your chords. Finale has always offered exceptional power and flexibility with percussion notation—and now it's even easier to use. It also automates countless other entry tasks like repeats, codas, adding measure numbers, cue notes or rehearsal marks to your parts, and tablature and fretboards for guitar and other fretted instruments.

Finale now offers more control over what elements (including notes, articulations, expressions, lyrics, smart shapes, chords, and fretboards) are shown or hidden when you apply alternate notation. Additional enhancements include stems up/down options for rhythmic notation and the ability to add augmentation dots to slash notation in compound meters. And, as far as lyrics are concerned, Finale allows an unlimited number of lyric verses and automatically spaces the lyrics to match the notes they're attached to.

Repeats
Repeats are easy to add and edit and they automatically play back. Select the measures that will appear in the first ending. Select "Create first and second ending." You're done.

Measure Numbers
Improved in Finale 2010—Measure numbers are essential for synchronizing an ensemble during rehearsals and performances. Finale offers unprecedented flexibility and control of measure numbers. Control alignment, positioning, and fonts separately in your score and linked parts.

Tablature and Fretboards
Finale can handle notation for an amazing array of fretted instruments. Enter notes directly into TAB staves using a mouse, computer keyboard, or MIDI device. Or copy from a companion Standard Notation Staff to a TAB staff and vice-versa. Specify the lowest fret to use as you paste. Once the music is in the tab staff, it is incredibly easy and intuitive to edit. For example, to change a fret number from '2' to '3', just select the note and type '3'. Up and Down arrow keys move a selected number to other strings. Numbers appear in orange when they are out of fret range.

Finale's handling of stems in tablature is absolutely easy. Various stem styles are simplly applied. Use the "Tab Styles" library that comes with Finale or create your own.

Timeavers
Finale's introduction in 1988 represented a revolution in saving time. You don't have to start over if you decide to add another bar on page one, or make a slight change in instrumentation. Similarly, the 2010 version has continued this trend of offering musicians new and better ways of making the best use of their time. With the Linked Parts feature you no longer have to make edits to your parts and score separately. The Selection Tool takes the guesswork out of editing nearly anything on the page. Multiple Page Editing lets you place as many pages on your screen as you wish and edit anything you want. Automatic rehearsal marks dynamically update when you delete, insert, or move measures in your score. Intuitive cut/copy/paste enhancements ensure that you always get the results you seek the first time. ScoreMerger consolidates multiple movements into a single score or a collection of parts into a conductor's score. SmartFind and Paint copies articulations, dynamics, and expressions to the same rhythmic motif across your score. Chord Analysis generates chord names from your harmony and creates chord symbols automatically. Quick Change makes it easy to change expressions and articulations with simple keystrokes. Resize Noteheads automatically to notate harmonization within a specified region. Multiple Undo lets you reverse any number of changes you made in the current session (even past the point you saved your score). There's also Automatic Note Spacing, Smart Page Turns, and more.

Composing & Arranging Tools
Concentrate on your inspiration since Finale 2010 takes the work out of composing and arranging. It handles instrument transpositions, offers range checking, and provides instant arrangements and piano reductions. Writing for video or film? Use the integrated video support.

Running low on inspiration? Finale offers composers and arrangers several idea-generating tools, perfect for saving time and suggesting creative options, including: Band-in-a-Box Auto-Harmonizing (up to 6-parts); customized drum parts with DrumGroove; a variety of authentic Latin Percussion rhythms; Canonic Utilities to apply inversion, retrograde, transposition, or a combo of them; and a Composer's Assistant which helps you realize chords, create common-tone transpositions, transition from one melody to another with melodic morphing or one chord to another with chord morphing, and generate a series of chords with increasing complexity and texture with the frequency modulation chord generator.

Engraver Tools
Finale 2010 offers ultimate control of the printed page. Equally important, it also speeds up and simplifies the process. Its Engraver Slurs automatically snap to avoid collisions even after transpositions that cause stems to flip. FinaleScript is an exclusive, easy-to-use scripting language that saves you time whether you create your own scripts or simply use those provided. The Document Styles function let you control the appearance of your documents and make creating your own Styles instantaneous. You can even customize your workspace with textured paper backgrounds, display colors, views, and palettes. Control the appearance of the printed page with engraver tuplets, a selection of music fonts—including the new-to-the-series Broadway Copyist handwritten font, Vertical Collision Remover, and other spacing controls. You can import graphics to your score like pictures or logos, or gain more control over what elements (including notes, articulations, expressions, lyrics, smart shapes, chords, and fretboards) are shown or hidden when you apply alternate notation. Additional enhancements include stems up/down options for rhythmic notation and the ability to add augmentation dots to slash notation in compound meters. There's also has over 50 time-saving plug-ins for specialized notation tasks like applying Patterson Beams, cross-staff beaming, creating tremolos or specifying different split points for selected regions using TGTools, and more.

Hearing Your Music
Finale 2010 includes more than 350 world-class instrument sounds from the makers of Garritan Personal Orchestra. Free sounds include orchestral instruments, jazz brass, saxophones, piano, choirs, drum set, guitar, organ, handbells, marching percussion, world instruments, and more. New-to-the-series sounds include church organ, a variety of electric guitars, five octaves of handbells, steel guitar, and a brush drum kit containing 50 additional sounds. Garritan provides different players to fill the section realistically. The sounds can be used with the Tapspace Virtual Drumline, Latin Percussion, and Row-Loff Marching Percussion sounds included in Finale and combined with other VST/AU instruments and effects. Human Playback further enhances the integration of Garritan Instruments in Finale by including customized legato and a variety of instrument techniques.

Garritan Aria Player is included free and is fully integrated into Finale 2010. All of your Finale sound libraries work together seamlessly in the Aria player so that you can mix and match sounds in your score. Plus you can add other VST/AU instruments and effects.

Sharing Your Music
With its introduction in 1988, Finale helped revolutionize the art of putting music on the printed page, placing world-class, engraver-quality printing within everyone's reach. But printing isn't your only outlet for sharing your finished products. Todays technology makes it possible to creating .MP3 or .WAV audio files, export MIDI or MusicXML files, creating textbooks, worksheets, or quizzes by exporting music as a graphics file into a word-processing program, creating SmartMusic accompaniments, or post your music at the Finale Showcase, a free site hosted by MakeMusic where people can see, play, and print your music.