RE: Subject: Laptop-based looping

["Andrew Koenig" <ark@acm.org>]

> Not sure where Finale fits into the picture - my understanding is that
> its very strong for scoring, and I presume it's a great sequencer, but
> if you've got Sonar, you can record your MIDI and audio tracks and then
> mix in that environment.

Finale is a word processor for music.  Its emphasis is on creating highly
legible musical scores, with the ability to play them back as a secondary
issue.

However, as composers have become more interested in hearing how their 
music
will sound, Finale's playback facilities have become more sophisticated.  
In
particular, for a few years Finale has included a facility called Human
Playback that does things to a score that a human musician would do, such 
as
accenting downbeats, phrasing according to the harmonic structure, and so
on.

Moreover, Finale is well integrated with the Garritan sample-based
libraries.

The result is that if I use a program such as Band-in-a-Box to create a 
MIDI
backing track, then run it through Finale Human Playback, and then render 
it
with the Garritan libraries, the result sounds dramatically more musical
than listening to the output of Band-in-a-Box directly.