MakeMusic has unveiled Finale 2008. This upgrade offers a lot of new features :
- Record/import a mono or stereo audio file to enhance playback.
- More than 250 world-class instrument sounds from the makers of the acclaimed Garritan Personal Orchestra are included free. In addition to orchestral instruments are saxophones, trumpet and trombone mutes, jazz bass and drums, guitar, marching percussion, world instruments and more.
- Multiple sound libraries now work together seamlessly. Combine all the included sounds, add Native Instruments-supported libraries (available separately), hear them all in playback and save the results in an audio file.
- Copy music, adjust expressions, transpose, add repeats and much more – all with one tool.
- Intuitive keystrokes can select measures or partial measures horizontally and vertically – without visiting a menu.
- Multiple tools support copy/paste, measure additions, transposition, measure layout, auto-orchestration and much more.
- Streamlined menus, more powerful contextual menus and intuitive keystrokes.
- New ScoreMerger easily combines parts into a score AND joins multiple scores/movements into one document – even if they don't contain the same number of staves, or have different instrumentation.
- Document Styles can instantly personalize the appearance of new documents, controlling text and music fonts, all libraries, text, graphics and page layout.
- Enhanced Setup Wizard offers more options and control and provides intelligent page layout – automatically adjusting system position, size and space between staves – to reduce white space on the page.
- Colored noteheads have multiple applications and are especially popular in elementary education. Select Boomwhackers® tuned percussion tubes from the Setup Wizard, and Finale automatically configures the noteheads with the Chroma-Notes colored music system and ensures this staff plays back integrated Boomwhackers sample sounds.
Additional new features include improved scanning, new and fully searchable help documentation, expanded MusicXML support, Human Playback® support for additional sound libraries and much more.
Finale 2008 will begin shipping in July 2007, pre-orders are now being taken.
