Thanks!

[bill]

David, it's wonderful that you've put energy into this!

Thank you

[winknotes]

Fantastic and a much needed forum. Looking forward to digging in. Thank you David

[David Gaines]

OK, so start firing away with category and topic suggestions. :-) Or if you think it's fine to release as is, I'll go ahead and paste this URL everywhere.

[bill]

That you've made MIDI and VSTi separate sections speaks volumes about one the basic structural problems with Finale. The fact that they can't be used together is a symptom of that problem.

[David Gaines]

The reason I did that, aside from just plain wanting to have some content here and I pulled those headers off the top of my head, was because although VST plugins obviously use MIDI controllers and commands to function, there is whole lot more to MIDI and how Finale implements it. For example, someone may be having an issue with a piece of MIDI controller hardware while trying to get a VSL instrument to do something in Finale and the solution revolves completely around the MIDI implementation and has nothing to do with VST.

Finale is not ProTools or Sonar or Cubase. It does not have a highly robust integration of VST and MIDI, but it's a whole lot better than it was a few years ago. Someday Finale (or something like it) will contain the highest professional level of notation features AND sequencer features, but no one (to my knowledge) is there yet. VSL's instruments are extremely complex as anyone who has set out on the journey to use them properly is well aware. Add in the complexity of Finale and you have one mammoth undertaking on your hands given the current design level of Finale as well as the current limitations of the hardware most people are able to afford to use.

At any rate.......what I'd really like to see here is people posting music files so we can see each other's scores, see each other's Human Playback Preference setups, and most importantly, hear what each other's music sounds like using VSL instruments, as we help each other reach the goal of using Finale and VSL to produce recordings that are as lifelike as possible as quickly and as painlessly as possible. No one should have to reinvent the wheel that *I* (and plenty of other Finale users) had to reinvent when I first acquired the VSL Special Edition Plus bundle.

[winknotes]

Do you want to have some sort of listening room then? Or is the idea to post a finale file in a related thread?

Is there any disk storage associated with this forum to enable users to post an mp3 or video if they wanted or would they link to some external hosting? Reason for asking is maybe a tutorial section could be nice (if it needs to be it's own section that is).

[David Gaines]

Listening room.....great idea. Done.

File storage....I have to look around more to see if that's available here, but I don't think so. You can, however, attach a file to a message - up to 1mb. Same as with the MakeMusic Finale support forum. You can always use MediaFire or some other online cloud-based file storage site, or SoundCloud for audio files. Linking to YouTube videos would be fine with me as well. Might as well keep things simple here.

[winknotes]

That's fine on the storage issue. I just wonder if we should have a sticky letting users know the attachment limit which would accommodate most Finale files but not mp3 files or video files if they want to post a tutorial.

[David Gaines]

Again, good idea. Want to take over as admin? :-)

[winknotes]

Life's been pretty busy so haven't been able to get here. I'm not trying to take over but just coming up with some ideas. Of course I steal from what I've seen on other forums I'd be willing to back you up though.

[David Gaines]

I've been swamped myself. I think we're ready to unleash this thing on the world now. I'll post announcements at the Finale forum and at the VSL forum and then wait for the tidal wave of new members.

[winknotes]

Batten down the hatches!

[David Gaines]

Howdy........sorry for the radio silence, it has been pretty busy at my house of late for various reasons. Anyway, I haven't forgotten about any of this, just looking for a chunk of time to devote to it. And in the meantime I've collected a few more of my own Finale/VSL playback issues with which you all can help me. ;-) Hopefully either tonight or tomorrow night I'll post the announcements I mentioned up above and tweak this board a little bit more.

DG

[as]

I just found out about this forum. Good idea David!

[David Gaines]

Thanks......I decided that it was essential to have a users group and that no one was going to create it if I didn't, so here we are. :-) I've learned a ton of stuff since that VSL thread at the MakeMusic forum was really active a month ago or so - both good stuff and not so good stuff. LOL Mostly I'm still having upredictability issues with my string orchestra piece, i.e. countless hours of tweaking, bending, adjusting, etc. - both Human Playback and Vienna Instruments parameters - and I still can't get the thing to play back error-free within Finale. I'm determined to do that and not export it to Cakewalk Sonar. The piece plays nearly perfectly with the Garritan instruments (minus the harmonics, which inexplicably the Garritan orchestra is lacking except for the harp) but I want to record it with Vienna.

In any event, I'll post the .MUS file, an MP3 of how it currently sounds, and the HP settings I'm using in another one of the boards here and we'll see what the rest of you can come up with instead of using that time on your own music. ;-)

dg