Re: [Worship] need advice about keyboard for use with Finale

[David Stone <dstone@chem.utoronto.ca>]

>On a separate note, my wife uses Finale to notate arrangements for our
>praise team and we are looking into purchasing a keyboard to help ease the
>pain of notation.  We know next to nothing about keyboards or what would
>work well.  We'd like to stay under $100.  Any suggestions?

For under $100?  A used Roland or Yamaha electric piano with at least
6 octaves would be my choice.  If you're just doing notation, the limited
number of sounds doesn't matter.  You can always add a good sound module
later if you want more variety for playback/recording purposes.

Did you already buy the Finale package?  If not, I'd generally suggest
going with Coda's Allegro or PrintMusic rather than the full-blown
'mothership' for most purposes.  Certainly, either of the smaller (and
cheaper!) versions are just fine for worship lead sheets or SATB
arrangements.

And...
>If your intention is to play the arrangements in and get a clean notated
>arrangement, you're going to be dissapointed. For notating single note
>arrangements I just use the computer keyboard and the "speedy entry" tool.
>This will go a lot faster than using the "simple entry" tool. The midi
>keyboard is only really necessary if you're doing a lot of notation using
>full chords. Then a midi keyboard can ease your life greatly.

That depends on how well you can play.  I don't have any problems using
the Hyperscribe entry tool for melody lines.  The trick is to make sure you
can play it correctly!!!  I usually use the "click" beat option, and
set the tempo slower than I would normally sing the song.  I find it
works very well but results will always vary depending on practical
ability: playing to a very strict tempo is something that requires
practice.

BTW, you can use the MIDI within the Speedy entry tool too...


Cheers,

Dave Stone



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