Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge Which is better in Finale? Manual or MIDI input?

I want to know which is the best method to inputting into Finale. And most people go about this two ways. They either input it with a MIDI keyboard, or they manually input it at the computer. So, which is the easiest and most recommended way.

I don't use Finale much. But in Sibelius, by FAR the most effecient way is one hand on the MIDI keyboard to enter pitch, the other on the computer keyboard for note value selection. Plus keeping alert for opportunities to copy/paste. Music is full of pattern and repetition.

I'm very used to the speedy entry of Finale, but I agree that the method described by our friend above seems to be the most reasonable, if you have a midi keyboard.

Yea, that is how I saw one guy in a youtube video doing it. He was writing a song for some treble instrument and he was doing the values in the left hand and the melody on keyboard with the right. That would make sense though. When I first started MIDI input yesterday, I thought the bass notes would fall in the bass clef, but the kinda do a deal where they go as ledger lines, which are a pain in the butt to read, so I only assumed I would have to click whichever clef I was working in.

I use the (computer) keyboard and mouse. That's what I did in Encore (before it went comatose for some years.) I got Finale and found it quite easy to use for simple things. (For more complex stuff, I had to read the online manual.)

I never go the hang of using a MIDI input. I cannot play strictly enough in tempo and just using MIDI for note selection didn't seem worth the effort.

I agree, real-time entry from MIDI keyboard isn't terribly useful (though it seems to be the feature a lot of people WANT to use). But I really do suggest anyone with even rudimentary piano-playing skills perseveres with the two-handed entry technique.

Depends on whether you want to actually create a score or a recording. For the latter I think that a midi keyboard is simply brilliant! Otherwise I rarely use it for notation issues.

Yes, if you want to create a score with MIDI input you will probably need to edit it (sometimes even a lot if there are ritardandos etc.) because human beings are not machines,