BY LORENZ RYCHNER MakeMusic Finale 2014 This notation program can be a powerful tool for the Recording Musician You read that right-recording musician! With this article I'm not looking to preach to the choir of inveterate "scoring musicians" (as in music-notation users), they know more about computer notation than I could convey in the space I have. Instead I want to reach out to the recording musicians, our main readership as spelled out by the full name of this magazine. 1. Here's where you define your preference for sound assignments in new projects. While music notation is not everybody's modus operandi, recording good sounds certainly is. That means you should take note (!) of Finale even if "writing music" to you so far has meant a pencilled lyric sheet and a chord chart and a maybe scratch recording... Why? Because Finale comes with an awesome sample library, worth the price of admission even before you take into account the many other features that prove that there's more to Finale than excelling at putting notes on paper, something it has been doing very well for a quarter of a century! In the process of checking out this sample library, you just might-if you aren't already-become convinced that notation on a computer screen can be a very efficient way of producing music to be recorded. 40 RECORDING June 2014 Finale 2014 in action! This is a score in progress, designed as a tool for auditioning Garritan sounds individually or in groupings. It shows only a small fraction of the notational powers of the program.