Finale is a must have computer software for every music teacher out there. It allows you to be adaptive in whatever situation comes your way. It allows you to be adavite to students individual needs and abilities. And, it's fast and efficient. Finale is a computer software that allows you to dictate notation. It allows you to rearrange other pre-existing pieces to better fit both your ensembles strengths and weaknesses. It also allows you to compose personalized exercises for each students individual needs.
So imagine you're a middle school band teacher and to your surprise your incoming class consists of 13 clarinets, 8 flutes, 0 oboes, 0 English horns, 0 bassoons, 4 alto sax, 1 tenor sax, 0 baritone sax, 3 trombones, 6 trumpets, 0 French horns, 3 euphoniums, 3 tubas, and 4 percussionist. This is an incredibly off balanced ensemble considering 5 of the parts aren't even covered on one side, and on the other you have 14 clarinets. With finale you can take those parts that aren't being covered and write them into the parts of the extra clarinets, alto saxes, and tubas where necessary.
Now imagine you're in a band rehearsal and your first trumpet player keeps messing up syncopated rhythms in two of the pieces you're playing. During your prep period you go to your computer and compose a number of exercises to strengthen his/her's understanding and comfortability of syncopated rhythms. Then, later in the week when you see that student for their weekly lesson you can work on syncopated rhythms using the very personalized exercise sheet which afterwards he/her can take home to practice. As a musician I can't tell you how many times I've gotten "personalized" exercises from teachers and most of the time it was illegible. With the software everything is clean and neat just like it came from a publisher. This software is a perfect example of technology making education more adaptable for the students needs. For this reason I believe every music teacher should have access to this software.
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