MaximumPC 2007 07

reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized

88 MAXIMUMPC july 2007

H

ey there, you fancy musically inclined

person, you. We’ve reviewed a few

bare-bones, low-priced music apps,

and now it’s time to tackle the big guns.

Yes, that’s right. These programs will set you

back a pretty penny—60,000 pretty pennies,

in fact. They have everything the budding

composer or aspiring DJ needs, but are they

worth the cash for the average Janes and

Joes of the computing world?

—Dave Murphy

Finale 2007

Staff paper be damned, we say. This

Beethoven-in-a-box is one of the most

popular music-creation utilities available

for the Windows platform, and it’s easy

to see why. A nigh-limitless level of help-

fulness and customizability has existed

throughout Finale’s many incarnations,

and the 2007 edition of the score-creator

ups the ante even further. The program not

only blends elements of sound-board mix-

ing directly into its notation interface but

also comes with a large collection of help-

ful videos—gone are the days of having to

scour through PDF help files just to figure

out the basics.

Our biggest criticism of Finale, aside

from its outrageous price, is that the

program hardly seems like much of an

upgrade from Finale 2006. Granted, Finale

2007 includes the awesome Garritan

Personal Orchestra, which gives you way

more realistic MIDI sound than your stan-

dard MIDI samples. Still, Finale 2007 is

what Finale’s always been—same ol’ inter-

face, same ol’ note

input. Only now, you

get to contend with

slowdown and finicky

stability as a result of

the extras.

As a stand-alone

product, you really

can’t get much bet-

ter than Finale 2007,

but only if you’re a

first-timer to the expe-

rience. Composition

noobs and people who

just want to transcribe

“Brick” might best

benefit from Finale’s

less feature-soaked

(and one-third cheaper) cousin, Allegro.

ableton live 6

You can do so much with Live 6, it’s hard

to know exactly where to begin describing

this masterful software sequencer. So we’ll

start at the top. With just a few clicks of an

in-application help system, we were up and

running with the program’s Operator add-

on, creating notes and beats that sound

as though they were pulled straight from a

Keith Schofield music video. Awesome.

While the program references a number

of functions that are a lot to swallow for a

beginner—filter frequencies, resonances,

waveshapes—the simple interface encour-

ages the ol’ “try it” approach to learning the

program. That said, audio enthusiasts will

find plenty of opportunity for experimenta-

tion under Live 6’s hood: You can create

your music using a MIDI-attached keyboard,

directly edit the MIDI notes within your

loops, and then change up your beats with a

ton of plugin-style effects.

Live 6 would benefit from a better

navigation system to simplify accessing its

many functions, and the drab gray program

needs some Apple interface treatment. But

these are paltry concerns for such a sweet,

learner-friendly music application.

Expensive Music-Making

Making your own jams is an awesome, and awesomely expensive, hobby

editing a track in ableton live 6 can be as simple as mixing

and matching blocks of loops.

if only history’s greatest composers had had access to Finale 2007’s music tools.

$600, http://www.finalemusic.com

finale 2007

rocking the suburbs

rocking the FarM^8

Taking out a second mortgage

just to make piano jams isn’t very fun.

Go find a cheap copy of Finale 2006.

It couldn’t be easier to cre-

ate music in any shape or

form you want.

$600 box, $500 download

http://www.ableton.com

ableton live 6

light-switch rave

Fun to tinker around with, even

if you have no audio-creation

experience whatsoever.

paciFiers^9

Could stand an interface

overhaul; a few more tutorials

would be nice. MAXIM

UMPC

KICKASS