Learning Finale

Finale is a powerful tool for any musician, offering wide-ranging flexibility to accommodate the entire range of notational styles. Although this makes Finale relatively complex, the resources listed below can get you up and running quickly, teaching you the vital skills to get your work done. This User Manual provides multiple ways of learning Finale, each designed to take you through musical tasks step-by-step.

• Getting Started. Start here! Every new user should follow this guide from start to finish to get Finale set up correctly, helping you avoid headaches later. The fundamental information provided here is crucial to a properly-functioning Finale, including installation, setting up your MIDI system, and authorizing the software.
• Finale Tutorials. There's no faster way of getting into Finale than going through the tutorial guide. Based on a sample Finale document, the tutorials take you sequentially from setting up the blank document and adding notes and markings to formatting the layout and customizing playback.
• QuickStart Videos. These brief videos break down large tasks into their constituent components, beginning from simply navigating your document to working with parts linked to the score. If you're a visual learner, there's no better method of building your Finale chops.
• Visual Index. One of the most popular help resources, the indispensable Visual Index displays an example document with many different notational elements, each of which you can click on to learn how to place it in your own score.
• How do I... This "encyclopedia" provides how-to instructions for a comprehensive list of tasks, covering the gamut from accelerando to zoom in/zoom out. Use it to continue to extend your proficiency in Finale once you've mastered the essentials, or refer to it any time you have a one-off question.