Coda Music has done something wonderful for the music world and you should take full advantage of their generosity. Finale Notepad 2007 has been released and once again it is totally free. Finale Notepad is an amazing tool for the price. Using it will inspire creativity, fortify musical understanding and promote music literacy.
If you are a teacher, you can easily add Finale Notepad into your everyday lessons and plans. Because its free and crosses O/S platforms (Mac or Windows), having any computer or computer lab available to you is all that you will need in order to utilize this very useful program.
You do not need a music keyboard or M.I.D.I. device to use Finale Notepad. As a matter of fact, those things wont help you at all, since M.I.D.I. type features are reserved for the upgraded versions of Finale. Despite this restriction, Finale Notepad actually is quite useful and beneficial for individuals and school music programs alike.
The Top 10 things you can do (for Free) with Finale Notepad 2007:
1. Easily create "Fake Book" music
2. Easily create guitar tab
3. Easily perform music transpositions
4. Quickly create and notate music- using up to eight staves
5. View music in "C" or concert pitch
6. Easily "jot down" musical ideas
7. Hear your "musical ideas" back
8. Listen to music at faster or slower speeds than the original
9. Print out music for later use
10. Share your ideas with others using Finales Showcase
Good Reasons Why Finale Notepad Should Be In Every Music Educators "Tool Box":
1. Its Free!
2. You can easily transpose music for your students
3. Its Free!
4. You can quickly write missing parts for your ensembles and instrumentalists
5. Its Free!
6. You can download music from http://www.classicalarchives.com and incorporate it into your classes (using Finale Notepad to view it) for discussions and as examples (Classical Archives is free too!).
7. Its Free!
8. You can use it as a creative tool, exploring music writing and composition with your students
9. Its Free!
10. You can write tests with it using a combination of the text tool and notation tools
11. Its Free!
12. There is no limit to the amount of computers that you can place the software on
13. Its Free!
14. You can easily use "screen capture" software to grab images of your music and incorporate the images into your word processing documents
15. Its Free!
16. You can make templates that graphically demonstrate the different types of chords, inversions and intervals and have the students both see and hear the examples
17. Its Free!
18. You can explore different rhythmical elements and polyrhythms that you may not be able to easily demonstrate yourself
19. Its Free!
20. Your students will be "blown away" by being able to do something MUSICAL in "computer lab"...
And the number one reason to use Finale in your classroom IS ...
ITS FREE! ... and it works with both Macs and Windows!
You can download Finale Notepad, for free, at http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/
You can also submit your music created with Finale software and search for music that others have created and made available, free of charge, by visiting https://www.finalemusic.com/showcase/fs_home.asp
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