I get asked a lot about what tools or tech we use here in the shop at Engraver’s Mark Music or requests from new music engravers, orchestrators and alike about what tools they need in their office to get up to speed. Well, there are a lot of different resources, how-to’s, and opinions out there on what you need or what is worth your time and money. What works best for you may not work as well or be as valuable to others (see my review of the JetStream Finale controller for a fine example of what I mean).
What I can say is after 15+ years of music engraving, editing and printing, there are some important/essential tools that I feel anyone in this field should have. It’s actually not that much so don’t get too concerned! If you want a blog about the different music sample libraries to spend thousands of dollars on, this is not it. Ok, so here’s my list of essential tools for everyone:
These tools are really all the basics that you need. There are dozens of other tools and tech you can get into like the Elgato StreamDeck, Keyboard Maestro, AutoHotKey, and others that can make you more efficient “power-user” for Finale, Sibelius or Dorico. Again, all these tools are great and provide amazing functionality, but they are not essential. In addition to these tools, here are some of the digital resources I follow to help me learn more about the latest ideas and tools in the industry:
As part of your New Year’s Resolutions, check out all these different resources and tips and try some new ideas and tech! This is a great time to evaluate your workflows and make the changes that will save you time and frustration. If you need any help or advice, get in touch with us here and we will be happy to assist and guide you. Also, if you are interested in one-on-one Finale instruction, we offer custom tailored lessons to your specific needs for $30 per half-hour, or $50 per hour. Just reach out to us and we will take care of everything! Recently, I had an interesting experience that helped remind me of the central ethos (if you will) of Engraver’s Mark Music. In an email exchange perspective client, an arranger wrote:
“Currently I use Sibelius Ultra software to create the arrangements, both octavo and full score. This also allows me to extract and edit my own parts for the bands… in view of my Sibelius use and the clients I work with, I’m wondering what Engraver’s Mark could actually do for me.” To which, I responded: “I totally get what you're saying about the use of Sibelius. It's such a powerful tool. It can certainly make things easier overall, though, like most things, there's quite a bit of learning involved. My company treats Sibelius, and Finale, like instruments that need to be practiced and techniques that need to be refined. Most of my clients use either Sibelius or Finale to write and orchestrate from the very beginning. Where my team comes into their workflow can be in a number of different places, from template design for a specific project or instrumentation, to score cleanup, part creation and editing and custom printing for recording sessions, live performances or retail sales. We know what the needs and requirements are of professional organizations and publishers so we can tailor our services to help the composers and orchestrators we with work deliver their best, on time and with less stress. Sometimes our clients need all of these services, sometimes just a few; it depends on the project. We integrate with any workflow and help the composers and orchestrators we work with to stay focused on their art and not all the other details.” In any business or service, there’s a point at which you have to answer this question; “Why/How do my potential customers need/want my company’s product/service?”. The answer to this question is the central focus of any fully developed business plan, demonstrating that the needs of your prospective client can be met by the product or service you are offering. Whether it’s a plumber or a high-tech product, the question is still the same and the thought, planning and execution of the answer can often be the difference between a successful business or one that doesn’t grow beyond a certain point. I took this question from the arranger not as an attack on the value of my skills or the business of Engraver’s Mark Music, but as an opportunity to fully explain our business model, highlighting our skills and assets while creating an image of a new reality for the client, one where their needs could be met and new possibilities would be available to them by partnering with us. Yes, music notation software has come a long way. These tools are extremely powerful and allow even novice user to achieve good results. However, more advanced skills and processes are needed achieve faster and more consistent results. Just as being able to install a toilet or change an electrical outlet or other more basic tasks around the house doesn’t take away the value of a fully trained and experienced plumber or electrician, the same thing goes those who use Sibelius or Finale to handle every aspect of a project themselves and those who use Engraver’s Mark Music or other music preparation services in their workflow. Each has its place and function. So, maybe for a small ensemble or personal project where your skills are equal to the task, you may not need Engraver’s Mark Music, and that’s ok. Maybe all you need, rather, is a teacher; one who is an expert in the area you are studying and is able to offer both knowledge and experience to help guide you on the next steps in your learning process. Engraver’s Mark Music can help you there too. We offer Finale instruction to beginners and advanced users alike to help refine and take their skills to the next level. (Contact us to learn more about Finale lessons) Maybe you are spending too much time on score clean up or part creation and formatting that it is taking time away from the content creation you need to be doing. Or driving all over town to print shops trying to get them to understand the specific needs of musicians and hoping they’ll be able to turn your project around on time and without messing it up. In either case, know that Engraver’s Mark Music has a solution for you; one where you gain that precious time back and partner with an experienced team that knows the challenges of the deadlines and creative tasks you have in front of you. No, not every project or person will use our service. However, Engraver’s Mark Music can create a custom solution for every project or person. That’s the focus our everything we do; to help all those we work with to stay focused on their art, not all the other details and partner with them to bring their music to the world. P.S. Here's a link to a great interview with Christopher Willis and how the music preparation process was a large part in his workflow on "The Personal History of David Copperfield" https://www.scoringnotes.com/podcast/christopher-willis-part-2/ There have been a few speed-enhancing and production-enhancing tools for music notation software (Finale, Sibelius, Dorico) out in the marketplace for a while now. Some of these are macro programs, allowing you to write scripts to perform repetitive tasks or other functions, i.e. FinaleScript or Keyboard Maestro. Others, like Elbsound’s Perfect Layout or the various Bob Zawalich plug-ins for Sibelius are really more like separate programs that function on an even deeper level than macro scripts. All of these tools can be amazing time-savers and really make your engraving much more professional.
One of the latest is the JetStream Finale Controller. This product, which can be used with the Elgato StreamDeck or with a mobile app, is a synthesis of the powerful JW Lua programming language and the physical interface of the StreamDeck controller. For those of us mere mortals who don’t code (myself include at this point) or haven’t even written a FinaleScript, (I can help you learn how to do that BTW) this is a great tool. It provides hundreds of features and shortcuts to almost every task you can think of in Finale, making everything from tool selection to even complex functions more accessible and streamlined. I purchased a StreamDeck last year to help expand some of my FinaleScript triggering and to help automate several file naming tasks or other simple repetitive functions. Now with the newly released JetStream software, I have been using them both in my work even more in the last few months. There are so many functions and possibilities that it can almost be overwhelming and knowing where to start can be a bit a puzzle, but with some trial and error, the vast power of these tools can really start to shine. One of my favorite aspects of the JetStream controller is that it comes with a default StreamDeck profile but also another preset profile for you to use to create your own custom workflows or button arrangements. This is extremely useful as now you can have the best of both worlds, where you can copy functions from the main profile, without altering it, and copy those into your new profile all with a couple mouse clicks. This brings the vast list of functions and tools down to a manageable level where the most common functions can be grouped together in new sequences that fit your desired workflow for any given project. There are so many other customizations and possibilities with these tools. I could go on for days, but better still, check out the JetStream Controller website and YouTube page for more details, tutorials and tips. These are great resources to keep handy as you begin to explore these new tools. All this being said, you may be wondering whether the JetStream Controller is only for professionals or Finale power-users. Actually, I would say the opposite. JetStream can be as useful and effective for a novice user as a seasoned pro. The ability generate custom tool sets will inspire pros to rethink how they perform various tasks, while the novice will find the physical interface helpful and easy to navigate and will reduce time spent looking through menus or dozens of extra mouse clicks. So, in the end, has the JetStream changed the way I work…. somewhat. I have found it to be more useful for working on my Mac in Finale than on my PC, as I have several tasks reprogrammed using the TG Menu Shortcut (check out my blog post about that tool here) that perform some of the same functions with keyboard shortcuts that are faster for me to use than pressing a button and taking my hand off the keyboard. On a Mac, that TG Tool plug-in isn’t available, so I have shifted a lot of those functions over to the StreamDeck/JetStream ecosphere with great success and efficiency improvement. Mainly, these tools have inspired me to continue to refine and rethink my workflows. There are lots functions that for me as a copyist (which is my main job) aren’t really useful. However, they would be used far more by an orchestrator or composer, who is entering notes and other information from the beginning. I am often cleaning up or reformatting scores and parts, so I start at a different place, which makes some of those tools less valuable to me. However, when I am engraving a hand-written score, or a score from a PDF or other file that is out of print, I definitely use the JetStream controller more often. All in all the quantity and quality of these tools is too high to pass up. Oh, did I mention that the JetStream controller software is free; and the StreamDeck has various options, all of which are very reasonable, so there’s really almost no risk of you wasting time or money. My advice is to try them out and have some fun exploring new ways of working and I bet you’ll be amazed at what you can do. Again, definitely check out the YouTube channel for some how-to videos and longer explanations of all the various functions. Happy JetStream-setting! In this funny little side of the music business, there are many job titles and roles that are played in the production of a piece of music and getting on to the page to put in front of a musician. Some of them are leftover from (at times) centuries ago and others are of a more recent vintage and virtually created out of the necessity or habit of a given project. Having not grown up, musically speaking, as an orchestral musician or a composer, I have found these titles to be interesting, at times misleading, curious, a bit pompous and enlightening. So, I thought I would share a bit of what I learned about some of these titles, how I see them used in the industry, what that means for those entering this side of the industry and most especially, what these titles mean to Engraver’s Mark Musc and how we function in our corner of the musical world.
And now, without further ado: 1. “Orchestrator” - to me, this means “one who puts the music on paper”. Granted, this is a very modern view of the traditional definition, which is someone takes the composer’s original music and arranges it for orchestra. That can included just a simple splitting out of instruments to completely rearranging a piece meant for strings into a woodwind ensemble. The job of the orchestrator is to take the musical vision of the composer and put it on the page in a way which most truly aligns with the original music, but also enhances it. In the modern usage of the word, this also means thinking of how the music will be performed in the studio or live and adjusting accordingly to fit the given recording schedule or orchestra size for a live performance. A composer can be his/her own orchestrator, but I found that in the modern film/TV/video game scoring world, the role of orchestrator is filled by another person or even team of orchestrators. 2. “Music Engraver” - this is a more archaic term which comes down to us from the practice of “engraving” plates of metal with music and then using a printing press to create the printed material. It's an incredibly complex, detailed art form and I am thankful beyond words that I don’t have to create sheet music in this way for my job! Honestly, the process of creating the plates to reproduce the music (they have to hammer in everything backwards, just in case you thought it wasn’t hard enough) is beautiful and awe-inspiring, but painfully slow. Just check out this video and you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2k1Y2GzXDU). This title was given only to a master craftsman, so today it does sound a bit pretentious, but I like it. I believe that what we, those of us who use Finale or Sibelius or Dorico or whatever, to make our music look as good as we possibly can, follow in the footsteps of the master craftsmen of old, and we too strive for perfection and excellence which comes of our years of practice and study. 3. “Music Copyist” - literally, this person copies music. Simple enough right? This title seems to have been born out of the film scoring industry starting in the 1930s (though perhaps even earlier). This person, usually working under a lead music engraver, was responsible to copying a part or score to reproduce it long before there were photocopiers. If you needed 8 copies of a violin part for a given cue in a movie score, well, you had to have a team of people to create, by hand, each one of them. I spent a very short amount of time early in my career writing out some charts by hand and I still think it’s a great place to start from to learn about music notation. It also gives one a tremendous appreciation of the sheer effort involved by those working in this field over the decades before the digital revolution swept through our industry. What one person can do now in an hour took probably a dozen people all day to do. I use this term quite often to describe my work, since that’s largely what it can be at times. I often work directly with an orchestrator, who will get the music exactly the way it needs to be, and all my job now is to clean up a bit around the edges, make parts and format them correctly and pass them along to our print department. This term can tend to mean a kind of music engraving of less quality than you would get from a true “music engraver” but I don’t see it that way. Not every piece of music needs to be engraved using the fanciest fonts and styles you would use for a major operatic work to be performed in Vienna. A plain, clear, accurate chart that is easy to read is always the best and a copyist keeps this motto in mind at all times. 4. “Music Editor” - “the one of oversees the final production and editorial standards of a given piece of music.” I view this term as describing two potentially different functions, 1. A “content” editor and 2. A “typeset” editor, which could be the same person but not necessarily. In the book publishing industry, there are editors who work with the author to craft, refine and style their works into better writing and then there are editors whose sole purpose is to make sure the commas, punctuation and grammar are used correctly. One editor is concerned with what is said and how the story develops, while the other is concerned with how it is written from a mechanical point of view. The same can be true in our world; an editor may be there just to given a quick look through the music to make sure there are no collisions of articulations and dynamics, make sure slurs are positioned correctly, etc, while another may be suggesting changes to the notes themselves, depending on the audience or customer for whom the music is intended. Why do all these terms matter? Well, its helps everyone understand the role they are performing in a given project, what’s expected of them and, in knowing the roles of the other people involved in the project, how their actions and choices affect those around them. This is really important when the deadlines are tight; knowing who has what role and how you can enhance their work makes all the difference. At Engraver’s Mark Music, while we have orchestrated a few small works here and there, our focus is to allow the creative forces in a given project, the composers, arrangers and orchestrators, to spend all their time and energy in those creative tasks, while we handle everything else. It says so right in our name. We are “Engravers”, using the best practices, honed with time, practice, and a myriad of projects big and small. We leave our “Mark” on our engraving with the quality of our work and the efficiency of our processes. Lastly, we are in service to the “Music” and our clients, making it better, clearer, and helping those who create the music stay focused on the creative process. If you are looking for a partner to help you create the best version of your music, contact us and learn how what’s in our name can help you make a name for yourself and your art. |
AuthorSammy Sanfilippo, CEO of Engraver's Mark Music Archives
November 2023
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