Finale alternative for big band arranging

If you arrange for big band and you were using Finale, you are probably looking for the right tool to switch to, since it stopped being developed in August 2024.

Big band work is really a parts problem. One score becomes seventeen stands: five saxes, four trumpets, four trombones and a rhythm section, across three different transpositions, with a drum chart and a guitar part that read nothing like the horn books. So the test is not whether you can write the arrangement, it is whether the software gets it onto seventeen stands correctly. Your existing charts also have to come across, and that depends on what your old files will export rather than on which editor you prefer.

Here is what to check, and how Flat handles each of them.

Where your charts stand now that Finale is unsupported

Finale still opens on any machine where it is already authorized, and MakeMusic has said that downloading and authorizing registered products stays available for the foreseeable future. So there is no cliff edge. What there is instead is a slow narrowing: development ended, technical support has closed, and every operating system release from here is one the application was never tested against. Plenty of people will get another few years out of it.

For an arranger the risk is concentrated in a small number of files that get used a lot. A chart that works is played for years, and it accumulates fixes: the trumpet range that came down a tone, the tag that got added, the bar the drummer kept missing. All of that lives in one file, and usually in one copy. If the band calls it next season you need to open it, not rebuild it. That is the reason to move deliberately rather than take the first recommendation from a forum. If you want the wider field first, we looked at the main Finale alternatives separately.

What to look for in a Finale alternative for big band arranging

Big band charts have requirements a small group never exposes. These are the ones worth testing against a chart you already know.

• Transposition across whole sections. The alto book, the tenor book and the trumpet book all read differently from your score. Flat can transpose a complete part for a different instrument, and the alto saxophone is the example in its own documentation.
  
  💡 Transpose a complete part.
• A concert pitch view for checking voicings. When you are stacking a five-part sax soli you need to see what actually sounds, not what each player reads. Flat switches between concert pitch and written pitch on the same score.
  
  💡 Display the score in concert pitch.
• Chord symbols for the rhythm section. Piano, guitar and bass read changes, not your inner voices. Flat handles chord symbols and can show guitar chord grids beneath them.
  
  💡 Add a chord notation.
• Slashes and written rhythms. Comping bars need slashes, and the hits need to be written out where the section has to line up. Flat does both.
  
  💡 Slash and rhythmic notation.
• A real drum part. The drum chart belongs in the same score as the horns, not in a separate file you keep in sync by hand. Flat has drum set instruments you can add like any other part.
  
  💡 Composing with drums.
• A swing setting for playback. Straight eighths tell you nothing about whether a shout chorus sits right. Flat applies swing from the measure menu, including swing eighths for the standard jazz feel.
  
  💡 Swing eighths and sixteenths.
• Rehearsal marks and consolidated rests. Rehearsal time is expensive, so marks have to hold their sequence after a cut, and a fourth trombone should not count thirty empty bars one at a time. Flat maintains rehearsal letter sequences and consolidates rests of more than three bars in the parts.
  
  💡 Add or remove multimeasure rests.
• Exporting the whole set, not just the score. The deliverable is a folder of seventeen parts. Flat exports the full score, one individual part or a set of parts, as PDF, MIDI or MusicXML, plus an MP3 or WAV of the playback.
  
  💡 Print and export your scores.

How easily your existing charts transfer

Moving a book is quicker than most people expect. Export from Finale while you still have a working installation, since its own files open only in Finale and MusicXML is the way out. You do not have to go one at a time either: Finale batch exports to MusicXML, so the whole book can leave in a single pass. There is a step-by-step guide for the Finale end of this, and Flat reads the resulting files directly. Notes, chord symbols and instrument assignments arrive intact, though on a full chart it is worth checking the transposed books and the page turns before you print a set.

Anything that will not export, or only ever existed on paper, comes in another way. Flat imports PDFs and turns them into editable scores, which covers charts that were handed round on paper long before anyone typed them up. If you want the detail on transposition itself, we have a separate piece on transposing in Flat.

Why Flat works for big band arranging

Handing out parts stops being a printing job. Every score in Flat sits behind a link, so the band can read from a phone or tablet on the stand, and you can still export a PDF set for the players who want paper. Flat also runs in a browser and as apps on iOS and Android, so the chart you were writing at home is the chart you open at the rehearsal, with nothing to export first.

The other difference is that someone else can be in the chart with you. Two people can work in the same score at once, so a bandleader and a section player can fix a voicing or a written hit together rather than trading attachments and guessing which file is current. And when you want to see how someone else voiced a section, the public scores in Flat's community can be copied into your own library and taken apart.

Ready to get your first chart out of Finale? Try Flat for free!