Regular readers of this blog are probably familiar with my books, The Elements of Rhythm Vols. & II. I created them within an InDesign template and used Finale 2011 to create all of the music examples. I originally wrote ALL of the examples out by hand, years ago, and when it came time to do every thing myself in real print, I owe my life’s work to Finale Music.
I met the guys (Tom Johnson, me, Scott Yoho, and Justin Phillips) at NAMM 2012 and showed them my books, got interviewed briefly for some video clips, and Scott Yoho, their Marketing guru, very kindly offered to write a blog with an overview of the books and some of the creation challenges. Here’s the link:
http://blog.finalemusic.com/post/2013/04/15/Creating-anything-you-can-imagine-with-Finale.aspx
I’ve been very fortunate to have people from all over the world reading this blog for the past three years, and on this rare occasion, I want to use it to publically thank Finale Music for creating a product that handled an unbelievable amount of detail. Some readers have seen the previous posts with page samples, and Amazon let me post a PDF that lets you look inside the books as well.
I didn’t have anywhere near enough room in the blog interview to describe how truly insane and tedious the level of refinement was to create so many rest and note shapes. I spent about a year and a half working out all the layout details, over 400 pages worth, learning how to convert one type of file into another, and basically, wearing many hats and drowning many times along the way!
It mattered to me that everything be as perfect and precise as possible, because if you’re gonna say that you have THE collection of building block rhythm patterns that all the larger combinations you could ever imagine come from… you’d best be right. Finale’s software accomplished the utterly damn near impossible, and yep, this surely is a sales pitch and a serious two thumb’s up.
When I wrote for DRUM! in the 90’s, I couldn’t always include a personal message in the articles, which is why I love blog technology so much. I am eternally grateful for Finale helping me accomplish a three-decade journey, just as I’m every day grateful that people stop by this blog to check things out.
So let me say this: if you are thinking about blogging drum music examples of your own, or considering cranking out your own set of books, I can give you over 400 pages of detailed reasons why Finale Music just flat-out kicks printing ass. It’s cyber ink on steroids. And no, they don’t give me free stuff to say this, nor do I ask for it.
Carry on.
David Aldridge's Drumming Blog 
Well done, David – I’m proud of you!
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