Update and/or die?
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Those who know me know that I am an Apple user, from the Apple ][e through the first Macintosh all the way up to my current MacBook Pro. I am not a blind defender of the brand—come on, guys, give us back our headphone jack—but every time there is a major OS upgrade, things break. I’ve learned not to be the first on the block to discover that the app I need to finish a major project no longer works.
Mac OS 9 was one of those big breaks, and now OS 10.15 “Catalina” is poised to be even a bigger break: the computer will no longer run “32-bit” software, which means that most if not all the software I have will need to be replaced one way or the other.
This is not a surprise. Apple has been warning developers for a couple of years now that this was coming, and several pieces of software now tell me they will break in the next update whenever I open them up. Still, it’s daunting to figure out what has to be replaced, and some of it is critical. (I will save my vituperation about Microsoft and Adobe’s subscription plans for another post.)
One program I can count on not keeping up with Apple’s updates is MakeMusic’s Finale. Not once have they been ahead of the curve, and this time is no different. Sometimes we will get an email ahead of time warning us not to upgrade; this time, it came after the release of Catalina. I was not fooled; I knew better than to try to improve my computer without a clear go-ahead.
All of this is to lead into my self-imposed TASK AVOIDANCE yesterday. I recently went looking for a choral piece I thought I had written and instead found another one that surprised me with its cromulence. It occurred to me that I needed to go into my music folder and make sure that every piece I’ve ever written was still open-able by Finale.
So I spent the morning going through every folder and subfolder and updating every piece. (The task was not Herculean; I haven’t written that much music.) Mostly I was opening the older pieces in Finale 14, saving them, then opening them in Finale 26, the most recent version.
Thus secured against surprise… [1]
Some of my old stuff was just lame, but there were a couple of pieces that I think are worth a church choir director’s time. (I was a part-time church choir director for about thirteen years.)
Give them a look:
Benediction #2: a lovely short piece that sounds like it’s been around for years — score (pdf)
I Was Glad: This is the SAB version, but you can easily convert it to children’s choir (it’s just a round); sweet, lilting, good call to worship — score (pdf) [NOTE: the mp3 cuts off at the repeat. Something in the Finale file—THANKS, FINALE—stops it from exporting the mp3 at that point.]
Psalm 125: another good call to worship, with a declamatory opening and a nice canonic close — score (pdf)
Trumpet in Zion: based on a text from Joel; it’s outrageously cinematic for a church choir piece, but I think it works, if you have a killer organist, a killer soprano soloist, and a set of tympani — score (pdf)
All of these can be found at my other blog along with more recent (and better) pieces.
[1] Bonus points for recognizing the reference.
