I am not familiar with NotePerformer.

Is “stems” a NotePerformer thingy?

Generally - in “Finale-speak” - stems are note stems (= the little vertical lines on the noteheads).

There can be ten thousands of note stems in a score.

However, I suspect that you are talking about something else???

Since Tim Davies uses Finale, I have to believe he would have figured out a system to export stems.

(Hire an assistant? Certainly not in my budget.)

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.

Stems as in the sound engineer jargon meaning audio files per instrument. So I'd like to export or "bounce" audio for each instrument so that I can mix them. At the moment, I can only solo one track and export it that way, but then I'd have to solo 30 times each track, which is insane.

Tim Davies is an orchestrator so exporting stems is not required for him. I also read his website, he doesn't mention anything related to mixing.

As Finale is primarily focussed on notation and not on sound engeneering, there are only basic functions for playback. For better playback/audio functions, most users run Finale's MIDI output through some sound generating software (like Note Performer) and/or VSTs. That's the place where you would usually create audio stems.

If you need to create audio stems from inside Finale, use Nick Mazuk's "Mute/solo selected staves" JWLua plugin. You can run it multiple times or alter the script to automate the export process for pre-defined stems.

As for Plug-In-development in general, JWLua is the only way to go at the moment. MakeMusic does not provide a SDK. This last discussion in the old forum still reflects the state of affairs.

You compare Finale to a game which features more than 1000 mods which can be installed. But game industry is much larger than the music notation world. I don't know how many people develop Finale, but there are not much more than ~10 people who have been creating JWLua scripts and ~3 who have access to the full SDK. It's a small world.

Harald,

Thank you for the plug in link, I'll definitely check it out. As for the Finale having been developed with no sound engineering in mind - times are changing. For example, Logic Pro started as a midi programming software and later added sound engineering capability, whereas Pro Tools started as an audio engineering software, which later added midi programming.

After Noteperformer showed itself, there's a great need for the scoring programs to have sound engineering capabilities. Noteperformer 4 will probably be an industry disruptor.

Continuing a 20 year old philosophy of just being a notation program will put MakeMusic at a disadvantage. Dorico, for example, has integration with Cubase. Even Sibelius has some not-widely used integration with Pro Tools. MakeMusic has to adapt whether it likes it or not because once all the great orchestrators who are 60 years old now pass away, the younger generation will move to something less strict.