Sibelius, Finale, and entrenchment

…the old days…

It’s inter­est­ing how we get so entrenched in one way of doing things. We become hard­ened (maybe even defen­sive?) against change, pre­fer­ring the com­fort of what we know. This is the point of an arti­cle referred to on the excel­lent Sibelius Blog. (By the way, if any­one knows of a Finale blog that is sim­i­lar, please let me know in the com­ments field.) We think Finale is best or Sibelius is best, depend­ing on which one we hap­pen to use. We think this way about our com­put­ers (Mac or PC?), our cars (for­eign or domes­tic?), our wines (red or white?) and so on.

But this way of think­ing pre­vents us from learn­ing and grow­ing; we don’t try new things — we don’t even con­sider it. Even within that very soft­ware pro­gram we use every­day we become inured to change, entrenched in our way of doing things, and we gloss over help­ful new features.

Of course the par­al­lels to com­po­si­tion need hardly be spelled out by me. We should all engage in a lit­tle relearn­ing every now and then. I highly rec­om­mend this blog entry.