A slow beginning to Finale

In my continuing effort to spur the economy on and to keep my interest in music piqued, I recently purchased a software package I had been relishing for the longest time: Finale 2009.

I cut my teeth on the free version of Finale Notepad, and I found it adequate for my purposes. But once I started trying to arrange stuff for quartet and big band, Notepad didn't cut it anymore. I asked around and did lots of research online, and the consensus was that Finale was the package to get. There are lots - really, really lots - of notation programs out there, and they mostly have similar features. I really just went with the one I was most familiar with that also happens to have the largest installed user base (as near as I can determine). With my academic discount, it was reasonably priced, and it arrived very quickly. I loaded it into my computer with no problem, started it up, and

Did practically nothing.

My ability to notate music for piano is now basically unlimited, but I pretty much had that before with Finale Notepad. When faced with a big band quantity of staves, I was stopped in my tracks. The saxes all had three sharps and the trumpets two sharps on my key-of-C song.

Uh-oh.

Now, I can make a few logical guesses as to how to go about notating a song, and certainly, I know enough about how to transpose to be able to move the notes up to the keys of D and A, but I have nothing but questions even after I make those assumptions. Like, do I write for the instrument or write for the piece? Namely, do I put the notes in the instrument's key, or in my key? What's the range of the instruments? Is there some way to transpose that automatically so I can write in a more familiar key and print in the key the musicians need to see the notes in? And what other restrictions are there on the individual parts? (Like, how many quarter notes can a trombone player play legato at 112 before he turns blue and passes out?)

I could go on.

Anyway, I've got probably the single most powerful tool for writing and composing music, but now I'm not only facing the daunting learning curve of the comprehensive application, I've got to actually know about composing music in order to get it down properly. I'll probably buy myself a composition book (of which I found several on Amazon) and try to learn composing and the software simultaneously. Maybe by summer I'll be ready to go.

In the meantime, that's $200+ injected into the economy by yours truly. Don't say I'm not doing my part.