Working with beginning music students? Would it help to add notenames to the noteheads in an example like this?

Finale 2012 makes it easier than ever:

1. Choose the Selection tool and indicate the music you wish to change.
2. Navigate to Plug-ins menu > Note, Beam and Rest Editing > AlphaNotes.

As simple as that, the noteheads now have note names:

Let me know how Finale 2012 is working for you by clicking on "Comments" below. Don't have Finale yet? Download the free 30 day trial version today.

Before Finale 2012, changing instruments mid-score was a bit of a process. For example, if I wanted a saxophonist to switch to a flute halfway through a piece, I had to add a Staff Style for the notation to appear correctly, and an Expression to make playback work right. In addition, when using the Garritan sounds I'd have to manually load the new sound into the Aria Player.

In Finale 2012, it’s as simple as click and play:

1. Choose the Selection tool, then highlight the measure where you want the change to occur.
2. Navigate to Utilities menu > Change Instrument.



3. Select the instrument you wish to change to and click OK.

Finale 2012 automatically sets the proper staff attributes AND configures the playback change. Want to go to another instrument or switch back? Just repeat the steps above.

Please let me know how Finale 2012 is working for you by clicking on "Comments" below. Don't have Finale 2012 yet? Download the free 30-day trial version!

I like the recent additions to the Finale website that invite a direct comparison between Finale and Sibelius sounds, playback, and support.

Of course there are many other reasons to choose one notation product over the other. Today I’d like to share one that’s pretty near the top of my “Could-Never-Switch-to-Sibelius” reasons for piano players like me.

Imagine you are playing in a two-handed piece like this:

Because the split point (the point at which notes are distributed to one or the other staff) was manually set at the “B” below middle “C,” the notes are correctly distributed in the first four bars. However, in measure 5, the middle Cs should appear in the bottom staff, not the top staff.

Correcting these changing split points is just one more area where Finale shines.

Here’s the first way I might fix this:

1. Select the Note Mover Tool.
2. From the Note Mover menu select “Delete After Merge.”
3. Click and drag around the middle C’s in measure 5 and drag them down to the bottom staff.
   As you do this, the notes magically merge into the lower staff giving you perfect notation.

Another solution is to use the Plug-in called “Split Point:”

1. From the Selection Tool, select the area you want to edit.
2. From the Plug-ins menu select Scoring and Arranging>Split Point.
3. Set the Split Point you want for that region and click “OK”.

The first solution lets you move individual notes, while the second lets you move multiple measures at a time.  The beauty is that you can choose, and quickly notate, any music that appears on two staves, including harp, organ, harpsichord, celeste, piano, marimba, etc.

Let me know how you’re getting along with Finale’s split point features, or ask any question, by clicking on “Comments” below.

I recently visited Celina, Texas, to provide an all-day, hands-on Finale training for a group of music educators. These are great sessions because everyone can apply my suggestions and ask questions immediately.

I was in the process of outlining my “Eight Great Tips” and had just described Tip #7, how to add multiple articulations. My example was to put in a fermata on every staff of the score. To do so I selected the Articulation tool, held down the “f” key (a shortcut for “fermata”), and then drag-selected all staves in the score. Voilà! In one quick action every staff had a fermata on it:

Then one participant asked: “What if I want the fermata to appear ONLY on the top staff of the score, but to appear on all the linked parts?”

It’s easy. With the Selection tool, just drag-select all the fermata handles, then right-click on any of these handles and select “Unlink in all parts.” This indicates that you want something to be different between your score and your parts. Then drag-select all the fermata handles you’d like to hide in the score, right-click one of these handles, and de-select “Show”:

As a result, all but the top fermata in the score appear in gray on-screen (letting you know they’re hidden), and they will not print in the score. They do, however, appear and print perfectly in the parts.

Should you do this? My engraver friends might suggest that a fermata should appear on every staff, but hey, this is Finale – you can always have it your way! 

Have any questions, comments, or suggestions? Share them with us when we have a workshop near you, or let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.

Excited about Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the new Macintosh operating system? Rest assured that we’ll be supporting Finale 2010 and 2011 notation products on Apple’s new big cat. Here are some compatibility info and tips that may help.

Compatibility

During our testing process, we found only a few minor problems running Finale on Lion, none of which should impact most users’ workflow. Here are two examples:

• Lion no longer includes a pre-installed version of Java, so you may receive an error that Java Runtime is not installed when you first launch Finale. Simply click “Install” on the error message and Java Runtime will be automatically downloaded for you. Re-launch Finale and Finale will open correctly.
• The Check for Updates dialog may display every time you open Finale, regardless of your previously chosen preference. Just click OK or Cancel and the dialog will go away.

More in-depth information can be found in our official Lion compatibility Knowledge Base article.

Tips

Apple has made some changes in Lion which may cause some confusion:

• Mouse scrolling is reversed from previous versions of OS X. Mouse scrolling now functions similar to iOS devices, like the iPad or iPhone. For example, scrolling up moves the page down and scrolling left moves the page right. This should be fairly comfortable on a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad, but if using a standard PC or older Mac Mouse, you may want to change this setting by going to System Preferences > Mouse > Un-check Scroll with finger direction.
• The User and Root Library folders are now hidden by default in Finder. To access Finale’s support files in Finder look in the Go menu for “Go to Folder” and type in the folder location (Tip: use the ~ key to designate the User directory). In addition, holding the Option key and clicking on the Go menu will display the User Library. More information about this can be found in the 10.7 compatibility article.

Upgrading

If you’re thinking about upgrading to Lion, here are some tips to keep in mind before you do:

• Ensure that all of your essential applications are supported. While some applications like Finale transition fairly smoothly, others may not at all. For example, older “PowerPC” applications will no longer work on Lion, unlike previous versions of Mac OS X. Check support web pages of your software regarding Lion support.
• Make sure your hardware is supported under Lion as well. It’s possible that your MIDI keyboard could function fine in Snow Leopard while its driver doesn’t work in Lion. Again, check with your device manufacturer to see if they have Lion drivers or Lion support before taking the plunge.
• Before installing Lion, run Software Update to make sure you have the latest Mac OS X updates.
• Lastly, back up your files! If something goes awry during the upgrade, you wouldn’t want to lose years of Finale or other documents. I would suggest backing up at least your Documents folder (or whatever folder you store your files in) to an external hard drive before upgrading to Lion. If you want to be extra cautious, check out this great MacWorld article.

Already upgraded to Lion? Please click “Comments” below to share your thoughts and experiences! 

When creating cross staff beaming in Finale, many people use the NoteMover Tool or the TG Tools Cross-Staff Plug-in to move notes from one staff to another.

While both of these options do the job well, I’d like to share an even quicker way to do this.

1. Choose the Selection Tool then click + drag to select the notes you wish to move.

2. Press Alt+Shift+Up/Down Arrow (Win) or Option+Shift+ Up/Down Arrow (Mac).

Share your Selection Tool or Cross-Staff tips or tricks by clicking on “Comments” below!

Need to add a grace note? While it’s easy to select the Grace Note tool from the Simple Entry palette, it’s much faster to use a modifier key to quickly turn the Grace Note tool on or off. There’s a better way in Speedy Entry too:

Simple Entry:
Press Ctrl + G (Win) or Option + G (Mac) to indicate the next note will be a grace note. Use the same keystroke to switch back to “regular notes.”

Speedy Entry:
To change the previous note to a grace note, press G.

You can really speed up note entry with these and other shortcut keys. Do you have some favorite note entry shortcuts? Please share them by clicking on “Comments” below!

In a recent blog, Justin shared some great tips regarding the Score Name insert in Finale. In short, if you’d like to change the text  “Score,” which appears in the upper left corner of your score, to something else (or simply make it go away), you should go to File > File Info and edit the Score Name Insert text.

In the comments section of that blog, my friend Jeff Whitmill said:

“I wish I could change the default "Score" to "Conductor." That's a change I have to make, every time I start a new ensemble (I save it in templates, but that's useless for new ensembles).”

Today’s tip is to create or edit a Document Style. Then the next time you need to create a score for a new ensemble, select this document style from Finale’s Setup Wizard. The resulting score will automatically show “Conductor,” regardless of instrumentation.

What’s more, Document Styles can include ALL your text preferences (like whether or not you want text inserts for “Subtitle,” “Lyricist” “Arranger,” and others) and is extremely easy to make. Simply take any existing Finale file that has these items configured the way you like, drop it in the Document Styles folder, and that file has become a Document Style you can select from the Setup Wizard.

The only trick is finding the correct folder. On Mac it’s pretty easy:

<user>\Library\Application Support\MakeMusic\Finale 2011\Music Files\Document Styles

On Windows this location is version-specific (and it’s a little trickier to boot), but here’s my tip to find the folder: it’s listed in Program Options > Folders > Document Styles.

What makes this additionally challenging in Windows is that you have to show hidden folders to see these locations. One way to do that is to go to Control Panel >Folder Options, select the View tab, and select “Show hidden files and folders.”

Check out a previous blog post on Document Styles here, and learn more about why Windows hides some files here.

Does this help? Have any questions? Let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.

“Reorder Staves” is one of several less-heralded but immensely helpful new features in Finale 2011. In previous versions of Finale, reordering staves involved dragging the staff to a new location, then using the Respace Staves feature to return the staves to proper spacing.

With Finale 2011 you can change the staff order without ever moving a staff or adjusting spacing. To do so, go to Staff Menu > Reorder Staves:

Simply select the staff you want to move, then click the up or down arrow to move it. Press OK and you’re done – the staff moved with no need to respace or worry about layout changes!

Are you using Reorder Staves? Let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below. 

Being a practical guy, I generally agree with the philosophy of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” However, I make exceptions. My old typewriter still works fine, yet I’ve found that my laptop provides me with a more efficient means to communicate my thoughts.

In creating new versions of Finale, we always strive to improve the user experience while being sensitive to the fact that not everyone wants a new experience; when providing new ways to do things we typically make it possible for you to still do it the old way, too. As a result, sometimes long-time Finale users continue to do things the way they always have – long after a better option exists. (And of course the question of what is “better” is very subjective.)

Often when I’m speaking with Finale users, someone will refer to part extraction without mentioning Linked Parts, and I’ll discover that they don’t know Linked Parts exist. Linked Parts is the Finale feature that automatically creates parts for your score, and ensures that edits made in your parts instantly appear in your score – and vice versa. Prior to Linked Parts, you would extract parts, creating many separate Finale files based on the way the score looked at that instant. Then you had to manage a whole bunch of separate part files, and hopefully you took the time to update the score whenever you changed notes in the part.

For me, the way Linked Parts transformed this process was no less dramatic than what word processing software did to my writing. Best of all, there’s nothing to turn on, I simply create new scores from Finale’s Setup Wizard and my parts are automatically generated.

However, if you’ve in the habit of starting new files from an old template, parts will not be automatically generated. If this describes you, or if you are simply working in an old file created before Linked Parts, the good news is that it’s simple to add parts after the fact too!

To see the Linked Parts in your score, go to Document > Edit Part:

If parts exist in your score, you’ll see them listed here. Just click on the part name, like “Cello,” to see individual parts, and note the handy keystrokes for moving between your parts (Next Part, etc.).

If parts don’t currently exist in your score, simply click on Generate Parts:

…and new parts will appear the next time you select Document > Edit Part.

Have any questions about using Linked Parts? Please let us know by clicking on “Comments” below!