In Finale, expressions are markings that tell the performer how to interpret (or express) a musical passage. This can include dynamic markings, tempo indications, expressive text, technique text, and more.

You can move and edit expressions, and indeed just about everything in Finale, with the Selection tool.

TIP 1: My handy shortcut for choosing the Selection tool is to hit the Esc key.

Once you've chosen the Selection tool, you can move any existing expression by simply clicking on it, then dragging it from one note to another (while continuing to hold the mouse down). As you drag, on-screen feedback indicates the note to which the expression is attached. This is important because this point of attachment is also where the playback effect will begin.

However, sometimes I want to move the expression but have the attachment point remain unchanged.

TIP 2: To move an expression without changing where the playback effect begins, simply hold down ALT (Windows) or OPT (Mac) as you drag or nudge the expression to its new location.

Is this helpful? Have other questions? Let us know by clicking on “Comments” below.

Like to read manuals? Neither do I. I learn much better when I watch something done in context.

One great way for people like me to learn how to get more out of Finale is to attend a live demonstration by Finale product specialist Tom Johnson. Tom brings great enthusiasm, humor, and energy to the subject while sharing only the essentials. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been possible to have Tom come to your house on your schedule.

Until now.

During his recent visit to Minnesota we captured Tom on video, demonstrating some of the “Eight Great Finale Tips” that have been so popular in his live demonstrations. Today the first four of these are available for you to view at your convenience.

Click on Tom above to check them out, and let us know what you think by clicking on “Comments” below.

Much has been said about how much time and effort is saved by using Finale’s Linked Parts feature, which dynamically links your score and parts (so changes made to one appear in the other). This week I’d like to highlight one specific aspect of Linked Parts, named Generate Parts. I’m constantly amazed at the enormous power it offers.

As an example, I have many scores created with older versions of Finale (before Finale 2007) which did not have Linked Parts. When I revisit one of these scores in Finale 2012, I want to take advantage of Linked Parts. To do so, I simply:

1. Open the old file
2. Select Document > Edit Part > Generate Parts

Done! My parts are now linked to my score. But this is just one of the benefits Generate Parts offers.

Ever create a new score from the Setup Wizard, enter notes in the score, and then look at the parts only to wonder why Finale didn’t automatically generate some multi-measure rests? Well, if you think about it, when the parts were created, there weren’t any notes in the score. Again one solution is to simply click on “Generate Parts” and multi-measure rests will automatically appear.

This explanation sometimes produces furrowed eyebrows, but it makes sense when you realize that we don’t want Finale constantly updating multi-measure rests each time we enter notes.

For another example, I typically want the page size and orientation of my parts to be different from that of my score. I might want the score to be 8.5” x 11” (in portrait orientation), with part to be 7” x 5” (landscape). To make this happen, I:

1. Go to Document > Page Format > Parts.
2. Change the Width to “7” and the Height to “5”. (I might also want to select a smaller percentage for “Scale Page To” as well.)
3. Click OK.

However, when I do this, nothing changes—until I click “Generate Parts,” for similar reasons. Once I got a handle on this, I felt like I became the master of Linked Parts, for which I am eternally grateful.

Happy notating!

I’ve got some exciting news to share this week.

First off, Finale SongWriter is now shipping. At $49.95 SongWriter is an affordable way for your Finale NotePad-using friends to add some of the features they’ve most requested. Check out the new website.

That’s not all we’ve been up to. We’ve also announced that:

• Our iPad viewer will arrive in May. Check out the latest video of this work-in-process in this recent blog post. Did I mention the app will be free?
• Finale 2012b will arrive in June, will be “broader in scope than past updates,” and will “include further improvements to features added in 2012, address top customer requests, and provide new features to help users create digital sheet music.” Finale 2012b will, of course, be free of charge to all owners of Finale 2012.
• We’ve also entered into an agreement with Hal Leonard to “dramatically expand [our] SmartMusic music library to include many of the most popular songs of the 20th century and today’s contemporary hits. For the first time ever, those songs will be available for purchase from within the SmartMusic application.”

Finally, Finale product specialist, frequent Finale blogger, and my friend Tom Johnson celebrates his twenty-fifth year with our company this month. I suspect that such a long run is pretty rare in the field of music software (It probably helps that he started when he was a long-haired, teenaged, hippie rock star).

While I hope to feature Tom in more detail soon, please join me in congratulating him!

Recently I gave my first-ever clinic on the subject of “Finale in General Music.” I wondered if anyone would attend. Imagine my surprise when nearly 200 Texas educators did!

In preparing for the clinic, I thought I had everything ready until, dozing the night before, I realized I hadn’t included anything about the Kodály Method.

As I typed the letters “K-O-D-A-L-Y” into Google, hoping to see an example of some Kodály notation that I could emulate for the clinic, I found something I didn’t expect: Two blogs I’d written earlier about that very topic! (This is scary on so many levels—where do I begin…)

General Music is fascinating to me because, on the surface, it can seem almost simplistic. Looking deeper, however, one realizes that the notation needs of the General Music Teacher are often complex. For example, a measure with a whole note usually looks like the example on the left, while the General Music teacher may require a centered whole note: 

Similarly I’d usually beam a measure of eighth notes as seen on the left. In a General Music class, a teacher might need to beam things differently or sometimes flip stems:

My point is simply to illustrate that General Music educators often have very different notational needs, all of which Finale can provide. Add in AlphaNotes™ and support for Boomwhackers and Solfège, and it’s clear that Finale offers the General Music teacher a huge array of specialized tools.

While all of these tools were very well-received in my clinic, Finale’s worksheets may have gotten the biggest response. Having editable, ready-made content that creates a limitless supply of ideas seems irresistible to General Music educators.

Have questions about using any of these tools in your classroom? Have tips you’d be willing to share? Please let me know by clicking on “Comments” below.

This is the Finale 2012 screen where you have to configure a MIDI keyboard. Oh that’s right, now you don’t have to!

In my role as a Finale Product Specialist, I travel the world demonstrating Finale. While I usually have my trusty laptop with me wherever I go, almost everything else can change. When I’m on a huge stage at an international trade show I might have the luxury of using a weighted-action, 88-key MIDI keyboard; if I’m in a school meeting room, a two-octave portable MIDI controller might be a better fit. 

One of the first things I do in preparing for any show is to hook up my hardware and configure Finale to use my current MIDI keyboard. It doesn’t take long, but I have to do it every time I change keyboards, just like anyone who switches between a portable keyboard on the road and a more substantial MIDI device at home or in the studio. But I’ve done that for the last time.

Finale 2012 automatically detects whatever keyboard I’ve plugged in, so I don’t have to configure anything. This is just one benefit among the many advances in Finale 2012, but I think it’s a nice metaphor for Finale as a whole, and an especially apt metaphor for Finale’s evolution.

In a pinch, I could write a score with a pencil and paper. Well, I might struggle with transposing instruments or different clefs, but I could get the notes down on paper, and could imagine what it would sound like. But Finale speeds up the process, creates great-looking pages, plays back, and produces results that can be easily manipulated and shared. 

While all this was true of early versions of Finale, it has since gone through a process of continual evolution. Finale has improved the final results, the ways music can be transformed and shared, and has removed a lot of the busy work. Examples of this can be large, like removing the need to extract parts from your score (Linked Parts now creates and updates my parts automatically) to smaller things, like no longer having to configure MIDI keyboards.

Here’s another example: Today anyone can download the fully functioning Finale 2012 software for FREE (everything but the premium Garritan sounds). This "free trial" is the same exact software you get when you purchase Finale; after 30 days you simply need to authorize it or the ability to save and print will be disabled until you do. Not only does this offer a great way to “try before you buy” it’s also a lifesaver if you ever have to replace or switch computers at the last minute and are away from your install discs.

So I suggest trying Finale 2012 for free. If you’re currently using Finale 2011, I suspect you’ll find the ScoreManager and other improvements as indispensible as I do. If, however, you’re using an older version of Finale, you might be even more amazed at all the stuff you no longer have to do. 

Let me know what you discover by clicking on “Comments” below!

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.

Last year I wrote a blog post about the Band-in-a-Box Auto-Harmonizing feature in Finale. I entered a familiar swing melody and then used the feature to harmonize it into a five-voiced sax section. I also created a brass section part in the same manner.

This week I thought I’d show you how I might quickly add some drums to that demo (or any other piece) using Finale’s Drum Groove plug-in.

To do so, I simply select the measures where I want to add a drum groove (in this case the whole tune) and go to Plug-ins > Scoring and Arranging > Drum Groove:

Here I can pick a style, determine what staff the drum groove will appear in, and how it will appear in that staff. For my example I specified “StraightSwing,” indicated that I wanted to create a new staff at the bottom of the score, and that I wanted slash notation to appear in this new staff.

Upon hitting OK my demo came to life with the addition of a swinging drum part. Done – and in seconds!

But wait, there's more.

In the bottom right corner of the Drum Grove dialog box (seen above) there's a "Note" added to convey how easy it is to add to list of styles found in Drum Groove. To do so, simply place ANY MIDI file in the Drum Groove folder. For example, you might download a MIDI file for a popular tune and place it in this folder (the file name will determine how it appears in the list). When you select this new style, any non-drum instrumentation in the MIDI file is ignored, while the popular tune's drum part is instantly added to your piece.

The only trick is in finding the Drum Groove folder. Here’s where I found them for Finale 2011:

Windows: C:\Program Files\Finale 2011\Plugin Components\Drum Groove
Mac: Macintosh HD\Library\Application Support\Finale 2011\Plugin Components\Drum Groove

Being able to easily expand the list of styles could be leveraged in many ways. You might simply toss anything and everything in there to be used as creative kindling when working on new music, or you could put in grooves or fills that you are likely to reuse in similar (or related projects).

Let us know how you’re using Drum Groove by clicking on “Comments” below.

As I refine a composition, everything is open to experimentation, including the form: I might freely move, add, or delete whole sections. Of course this creates chaos in my rehearsal letters, right? I mean, if you delete the B section it suddenly looks like your score jumps from A to C, right?

Not with Finale. Finale lets me quickly enter rehearsal marks that automatically respond to these types of edits. How quickly? Select the Expression tool, hold down the letter “m,” and click on any measure where you’d like a rehearsal mark to appear. Done.

If this is the first such mark in your score, it will automatically appear as an A. If it’s the second mark it will appear as a B, and so on. If you’ve entered A, B, and C in this manner, and delete the measure containing B, the C marker turns into a B, and you don’t have to think about it.

Of course this is Finale, so if you want something other than letters indicating your rehearsal marks, you can choose from a host of auto-sequencing styles including measure numbers, numbers, and various combinations of letters and numbers. You can also edit all aspects of the mark, including fonts and enclosure shapes, and have these edits impact all current and future marks in your score.

But if you just want it to work, enter your rehearsal marks by clicking on “m,” and then worry about something else – like mowing the lawn.

We haven’t automated that – yet.