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Create a URL Hyperlink in Finale
Did you know you can create Page Text which is a URL hyperlink in Finale? Select the Text Tool, then double click on the page where you want the link text to appear. When you see the flashing cursor, select Hyperlink… from the Text Menu. Enter your Display Text and Link Address in the fields when prompted. To click the link, hold down the option or alt key to open the link in your browser.
Articulation Alternatives for Staggered Bowing in Finale and Sibelius
Bowings are a type of symbol used in music notation to indicate the use of the bow in string parts, which indicate the manner in which a note should be played. Finale and Sibelius share a standard way to create these; they treat bowings as articulations, which are automatically positioned in proximity to the notehead.
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS & PLAYBACK
In Sibelius, you can add alternate key shortcuts to the Default bowing shortcuts. Locate “Keypad (Articulations)” in Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts (called “Menus and Shortcuts” in Sibelius 6). Select Upbow or Downbow from the list, then click the Add button at the right to add an alternate keystroke.
In Finale, you can program a new key shortcut for Upbow or Downbow by selecting the Articulation tool, then typing SHIFT followed by the letter or number you want to use. When the dialog opens, select the articulation you want to assign to your keystroke.
Both programs are pretty smart about playback, and with a decent sound set, you’ll hear a difference between upbow and downbow during playback (the little GM soundset does not have multiple samples or velocity sensitivity for playback.)
ARTICULATIONS
In engraved music for publication, articulations such as staccato, accent-staccato, accent, tenuto, marcatissimo etc., are actually considered to be part of the notehead, and so they appear that way – automatically moving inside the staff to maintain close proximity to the notehead regardless of pitch or stem direction:
By default, Finale and Sibelius both apply the upbow and downbow symbol as a note – attached articulation, centered over the note, and above the staff.
STAGGERED BOWING
Bowings, though, are a special case. First, as mentioned above, rather than becoming ”part of the notehead”, bowing marks always go above the note (except in special divisi situations), and outside of the staff, rather than orbiting the notehead inside the staff like a staccato or accent might.
Additionally, while they appear in proximity to the notehead a high percentage of time, sometimes a single note or phrase needs to be sustained longer than is possible with a single bow. In this case, it is common practice to divorce the bowing symbol from any notehead, and display it independently. The term for this is “Staggered Bowing”. The location of the symbol relative to the barline gives a beat location for the bow change, independent of any specific notehead.
In the following example, note how the first three bowings appear centered over specific notes, but the last one appears to be in the middle of a bar, “staggered”, e.g. not attached to any notehead:
“Free Bowing” is another related technique used by composers. This is a directive which specifies that bowing need not be uniform within the section. This is sometimes indicated with parenthesized bow markings, or with a text directive.
For these cases, it’s not advisable to try to use the standard bowing articulations provided by the notation software. In Sibelius, you’ll find you can’t move the Upbow or Downbow symbols left or right, and if you try to do this in Finale, you can wreak havoc with your note spacing.
Fortunately, both Finale and Sibelius have alternative ways to enter these bowing symbols which are not note attached.
In Finale, Go into the Expression Selection dialog, select Technique Text and then “Create Technique Text”. Choose “Music Font” from the popup menu (which will most likely be Maestro in a standard Finale Default File). Now, up in the main Text Menu, choose “Inserts > Symbol”. Select the Upbow and Downbow symbols from the list. (slots 178 and 179). In the Positioning Tab, set the horizontal positioning to be at “Horizontal Click Position” to allow you freedom to move it anywhere in the bar. Or, cut to the chase and download this file, which has these premade (including the parenthesized variant).
Finale users should also consider using this text expression technique for creating caesurae (breath marks). Dragging a note-attached breath mark articulation to move it can mess up note spacing in the parts.
In Sibelius, all of the Symbols available in the Keypad are also available in the Symbols dialog. The symbols in the dialog don’t have any unique placement attributes associated with them, so you can place them anywhere. Type “Z” to open the Symbols dialog (or “Gallery”, as it is now called in Sibelius 7) and choose your bowing from the list. Once chosen, the cursor will turn blue to indicate that it is “loaded”. Click above the staff where you would like the bowing to appear.
The only thing to be aware of when using these free-floating symbols is that you may find that locations can shift a bit between score and parts in both programs, so you may have to make some minor adjustments. All in all, though, this is a simple, clean way to enter staggered (e.g. horizontally offset) bowings in Finale and Sibelius, which both consider articulations, including bowing marks, to be “note attached”.
~robert
for Laura Cones
Postscript: It’s worth noting that not many standard classical published works available for rental have typeset bowings. When an orchestra rents a piece for performance, advance parts are given to the principal string players to mark their preferred bowings in pencil. These are then given to the music librarian, who pencils these bow markings into each part for the ensemble in advance of rehearsals.
On Location : Number Repeated Measures in Finale & Sibelius
When the same bar of music is repeated over and over, it’s common to indicate the the repeated pattern in subsequent bars using a single bar repeat sign, notated with a single slash with two dots:
However, if there are more than a few of these in a row, it’s pretty easy for the performers to get disoriented without some sort of numerical reference. So, it’s common practice to indicate the current number of the repeated measures by placing a number over every other measure, or every four measures:
In some cases, the numbers appear over every measure.
Sometimes, it’s desirable to number ostinato patterns which remain written out. That is, the one bar repeat sign doesn’t replace the notation, but the iterations of the pattern are numbered above each measure, or every n bars:
Both Finale and Sibelius offer tools to help you number repeated measures for either of these situations.
On Location : Finale & Sibelius Rehearsal Marks
“From the top ?” . . .
Image source : “The Art of Music Engraving and Processing” by Ted Ross
“Thanks for the great rehearsal marks!” isn’t the type of compliment you’ll hear from musicians at a rehearsal. But even if they don’t always tell you, musicians really appreciate it when you make their job easier by providing clear location info in their parts.
Location info helps the musicians stay in sync. Entrance cues in parts are a good example. Different barline types help to define sections. Multi-measure rests that break logically with phrases can be a location aid. Bar numbers are particularly helpful when navigating linear scores. Key changes or tempo changes can also provide location info.
REHEARSAL MARKS
Rehearsal Marks allow the members of a band or orchestra of any size to quickly navigate to a specific point in the score together, in order to master more difficult passages in rehearsal. (It’s also easier for the conductor or bandleader to say “Take it from Letter M” than “Take it from bar 167″). Even after the piece has been mastered, Rehearsal Marks continue to provide location signposts for the players, helping them to stay oriented during performances or additional rehearsals.
Finale and Sibelius allow you to easily change the appearance of Rehearsal Marks to make them stand out in your score and parts.
Font, size and attributes can all be customized.
Both programs dynamically update rehearsal marks if you insert, move or delete them, automating the sequence of Rehearsal Marks correctly regardless of the order in which you enter them.
You can restart the Rehearsal Mark sequence at any point in the score. In Finale, choose Edit Rehearsal Mark Sequence from the Expressions menu. In Sibelius 7, choose the drop down menu for Rehearsal Mark in the Text Tab. In Sibelius 6, choose Rehearsal Mark from the Create Menu.
In both Finale and Sibelius, you can choose whether Rehearsal Marks are displayed as Rehearsal Letters, Rehearsal Numbers, or Bar Numbers.
Rehearsal marks are assigned to key shortcuts, which can be customized. Default shortcuts are “M” in Finale or “CNTRL-R” (windows) or “CMND-R” (mac) in Sibelius.
Both programs allow to you insert a non-sequential rehearsal mark if needed, and to hide measure numbers at the locations of the Rehearsal Marks.
Change Stubborn Text in Finale Quickly, Easily & Globally with Finale Script
In “Finale Text Sized, Placed & Styled – Document Options & the Category Designer“, we looked at how we can set up a Finale document’s overall font choices using the Document Options > Fonts and the Category Designer.
Changes to the Category Designer and Set Default Music Font affect your score in real time; however, some of the text objects in Document Options > Fonts can only be set prior to starting work on your score; problematic if your score is already completed, or you need to update your House Style after the fact.
So, since some of the Document Settings don’t update in real time in Finale, how do we change the font settings for text types such as Lyrics*, Measure Numbers*, Staff Names* and Text Blocks* which we have already entered?
This is where writing a few short lines of Finale Script can help you. Wait! You don’t have to be a computer programmer. It’s really simple, I promise. And it will save you hours of work over time with minimal effort up front.
Finale Text Sized, Placed & Styled – Document Options & the Category Designer
There are two main requirements for managing Text in any notation program. First, we want to be able to define in advance how the musical and text elements will look, so that our score is following the same appearance rules throughout. This is part of what music publishers refer to as a “House Style”. Secondly, we need to be able to “break the rules” easily for special cases (for instance, if the title is to be in an ornate font where text is otherwise a more standard serif or san-serif font.)
For existing scores, knowing how to set up defaults for Text in Finale will also help us quickly locate font, size and attribute information about a particular string of text, and quickly make changes, if needed.
SCORE SETUP
Initially, there are two main locations where we define Text in Finale. The first of these is found in Document Options > Fonts, and is the place where we determine the exact “look” of the music notation itself, as well as the default font, size and font attributes for some other Finale text.
The second “default setup” area for text is Finale’s Category Designer, where we choose the font, size, style and location of all instructional text for the piece associated with staves or systems. These categories include Dynamics, Expressions, Techniques, Tempo and Rehearsal Marks etc. Let’s take a look …
Center Grand Pause (G.P. & other text) in Sibelius – Lines Method
Sometimes, such as when displaying “G.P.” text in an empty bar of score, it is desirable to be able to center the text between the barlines. While Sibelius doesn’t explicitly offer a “center text between barlines” feature when inputting text, the ability to center any string of text attached to a Line makes this “centered in bar” justification possible.
In “Centering Grand Pause (G.P.) text in Sibelius – Symbols Method“, we covered a method of centering Grand Pause (G.P.) text using Symbols.
Sibelius has a “Centered Text” feature built into its Edit Lines dialog. You can immediately see this in action:
One Step Text Multi-Copy Shortcuts in Finale 2012 / 2011
The following Text Expression multi-copy shortcuts for Finale 2012 and Finale 2011 do not work with System / Score text Categories (e.g. Tempo Marks, Tempo Alterations and Rehearsal Marks), however, they can be used with Dynamics, Expressive Text and Technique Text.
Grand Pause ( G.P. ) Text in Sibelius – Symbols Method
Q: I’m trying to figure out a better mousetrap for dealing with Grand Pauses (GP) in Sibelius. When I use tempo text to create a grand pause in the score, it doesn’t center over bar rests in the score or the parts, so it requires a whole lot of tweaking in both places. I’m hoping there is a smarter, less laborious way to deal with this?
A: Good question. There is actually more than one approach we can take to address this question, in the absence of a true Sibelius feature to center text within a bar. In this tutorial, let’s take a look at the Symbols method:
Aleatoric Elements : From Boxed to Out of the Box Notation In Finale
Music that supplies only the pitches while directing the players to improvise the rhythms freely is a common (partly) aleatoric device which gives the composer a desired degree of control over the tonality, while retaining temporal freedom.
The notation is typically indicated by surrounding a series of specific pitches with a square or rectangular box, along with a box extender line to indicate that the pitches are to be improvised on for a specific number of beats or a given number of seconds. The exact duration of the “box” can also be indicated as a text duration (e.g. 00:06″ etc).
In ”Creating Aleatoric / Temporal Boxed Notation in Finale, Part 1” we looked at how to create these semi-aleatoric directives.
Sometimes, the reverse is desired: the rhythm is notated, but the specific pitches are left up to the player. A common convention for this is to show stems of different lengths (without noteheads) to show the relative pitch relationships:
This is quite simple to do in Finale:
Sibelius Word Menus
A useful, but often overlooked feature of Sibelius are Word Menus. Word Menus are built-in lists of useful words: terms, musical symbol text etc, available via contextual menu or keyboard shortcuts when you are entering various types of text.
Sibelius – Create Etude Numbers Using Instrument Changes
Etude numbers in published works commonly appear at the left edge of the first staff of each etude:
Since these occur in the same place as Instrument Names might in a score, (and since serendipitously, instrument names aren’t typically displayed at the left edge of systems in an Etude book), we can use the Instrument Name Text Style in Sibelius combined with Instrument Changes to create a series of Etude numbers. Here’s how: