The Specify Voicing feature in Finale’s Managed Parts can be a powerful timesaver once you come to terms with its quirks and limitations.
Specify Voicing gives you options for splitting a single staff in an orchestral score into multiple parts. For example, you might put two flutes on a single staff for the score, but each player still only receives either the flute 1 or the flute 2 part. In this case, you would typically set up the Flute 1 part to display the “Top Note” of “Selected notes from one or more layers,” and layer 1 in “Measures Containing Multiple Layers.”
Flute 2 would be set to display the bottom note, and layer 2 in multi-layer measures.
With these settings:
- Any time there is a single note in a single layer (with nothing else in other layers), it will display in both parts
- Any time there are two simultaneous notes in a single layer (with nothing else in other layers), it will put the top note in flute 1, and the bottom note in flute 2
- Any time you have any entries in more than one layer, it will put the contents of layer 1 in flute 1, and layer 2 in flute 2
One of the problems that crops up with Specify Voicing is when you want to have some passages where both players are in unison (a2 or tutti), but other passages where only one player is playing. With the above settings, the tutti passages will display correctly, but in order to force a passage into only one part you need to specifically address the other part.
In his post titled “Hide Notes to Create Multi-Rests in Voiced Linked Parts Using a Staff Style” Robert shows how to put rests in, say, layer 2 and then use a Staff Style to have them display as blank notation so that they will be handled correctly when creating multimeasure rests. But while I love Staff Styles as much as the next guy, I do find it challenging juggling too many of them at the same, so I was wondering if there was another way to achieve the same effect…
more >> “Finale: Tricks with “Specify Voicing” in Managed Parts”
