Posted on

Creating a New Score from Transposed Parts in Finale or Sibelius

Q: I’ve got a chart with just the parts and I’m re-constructing a score. I want to enter the notes as they are without going through transposing. Is there a way to just enter the notes onto a transposed score? It seems like there must be an easy way to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks . . .

A:  I’ll walk through the steps for creating a score from an existing set of printed parts in both Finale and Sibelius. You can create a new score from existing transposed parts in either program, but as you’ll see, one notation program has a clear advantage in this particular area.

more >> “Creating a New Score from Transposed Parts in Finale or Sibelius”

Posted on

Chord Symbols by the Numbers in Finale

If you are like me, you may have trouble remembering some of the keystrokes required to enter certain chord symbols into Finale, especially when you start getting into some of the alterations.

For either the Handwritten or Engraved Styles, many chord suffixes are simple to enter, because you can just type in the suffix as you would any string of text, and as you do so, Finale creates the proper chord suffix. For instance, in the Handwritten Style, you can type in “Cmaj7” or “C7(b9)” and you’ll get nice looking chord symbols with the proper vertical alignment both suffixes:

more >> “Chord Symbols by the Numbers in Finale”

Posted on

Finale – Type Harp pedal markings as text into your score

Q: “In Finale, I have notated the starting and ending notes of a gliss which is in C minor. The full version of TGTOOLS has the Harp Pedaling… plugin, but since I’m not displaying enough pitches at this point in the score to outline the C minor tonality, I can’t get the plugin to work. Can I manually type in the harp pedal marking for C minor as text into Finale?”

A: Yes. To indicate the pedal changes at the start of a piece or new section, there are two standard conventions:

more >> “Finale – Type Harp pedal markings as text into your score”

Posted on

Notating Fingered Tremolos in Finale and Sibelius

Fingered tremolo resembles a trill, but often with a larger interval between the fingers. The notation shows the tremolo marking between two notes rather than intersecting stems, or directly under or over a whole note. The convention is to show the full value of each of the notes in the tremolo pair.

Fingered tremolo is very straightforward to create in both Finale and Sibelius:

more >> “Notating Fingered Tremolos in Finale and Sibelius”

Posted on

Locating and Editing the Triangle Symbol for MA7 chords in Finale

In Finale 2012 and several earlier versions, chord suffixes can be created by simply typing them in with the Chord tool.   If every chord suffix library for Finale was the same, you could simply type in a standard keystroke for each suffix.

However, depending on the library that is currently in use for the suffix, this isn’t always the case. For instance, consider the different ways arrangers indicate a major 7th chord: M7, MA7, MAJ7, etc. In Finale, the in order to type in a chord suffix directly, it has to exactly match one of the existing suffixes in the current library.

In addition, some symbols, like the Triangle ∆ (Delta symbol) sometimes used for MA or MA7 chords isn’t an obvious keystroke. Furthermore, some chord fonts, such as the JazzCord font, are designed to display each suffix and any of its alterations using a single font character (e.g. “∆7” isn’t two keystrokes in JazzCord, it is a single character).

To locate, display or edit these suffixes which can’t simply be typed in, and for which you don’t know the shortcut: enter the chord name without the suffix, (e.g. “C”) then right-click to select “Edit Chord Definition”. This will allow you to manually choose the chord suffix.

more >> “Locating and Editing the Triangle Symbol for MA7 chords in Finale”

Posted on

Creating lyric elision slurs more easily in Finale 2012 and earlier

e·li·sion

Elision is defined as the omission of a vowel, consonant, or syllable while pronouncing or writing something, sometimes as a natural shortening, as in “he’s,” sometimes for literary or poetic effect, as in “’tis”.

In vocal music, elision slurs are the curvy ligatures used to connect two lyric syllables under one note. This type of markup is quite common in vocal music in a language other than English:

fin-elision-slur

In Finale, the process to show two elided syllables on the same note should be very straightforward. One could ideally type a specific keystroke to produce the elision (it’s a underscore in Sibelius) and you could type these in on the fly.

In Finale, you use a single keystroke to create the elision character; SHIFT-I. But even in Finale 2012, the process described in the User Manual requires several steps:

more >> “Creating lyric elision slurs more easily in Finale 2012 and earlier”