11/17/15 : Today, following numerous teasers on the @finaleofficial twitter feed in the last few days, MakeMusic has released an incremental, but significant update to Finale 2014 they have dubbed “2014.5”. Although this is a maintenance update to Finale 2014, the installer leaves your original Finale 2014 application in place, allowing you to have both Finale 2014 and Finale 2014.5 installed at the same time. (You’ll have to redo your Finale workspace preferences and install any 3rd party plugins for this version, but in my opinion, well worth the few minutes this will take.)
Display Instrument Names Differently Between Score & Parts in Finale
There is a visual style preferred by many composers and orchestrators in which instrument group names are shown bracketing two or more staves, with numbers (1., 2. or I., II.) rather than individual instrument names showing for the specific instrument staves:
This is a nice presentation, which clearly shows how the orchestration is organized with a minimum of clutter. The method to create Multi-Stave Groups like the above in Finale, as well as a cool variation for group name display are covered in this post by my colleague Jon Senge.
However, while this works great for the score, it’s quite another thing if you are also creating the parts, because there are no longer unique identifiers for each instrument. When you get to the parts phase, you first have to figure out which staff goes with which instrument, and once you do, you have to manually type in each instrument name in the Linked Parts! Ideally, the instrument names should remain in the template for parts. So, how can we do this?
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Finale Quick Tip : Smart Word Extensions @ Double Barlines
In vocal music, single syllables of text which span several different notes in succession are shown with horizontal lines, called Word Extensions, or Lyric Extensions. The technical name for these vocal phrases is “melisma” or the plural, “melismata”:
Finale has a great productivity feature which automates the drawing of these lyric extensions called Smart Word Extensions.
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Finale : Vertical Placement of Bar Numbers, part 2
Q: When preparing a musical theater orchestration, one of the “parts” I want to extract is actually a Piano/Vocal score, which has the piano staff and all the vocal staves. Copying standards in the musical theater world generally call for bar numbers to be on the top staff for these Piano/Vocal scores, but on the bottom of the staff for orchestra parts. Any thoughts on how you’d approach that particular conundrum in Finale?
A: In Sibelius, because Bar Numbers are individual Text Styles, this is easily achieved by simply making a copy of the Bar Numbers for Parts Text Style and then assigning it a different vertical location than the original (see Bar Number Flexibility for Score & Parts in Finale & Sibelius), where Finale’s design only offers one global position for all parts.
You are absolutely right – for master piano / conductor parts for musical theater, the bar numbers are frequently located above the staff; a different location from the other single line and braced grand staff parts, where the bar numbers are typically below.
Here is an example from the musical “Rent”:
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Finale 2014D Announced
November 3rd, 2014 : MakeMusic today announced a new 2014d update to Finale which includes a half-dozen new features, as well as a handful of bug fixes:
- Meet Gear Fisher, MakeMusic CEO (Gear Fisher, via Finale Blog)
- Finale 2014d and News from MakeMusic – (Finale Blog)
- Announcing Finale 2014d! (Erik Vork, via MakeMusic Forum)
- Finale 2014d and beyond: a discussion with MakeMusic (Sibelius Blog)
Of special note is a new opt-in anonymous usage data feature which will help MakeMusic better track how Finale users are working with the program, so that relevant improvements can be made more frequently and efficiently in the future:
“Improve Finale: By selecting “Yes” below, you allow MakeMusic to automatically collect anonymous information about your hardware configuration and how you use the software. With this information, we will identify usage patterns so that our designers can make informed decisions when creating future versions of Finale.
We will not collect your name, address or any other personally identifiable information, and you will not be contacted in any way. Since we have no visibility into your actual documents, there is no risk that any unpublished or copyrighted material will be accessed.
You can change this setting at any time by choosing “Help Improve Finale” from the Help menu.”
Here is a list of the features and bug fixes:
Finale Quick Tip : Change Measurement Units on the Fly
Finale supports six+ different units of measurement :
- Inches
- Centimeters
- Points
- Picas
- Spaces
- EVPUs (Enigma Virtual Page Units)
While Millimeters aren’t specifically listed as an available unit of measurement in Finale, you can enter mm values when using Centimeters by simply moving the decimal point to the left (25.4 mm = 2.54 cm).
You set the measurement unit from Preferences > Measurement Units in the Finale Menu, but that doesn’t mean you always have to think in those units. Some places in Finale, such as the Document Options and Page Format dialogs, have a handy Units popup menu which apply only within that dialog:
But Finale gives you even greater control. You can enter values in any unit of measurement in any numeric field of any dialog by simply adding the first letter of the unit of measurement after the number.
For example, if you need to “think in inches” for a moment, regardless of the current unit of measurement setting, type in “1.75i” (“i” for inches) and Finale will enter the measurement correctly, and convert the number to the current unit of measurement for you.
On the off chance you should ever need to enter a value in picas this way, the shortcut is “p0” (“p” is reserved for “points”.)
.5i, 6s, 144e, 1.27c, 36p, 3p0 are all the same value, just entered differently
Finale Quick Tip : Fix Frozen Ties in Managed Voices
Sometimes in Finale, particularly in older scores which have been updated , ties on notes in secondary layers can get “frozen”. The ties in both Layers look normal in the score:
..but in Managed Parts (which use Finale’s Voicing feature), these same ties appear upside down:
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