If you’ve ever opened Finale’s Articulation Designer (Opt.-Click or Alt.-Click on the Articulation tool to open the dialog), you have probably seen the “Playback Effect” settings:
Finale’s Articulation Designer allows the user to select and define a Playback Effect for each Articulation, but did you know that you can define more than one playback effect at the same time for an articulation?
Finale’s flexibility is easy to miss here, because there is a single popup menu which functions simultaneously for three different playback parameters; Change Attack, Change Duration and Change Key Velocity:
For instance, to define playback for the accented staccato articulation, under Playback Effects, Change Duration is set to 50% (top and bottom) and change velocity is set to 125% (top and bottom). Both of these effects playback when an accented staccato is applied to a note. As you change the popup menu, the values associated with that popup menu setting change in the text fields:
This isn’t what you might call typical UI design for a popup menu on Mac or PC, however, it works just fine, as long as you know that the various parameters for each popup setting are brought to the foreground for editing when you select the popup.
If you set values in for two or even three of these playback effects, they will play back their various attributes when the marking is applied to a note.
Great tip, Robert! 15 years using Finale and I thought I had to choose just one!
Thanks for the good words, Jerry!