If you are a music educator teaching the fundamentals of rhythm, from time to time, you may find the need to count out beat numbers over the notation to help indicate various rhythms for your students.
Sibelius has a useful plugin called “Number Beats” (found in the plugins Text category) which does this automatically, but until recently, I wasn’t aware of a similar plugin for Finale.
The JW Pattern plugin ( mac | windows ) will do the job nicely in more recent versions of Finale:
- Select a region
- Choose JW Pattern
- Drop-down the Sequences category
- Choose the “Numbered Steps” task.
- For “Step Method”, choose Beats in measure”
Finally, you can choose one of Finale’s Text Categories from the Category drop down to control the text style and placement of the resulting text.
The JW Pattern plugin is available free of charge on Jari Williamsson’s Finaletips.nu website.
Thanks to my friend and colleague Gary Gibson for contributing this tip.
~robert