Category: Finale

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Finale Note Spacing, Beat Spacing, Beat Groups & Time Signature Spacing

Q: I am using Finale 2011, and I am having a music spacing issue. If I am inputting beamed notes, and add an accidental, the space between that note and the one before it becomes unnecessarily larger, and the beamed notes are no longer evenly spaced.

Unchecking the “Avoid Collision of Notes and Articulations” has no effect on the spacing whatsoever. I have viewed several Finale scores that lead me to believe that even spacing with accidentals is possible, but I am at a loss as to how to accomplish it. Have you any ideas for solving this issue?

A: In addition to the spacing parameter controls found in Document Settings>Music Spacing, Finale has three different types of automated spacing: Note Spacing, Beat Spacing and Time Signature Spacing. Additionally, Finale provides a way to fine tune the spacing between individual note objects.

Let’s take a look…

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Featured Finale Plugin – JW Staff Polyphony

If you are a longtime Finale user, chances are you know who Jari Williamsson is. Jari has maintained the Finaletips.nu site for a number of years and is a prolific Finale plugin author.

One of Jari’s latest offerings is an amazing multi-purpose music notation plug-in for tasks related to exploding music, merging music, working with layers, chord voicings and more called JW Staff Polyphony.

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Lyric Phrasing

I frequently receive vocal scores which have slurring that seems to be at odds with the lyrics themselves:

Essentially, this boils down to too many conflicting symbols being used simultaneously to represent similar instructions. A little historical context might help break down why we seem compelled to use these conflicting instructions for phrasing in vocal music:

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Vertical Spacing of Staves and Systems in Finale

Q: I’m working on an orchestral score in Finale, and I’m having some trouble with the vertical staff spacing. Is there something like the Space Systems evenly tool, but for staves within a system? Finale’s leaving a big margin on the bottom! Thanks!

With orchestral scores, one system very often represents a full page of music, and so in this case, we want to adjust the vertical positioning between the staves themselves, rather than the distance between systems to create the proper look. Fortunately, Finale offers some great tools for this purpose.

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Finale : Using Linked Parts, Finalescript & House Styles for Commercial Parts

Back in 2011, I posted Making Efficient Use of Linked Parts In Finale which outlined a few of the advantages of using Linked Parts in Finale vs. the “old school” method of individual part extraction, or pasting parts into a separate template file.

Recently, a conversation with an industry colleague made me realize that even 6 years after the introduction of Linked Parts in Finale, some of the very best veteran professional music copyists working in LA and elsewhere still are not taking advantage of Finale’s Managed Parts feature.

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Finale : Feathered Beams in Cross-Staff Notation

Feathered Beams in Finale are straightforward to create in a single staff (see this tutorial).

However, creating feathered beams in a grand staff with cross-staff notation is a little more involved, so it seems like an excellent topic.

In this tutorial, we’ll examine several methods for creating cross-staff feathered beaming in Finale. Thanks to Peter Thomsen, Luke Dahn and Zuill for their contributions to this tutorial, and a shout out to Alexander Blank at Indiana University for bringing us all together on the OF NOTE blog!

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