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.

This plugin consolidates a number of previously available single-purpose plugins into one place – the functionality of JW Merge Layers, JW Explode Layers, JW Quick Explode and JW Chord Manager are now integrated into a single master plugin suite.

(The old versions of these plug-ins are now obsolete.)

When you first run the plugin, the dialog shows three Task categories; Layers, Staves and Chord Lines:

Click on the triangle to left of one of the Tasks to get to all of its various available functions:

Here is a rundown of the capabilities within each Task:

Layers

1. Copy – Copies the contents from one source layer to another destination layer.
2. Move – Moves the contents from one source layer to another destination layer. Layer-assigned expression are moved to the destination layer.
3. Swap – Swaps the contents between two layers. Hidden layers can’t be swapped. Layer-assigned expressions are also swapped.
4. Remove – Deletes the contents for the selected layers. Hidden layers are never removed. Layer-assigned expressions are also removed.
5. Merge – Merges note layers with identical durations.
6. Split – Splits notes in Layer 1 to multiple layers.
7. Expression Merge – Transforms identical layer-assigned expressions (if found for all used layers) into one expression for all layers.

Staves

1. Merge – Merges contents from multiple staves to one staff (according to various notation styles).
2. Split – Distributes notes from chords on one staff to multiple staves.
3. From Layers – Distributes layers to individual one-layered staves.
4. To Layers – Merges one-layer staves into one staff with multiple layers.

The “From Layers” task in this group is especially powerful. For instance, if you have a combined Flute 1 & Flute 2 on one staff but in two layers, and you would like these divisi notes to also be distributed to two separate Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2 staves: First, copy both layers from the divisi Flute staff into the Clarinet 1 staff, then select the Clarinet 1 staff and run the “From Layers” task to quickly break out this line into two additional, separate staves for Clarinets.

If the notes in the source staff are in the same layer, use the Split task. Of course, there are tasks to combine the notation from two staves into one as well. For homophonic staves, you can use the “Merge” function, or, if you need stems up / stems down divisi, use the “To Layers” task.

Chord Lines

1. Add – Adds lines of notes to chords or to single notes.
2. Delete – Deletes a note line from chords. At least 2 notes must be available prior to removal.
3. Drop – Drops a specific line one octave down.
4. Keep – Keeps a specific note line while removing the other chord notes.
5. Rotate – Rotates the chord by moving the top/bottom note an octave. A minimum of 2 notes is required for the chord to be rotated.
6. Transpose – Transposes a specific note line or the full chord.
7. Split Unisons – Splits unison intervals into octaves.

Windows | Mac

~robert

Related Posts

• Create a Divisi or Chorded Instrument from Two Separate Staves
• Keep it Together in Finale or Sibelius : Score & Parts in the same file
• Finale Tip : Quickly Delete Duplicate Unison Notes in the Same Layer

 for Chris Bernotas