Articulations

Noteman says: Multiple articulations can be applied to a single note or rest. Finale automatically stacks articulations based on the order in the Articulation Selection dialog box.

1. Choose the Articulation tool . When an articulation can be assigned, the cursor changes from an arrow to an arrow with a quarter note. Click on, above, or below a note. If you are using voices, click above the staff for Voice 1 and below for Voice 2. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Double-click the desired symbol. The Articulation Selection dialog box closes and the selected articulation appears.

   Many of the items in the Articulation Selection dialog box include a character in the upper right corner of its slot. This indicates that there is a Metatool assigned to the articulation to make entry even quicker. See Articulation Metatools to find a list of predefined Metatools and how to use them.

1. Choose the Simple Entry tool .
2. Select a note and press numpad * or OPTION+A and choose one of these options:
   • Press an articulation Metatool key to add an articulation to the note.
   • Click Select (or press ENTER) to open the Articulation Selection dialog box, where you can choose from a list of articulations.

     Note that the Metatool assignment appears in the upper right corner of each articulation in the Articulation Selection dialog box.

3. Sticky articulations allow you to save time by simultaneously entering both articulations and notes when using the Simple Entry tool. To add a sticky articulation to the caret and mouse cursor, press COMMAND+numpad * or COMMAND+OPTION+SHIFT+A and choose one of these options:
   • Press an articulation Metatool key.
   • Click Select (or press ENTER) to choose an articulation.

   Now, the chosen articulation will appear on all notes entered until the sticky articulation is removed. Press COMMAND+numpad * or COMMAND+OPTION+SHIFT+A again to remove the articulation from the caret and mouse cursor.

1. Choose the Articulation tool .
2. Drag the handleA small square which appears on currently "selectable" elements in the score. Handles allow you to select, edit and adjust musical elements in the score. to move the marking. Select it and press the arrow keys to "nudge” it for fine positioning. To move an articulation to the opposite side of a note, choose Articulation > Direction to select one of the positioning options. To remove the articulation completely, select it and press DELETE.

   If there are multiple articulations stacked together and an articulation is moved or removed, the stack will automatically accommodate for the new positioning.

By default, Finale vertically positions articulations based on settings in the Articulation Designer dialog box. This positioning can be overridden by using the Articulation menu or keyboard shortcuts.

1. Choose the Articulation tool .
2. Click the handleA small square which appears on currently "selectable" elements in the score. Handles allow you to select, edit and adjust musical elements in the score. of the articulation that you would like to move vertically.
3. Choose Articulation > Direction or right-click the handle and choose Direction. The Direction submenu appears.

   You can choose to flip the articulation to the other side of the note, place the articulation above the note, place the articulation below the note, or select to use Finale's automatic settings in the Articulation Designer dialog box.

4. Select one of the options, or use the listed keyboard shortcut, to change the vertical position of the selected articulation.

Most articulations stack on entry (see Articulation Selection dialog box). Use these steps if you would like to unstack an articulation or reorder a single articulation in a stack.

1. Choose the Articulation tool .
2. Click the handleA small square which appears on currently "selectable" elements in the score. Handles allow you to select, edit and adjust musical elements in the score. of the articulation that you would like to reposition.
3. Choose Articulation > Stack > Never or right-click the handle and choose Stack > Never. The stack of articulations adjusts to compensate for the no longer stacking articulation.

   If you would like to change the order of a single articulation stack without affecting the entire document, you can now click and drag the handle of the unstacked articulation to a new position.

Articulations that have been manually adjusted can be reset to adhere to the default positioning settings found in the Articulation Designer dialog box.

1. Choose the Articulation tool .
2. Click the handleA small square which appears on currently "selectable" elements in the score. Handles allow you to select, edit and adjust musical elements in the score. of the articulation that you would like to reposition.

   Select multiple handles to reset a group of articulations.

3. Choose Articulation > Reset to Default Positioning. The articulation moves to its original position.

   This option can also be found by right-clicking the articulation's handle and selecting Reset to Default Positioning from the context menu.

1. Choose the Articulation tool
2. Click and drag over a region of notes. A black outline appears around the selected region.
3. Release the mouse. The Apply Articulation dialog box appears.

   If you have programmed a Metatool for the particular articulation, press the Metatool while drag-enclosing the notes. See Metatools.

4. Click Select. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
5. Double-click the symbol you want. At this point, you can specify a number of other parameters:
   • Select Notes within the Range of Durations to select a range of note values you want affected by the marking—for example, you might want the articulations to appear only on eighth notes and quarter notes; you’d click the eighth note in the upper palette and the quarter note in the lower one.
   • Select Include Notes that Start a Tie to specify whether or not Finale should place the articulation mark on notes beginning a tie.
   • Select Include Notes that Continue or End a Tie to specify whether or not Finale should place the articulation mark on notes ending a tie. For example, an accent mark doesn't mean much on a note at the right end of a tie.
   • Enter values in the Additional Positioning fields to specify an additional amount of horizontal or vertical distance added to or subtracted from the marking’s usual distance from the notehead.
6. Click OK (or press RETURN). Finale places the marking on every selected note in the region.

Use SmartFind and Paint to copy the markings in a selected region to another rhythmically identical region in your document.

1. Choose the Selection tool .
2. Click or drag-enclose any region of music that contains markings to select it. Add additional measures to the selection by SHIFT-clicking. Double-click to select a full measure, and double-click a second time if you want to include all other staves in your selection.

   The selection must occur on a single staff, not spanning multiple staves. Only rhythms and markings in the current layer of the source region are used for the pattern matching and painting process.

3. Choose Edit > SmartFind and Paint > Set SmartFind Source Region. An outline box appears around the selected region. If you selected the wrong region, choose Edit > SmartFind and Paint > Deselect SmartFind Source and try again.
4. Select a target region to paint. If no region is selected, SmartFind assumes you wish to scan the entire document. You may include partial measures in your target region.
5. Choose Edit > SmartFind and Paint > Apply SmartFind and Paint. The SmartFind and Paint dialog box appears.
6. Check the box for the markings you want to copy.

   If you’ve already entered some markings into your document, you may wish to check Delete Target Markings Before Paint. With this box checked, SmartFind erases the markings before painting the new markings, so you get an exact duplicate. Note that checking this option only erases markings checked to paint. For example, if all markings to paint except articulations are checked, SmartFind erases markings in the target but leaves articulations untouched. The checked marking types are deleted regardless of whether the markings appear in the source region.

7. Click Find. SmartFind shows you the first match, if any.

   SmartFind looks for matches in all layers of the target region, regardless of the source layer. It searches the first measure of the top staff selected to the last measure of the top staff in the region, then continues through layers, then down through the rest of the staves. SmartFind looks for a match based on the rhythmic or note durations and therefore considers tied notes. It ignores grace notes, Voice 2 and mirrored notes.

8. Click Paint to apply the markings to the match, or Paint All to apply the markings to all matches, or click Find Next to skip this match. SmartFind copies the select markings from the source region onto the rhythmic match target region. Only the first note of a tied note will receive copied markings.
9. When you’re finished, click Cancel or Close to return to the document. Select Edit > SmartFind and Paint > Deselect SmartFind Source Region to remove the black outline around your selection.

When you place an articulation marking onto a note, Finale automatically centers it and places it a precise distance away from the notehead. Once the marking appears in the score, you’re free to drag it into a new position. The following procedure can be used to move a specific marking into a new position, such as moving breath marks a uniform distance to the right of the notes to which they’re attached.

1. Choose the Selection tool and select the region of music you want to affect. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
2. Choose Utilities > Change> Articulations. The Change Articulation Assignments dialog box appears.
3. If you want Finale to reposition all articulations in the selected region back to the default position, click OK.
4. If you want Finale to reposition only a certain articulation marking, choose Apply To: Selected articulation; click Select, and double-click the symbol you want.

   You can also swap one marking for another throughout the selected region: select All articulations (or Selected articulations), check Change to articulation, and click Select to specify the replacement symbol.

5. You can also specify new positioning information by entering numbers into the H: and V: text boxes. You’re adding distance to either the usual or existing positions of the selected markings, depending on your selection from the pop-up menu. The units are whatever you’ve selected using Finale > Measurement Units.

   For articulations designed to be placed Always Notehead Side, or Always Stem Side, positive numbers move the symbols to the right (H:) and away from the staff (V:); negative numbers move them left and in toward the staff. For articulations designed to be placed Manually, Above Note or Below Note, positive numbers move the symbols to the right (H:) and upward (V:); negative numbers move them down and left. See Articulation Designer dialog box for more detailed explanations of these options.

6. Click OK (or press RETURN). Finale positions every articulation mark in the selected region, according to your specifications.

   To restore the original positions of the markings, eliminating any hand-positioning you’ve done, drag-enclose the desired articulations and press the CLEAR key (laptop users FN+SHIFT+DELETE).

1. Choose the Articulation tool .
2. Press DELETE while drag-enclosing a region. The articulations in the selected region are removed.

You can copy any musical elements—such as articulations—from one passage to another. In this discussion, the source region is the music that contains the articulations, and the target region is the music to which you want to copy them.

1. Choose the Selection tool .
2. From the Edit menu, choose Edit Filter. The Edit Filter dialog box appears.
3. Select Articulations; then click OK (or press RETURN). Finale will copy and paste only articulation markings and leave all other musical elements alone.
4. Select the source region. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
5. Drag the selected region so that it’s superimposed on the beginning of the target region. If the first target measure is offscreen, scroll to it; then, while pressing OPTION and OPTION on either side of the SPACEBAR together, click it. The Paste Multiple dialog box is displayed, where you can specify the number of times you want the articulations copied.

Finale only copies articulations to notes that fall on the same beats as they did in the source measures. The articulations maintain their positions relative to the noteheads.

1. Choose the Articulation tool , and click a note in the score. It makes no difference what note you click; the symbol you’re about to design won’t appear in the score until you want it to. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Click Create. The Articulation Designer dialog box appears. If the symbol you want to create is not a musical symbol in the Maestro font, click Set Font to specify a different font.
3. Next to the Main Symbol display, click Main. The Symbol Selection dialog box appears. Use the scroll bars to view all the musical symbols available in the font.
4. Double-click the marking you want. You return to the Articulation Designer dialog box.

Noteman says: As you read about the following options, remember that all of these placement options have already been established for the basic set of articulation markings included in your Finale package. You can safely skip this entire section, unless you want to learn to edit these settings (or create new articulations of your own.

5. If this marking is supposed to flip "upside down" when the stem direction changes, click the Flipped button and select the flipped character. Some symbols, such as are supposed to appear inverted when below a note. Finale can’t turn a symbol upside down; instead, Maestro and other music fonts contain both the normal and inverted versions of each such symbol. When a note’s stem direction changes, Finale can substitute the appropriate "upside-down" symbol automatically.
6. Choose When placed below a note, use the… > Flipped Symbol. See Finale Libraries for the settings of typical markings.
7. Define the marking for playback, if you wish. Your marking can affect key velocity (i.e., volume—an accent, for example) or timing (a staccato mark, for example).
8. Describe how you want this marking to appear, using the Positioning section.

   How you use these options depends upon the type of music you’re notating, and your own preferences. If you make these settings carefully, you’ll save an immense amount of time when you place articulations into your scores, because Finale’s articulations don’t snap into place on a note—when a note’s stem direction changes, its marking even flips to the other side, and, as in the case of a fermata , even turns upside down automatically.

   • In some jazz and popular music, it’s standard practice to place certain markings consistently above the staff, regardless of stem direction. If that’s the case, choose Above note from the Vertical positioning pop-up menu.
   • In other music, you may decide that a symbol should appear either above or below the note, depending on the note’s stem direction. In that case, choose either Always notehead side or Always stem side from the Vertical position pop-up menu.
   • Click Center horizontally if Finale should center the articulation with the notehead automatically. Check Center over/under stem when stem side if Finale should center the articulation to the stem rather than the notehead when stem side.
   • Click Stack automatically if, when there are multiple articulations present, you want Finale to stack articulations based on the order of the items in the Articulation Selection dialog box.
   • Click Always place outside staff if you want Finale to place this marking as close as possible to a note, but never within the staff. Finale can accommodate either notational convention: With Always place outside staff unchecked, articulations are placed a certain distance from the notehead whether or not they’re inside or outside the staff. With Always place outside staff checked articulations are placed as close as possible to their noteheads without appearing within the staff lines.
   • Click Avoid staff lines if you don’t want Finale to place a symbol so that it falls on a staff line. (Because symbols are different sizes, Finale attempts to place the symbol’s handle so that it doesn’t fall on a staff line. This may mean, however, that the handle of a marking is between lines, but part of the symbol itself crosses a line. In that case, click the Handle Positioning button, and use the H: and V: controls to further adjust the symbol’s positioning within the staff lines.)
   • Click Attach to top note if, when you attach this marking to a chord, you want Finale to measure the marking’s distance from the top note instead of the bottom one.
9. Click OK (or press RETURN). From now on, you may click as sloppily as you wish when attaching this marking to a note; Finale neatly centers it, places it on the correct side of the note, and substitutes an inverted symbol when necessary—if you’ve set the marking up that way. Once you’ve placed an articulation on a note, of course, you’re still free to drag it to a new position.

Human Playback interprets and performs articulations during playback automatically. To hear manual changes to the MIDI playback definition of any articulation you must first set Human Playback to None in the Playback Controls dialog box.

1. Choose the Articulation tool . If you haven’t yet placed the articulation in the score, click any note. When the Articulation Selection dialog box appears, click the desired symbol and click Edit; then skip to step 3.
2. Double-click the handle. The Articulation Designer dialog box appears.
3. To specify how the marking will affect playback, make a selection from the Playback Effect pop-up menu.
   • Choose Change Attack to shift the attack point forward or backward in time—a useful option for producing rolled chord effects.
   • Choose Change Duration to affect the note’s length by changing its release point—to create a staccato mark, for example.
   • Choose Change Key Velocity for accents, stress markings, and marcato markings—symbols that affect a note by striking it with more or less force (generally making it louder or softer).
4. In the Top note value and Bottom note value text boxes, enter the amount of playback effect you want this articulation to have. Of course, it may be easier to click the Values as percentages checkbox, so that the numbers you enter represent percentages of the note’s original value. If you enter 200 into the Top note value text box, the note would be twice as loud as an unaffected note.
   • When Change Attack is selected, the numbers you enter in these text boxes are 1024ths of a quarter note. To create an articulation that strikes a note earlier or later than notated, therefore, enter numeric values large enough to create a noticeable rhythmic difference on playback: 256 (a sixteenth note) and higher, for example. A Change Attack marking makes especially good use of the Top note value and Bottom note value text boxes. These text boxes come into play when you’re attaching an articulation to a chord, because the top and bottom notes can have different values; Finale scales any middle notes proportionately. With this setup, it’s easy to create effects such as rolled chords. For example, you might enter -256 as the Bottom note value, and 0 as the Top note value. Finale would roll the chord from bottom to top, and the top note would land on the beat.
   • If you’re creating a Change Duration marking, the numbers in these text boxes are, once again, 1024ths of a quarter note. Generally, however, you wouldn’t use the Change Duration setting to lengthen or shorten a note’s notated value by a fixed amount. Instead, you’d want an articulation to change a note’s duration by a percentage—a staccato mark should shorten a note’s playback duration by 50%, for example, regardless of whether it’s a quarter note or an eighth note. Therefore, click the Values as percentages checkbox, so that the numbers represent percentages of the note’s written value. You’ll usually want to leave the Bottom note value blank, so that the Top note value affects the entire chord to which it’s attached.
   • If you’ve selected Change Key Velocity, the numbers you enter are MIDI velocity values. These range from –127 to 127, where a negative number will make the affected note softer than unaffected notes, and a positive number will make the affected note louder (0 = no change). If you’re creating an accent mark, for example, you could enter, say, 40 into the Top note value text box; if an affected note has an original MIDI velocity value of 60, it will now play back with a velocity of 100.
5. Click OK (or press RETURN). The changes you’ve just made affect all occurrences of this articulation, even those you’ve already placed into the score.

Most articulations stack on entry (see Articulation Selection dialog box). Use these steps if you would prefer to use a different order when articulations are being stacked in your document.

1. Choose the Articulation tool . Click any note. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Select an articulation and use the Move Down and Move Up buttons to adjust the order of articulations.
3. Click Done. Current articulations in the document are rearranged.

1. Choose the Articulation tool . Click any note. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Click the symbol you want to remove; then click Delete. If the item is being used in the score, the Delete Element dialog box appears. Select whether to replace the articulation with a different articulation, or simply delete all instances from the score, and click OK.
3. Click Cancel to close the Articulation Selection dialog box.

Finale v26 introduced improvements to the default positioning of articulations. This includes stacking and automatic collision avoidance with Smart Shapes and other articulations. When an older file is opened in Finale v26, the Update Articulation Positioning dialog box appears. If you choose not to update articulation positioning when first opening an older file, this can happen at any time by using the Change Articulation Assignments dialog box.

1. Choose the Selection tool .
2. Choose Edit > Select All to highlight all of the measures in the document.
3. Select Utilities > Change > Articulations. The Change Articulation Assignments dialog box appears.
4. Check Make stacking dynamic for stacked articulations and click OK.

   Manual adjustments that were originally made in the document are reset and articulations adhere to updated positioning settings.