Copying music
Note. View the Copy, paste, and other functions QuickStart Video for an overview.
Finale offers a great deal of control over
copying, including options for filtering specific elements, methods for
both inserting and pasting (replacing), and the ability to copy across
documents. This section describes methods for copying music in Finale,
and the choices you have when doing so.
For the remainder of this section, “source”
refers to the original selected music, and “target” refers to the destination
for the copied material. Also, unless specified otherwise, "selection"
refers to a region including full or partial measures less than a .
Any tool that allows regional selection can be used to copy music, including
the Selection tool, Staff tool, Measure tool, and others. For more details,
see Selecting Music.
Note. See The Selection tool for a tutorial on general mass-editing techniques, including selecting, copying, transposing, and working with measures.
Whenever you copy music, you will need
to choose whether you want to copy and
paste or copy and insert.
- Copying and pasting allows you to replace
the music in the target region with the music from the source region.
Pasting does not wipe out any measure settings, such as measure-width
information unless a
is pasted (and Measure Settings are selected in the Edit
Filter dialog box). When pasting any region other than a stack, all
note attached items and many measure attached items are replaced.
- Copying and inserting allows you to
introduce new beats or measures into the piece, pushing all existing
music to the right. Inserting a selection nudges all subsequent music
the number of beats of the inserted material on the target staves only.
When inserting any region less than a stack, the inserted beats can overflow
into the next measure requiring the music to be redistributed in all remaining
measures of the piece. This is called Rebarring
music, and Finale applies it automatically when inserting regions
less than a stack. Since stacks are always full measures, all staves,
inserting a stack does not rebar music, but pushes all measures to the
right intact (increasing the length of the score the number of inserted
measures).
After selecting a region of music, use
one of the following methods to copy and paste or copy and insert.
- Copying
and pasting using the clipboard. This
method allows you to easily copy/cut and paste to target regions outside
of the visible area, or paste the same material multiple times. See To copy and paste using
the clipboard.
- Copying
and pasting by dragging. This method
allows you to quickly copy and paste to target regions within the visible
area, and also allows you to copy and paste to target regions outside
of the visible area. See To copy
and paste by dragging.
- Copying
and pasting stacks. This method allows
you to copy and paste any number of items in the Edit Filter dialog box
including measure items like
key signatures, barline styles, and measure widths. See To
copy and paste stacks.
- Copying and inserting using the clipboard.
This method allows you to easily copy/cut and insert to target regions
outside of the visible area, or insert the same material multiple times.
See To copy and insert
using the clipboard.
- Copying
and inserting by dragging. This method
allows you to quickly copy and insert to target regions within the visible
area. See To copy and insert
by dragging.
- Copying and inserting stacks. This method
allows you to insert full measures, all staves, including any number of
items in the Edit Filter dialog box. See To
copy and insert stacks.
When copying across instruments, Finale automatically transposes the music to an octave within the range of the target instrument (or as close as possible). See Copying between instruments of different ranges.
Note: To move measures from one system to another or make
other changes to the measure layout, see Measure
layout.
