Rebarring music

Finale’s rebarring feature is extremely powerful: almost instantly, it redistributes the notes of your score so that each measure contains the right number of beats. You can re-notate a waltz as a two-step, or vice versa.

In the Time Signature dialog box, the Rebar Music option, when selected, rebars your music automatically whenever you change the time signature. There are only two circumstances, therefore, when you might need to invoke the Rebar Music command manually—when the check box is deselected, or when you insert (or delete) a note from a measure, and you want Finale to make the following notes flow into (or out of) that measure to take up the slack.

Whether you use the Rebar Music check box, or manual rebarring feature, Finale is smart enough to split or combine notes as needed, rebeam the notes, and stop rebarring at points you designate (such as key or time changes); the program will also create measures as necessary. If Finale reaches one of these stopping points but doesn’t have enough notes leftover to fill an entire measure, it will fill this final measure with the appropriate number of rests.

When you rebar partly-filled measures, Finale does not “pad” the measures with rests. For example, if you’re in 4/4 time, and you enter two quarter notes (and no rests) in each of two measures, when you rebar the music, you’ll end up with one measure containing 4 quarter notes. To maintain the positions of the rests, you must actually enter the rests, or you can “pad” the measures with rests using the Fill With Rests command located in the Check Notation submenu of the Utilities menu.

To rebar existing music manually

1. Choose the Selection tool and select the region you want rebarred.
2. Choose Utilities > Rebar > Rebar Options. The Rebar Options dialog box appears.
3. Select how you want your music rebarred, and click OK.
4. Choose Utilities > Rebar > Rebar Music. Finale redistributes the notes, so that each selected measure contains the correct number of beats while respecting your settings in the Rebar Options dialog box.