Piano reductions

To create a piano reduction for the entire piece

  1. Choose Plug-ins > Scoring and Arranging > Piano Reduction. The Piano Reduction plug-in appears.
  2. Select the staves to be included in the piano reduction and the split point.
  3. Click OK.

To create a piano reduction over a region

Using Finale’s Imploding music feature, you can condense the musical material from several staves onto a single staff—or, in the case of a piano reduction, onto two staves. If the source staves contain several independent rhythms, Finale does its best to sort them out, but you may still have to do some cleaning up afterward. Implode Music works best when the source staves have only one or two independent rhythmic patterns.

  1. Choose the Selection tool icon and select the region to be imploded onto the treble-clef staff of the piano reduction. You can select a region of on-screen measures by SHIFT-clicking or drag-enclosing, or entire staves by SHIFT-clicking to the left of each.
  2. Choose Utilities > Implode Music. The Implode Music dialog box appears, asking whether the resultant reduction should appear on a new staff (at the bottom of the score) or whether the music should be imploded onto the top existing staff (in which case the current contents of that staff will be replaced).
  3. Click OK. If you’ve selected a large amount of music to be imploded, this process may take time. Note that any existing articulations and expressions in the source staves will appear in the resultant staff.
  4. Repeat the procedure for the bass-clef staff of the piano reduction. Don’t forget to change the clef of the bass staff (see Clefs). If the resultant part is a rehearsal piano part that you want to appear at a smaller size, see Reducing/Enlarging.