Staccato marks

The staccato mark (•) is an articulation. For complete instructions on creating and manipulating articulation markings, see Articulations.

To define a custom playback effect for staccato marks

Human Playback interprets and performs staccato marks during playback automatically. However, you can use these instructions to define a specific playback effect. To hear changes to the playback definition of articulations, you must first set Human Playback to None in the Playback Settings dialog box.

  1. Choose the Articulation tool icon and select the staccato mark:
  2. Under Playback Effect, choose Change Duration from the dropdown menu. Select Values Are Percentages. Enter 50 as the Top Note Value; leave the Bottom Note Value blank.

    You’re telling Finale that a note affected by this mark should last only 50% as long as it normally would. You can use any percentage you like instead of 50%—just be sure Values Are Percentages is selected.

  3. Press ENTER to exit the dialog box(es).

To create staccato playback with the MIDI tool

If you want to create a staccato playback effect but you don’t need an actual staccato mark on each of the affected notes, you can use the MIDI tool to achieve the same effect by altering the Start and Stop Times of the notes.

  1. Choose the MIDI tool icon and select the region to be affected.
  2. If you want to edit only particular notes on a single staff, double-click the highlighted area to enter the MIDI tool split-window. Select the specific notes whose durations you want to edit.

    Once in the MIDI tool split-window, you can select entire regions of notes by dragging through the “graph” area of the window. You can also choose specific notes to edit by selecting their handles (in the notation display at the bottom of the window). Select one handle by clicking, additional handles by SHIFT+clicking, a group of handles by drag-enclosing, and additional groups by SHIFT–drag-enclosing.

  3. Choose MIDI tool > Edit Note Durations.
  4. Choose MIDI tool > Percent Alter. The Percent Alteration - Note Durations dialog box appears, letting you specify how much shorter you want each note to be.
  5. Enter 50 (or any other percentage).

    You’re telling Finale how much to shorten each note relative to its notated full value (50% of full value, for example).

  6. Click OK.

    To restore the affected notes to their full values, select the affected measures and press BACKSPACE or use Edit > Clear Selected Items to erase Performance Data.