###My Top 10 Finale Tips (in no particular order)

**1. Use Scroll View to enter the music first, then worry about the page layout afterwards.**

Scroll view is a representation of music at it occurs in time: i.e. as a linear flow of information. A good way of working is to enter the music first, then worry about the layout later on. You can then concentrate on different musical elements at different times. It may also make navigating around the score much easier and seemingly more fluid.

Scroll view can also make use of programmable Staff Sets, and hairpins entered in scroll view will automatically be ‘opened’ if they go across a system break in page view.

**2. Entering Hairpins**

When entering hairpins in Scroll View, and the marking goes to the first note in the following bar, stop the hairpin just before the barline.

This will avoid the very annoying tiny hairpins appearing at the start of the staff in page view.

**3. Make use of Finale plugins available via the internet.**

Many of these are free, or are very reasonably priced for the power that they offer. For example, orchestral composers working with optimized staves will find TGTools‘ Staff List Manager absolutely invaluable. Robert Patterson‘s Beam Over Barlines and Mass Copy plugins make life much easier, and his Measure Numbers plugin makes numbering repeated measures a breeze.

**4. Metatools, metatools, metatools.**

If you didn’t do the Finale tutorials, then you may not know about metatools – your new best friends. Metatools are single-keystroke-shortcuts for time signatures, key signatures, articulations, expressions, smart shapes and staff styles. In the Expression Selection box, see the numbers and letters in parentheses? For example, next to the ffff marking, there is a (1). This means that if you select the Expression Tool, hold down the 1 key on your keyboard and click in the score, it will insert a ffff marking. Very quick!

You can programme your own metatools by holding down the option (Mac) or control (PC) key and pressing a key on your computer keyboard. For example, if you wanted to programme 3/4 onto the key 3, then choose the Time Signature tool, press option- or control-3, and enter 3/4 in the appropriate way. Then in your score, wherever you want a 3/4 bar, you can hold down 3 and double click.

**5. Don’t drag expressions or articulations from note to note – delete and re-enter them instead.**

If you have attached an expression or articulation to the incorrect note, then it is tempting just to drag them to the correct note. This should be avoided, as you will find it will yield nothing but immense grief after extracting the parts. Because the spacing changes from time to time, if you drag around these elements they will be in the wrong place when the spacing changes.

It is much, much quicker and much, much, much less frustrating in the longer term if you delete the expression or articulation and then re-enter it attached to the correct note.

**6. Use the EngraverFontText family for tempo indications.**

Finale’s built-in *Create Tempo Marking…* plugin is handy but produces ugly results. It is much more pleasing to create an expression using the EngraverFontText fonts that come with Finale.

EngraverFontTextT creates a marking using the Times font, EngraverFontTextNCS creates a marking using the New Century Schoolbook font, and EngraverFontTextH creates a marking using the Helvetica font. To create a crochet=80, you would enter q=80 into the Text Expression Designer dialog box, and choose the font and font size that you’re after. If you want it to play back, click on “Show Playback Options” and enter the revelant details.

**7. Use the Selection Tool to edit and move musical details.**

Having to shift between tools all the time can be very annoying, particularly when it comes to tasks such as editing hairpins, dynamic markings, articulations, and slurs in extracted parts. The Selection Tool can alleviate much of this annoyance, as this one tool can adjust most elements in the score. It is very easily accessed via a simple keystroke: Apple-Shift-A on the Mac or Control-Shift-A on the PC. Unfortunately it cannot adjust bar numbers at this stage – hopefully Coda will include this functionality in a later version of Finale.

**8. Save your most commonly created settings, expressions and articulations into your default file.**

Every time you open a new file in Finale, it is created through either the Maestro Default File or the Jazz Default File, depending on which font you choose in the New Document Wizard. If you open up this file separately, you can create your most commonly created expressions, articulations, staff styles, custom shapes, document settings etc., and save it. Then when you next create a new document, all of these things will already be loaded – you won’t have to create them again.

**9. Opaque text expressions.**

There may be occasions in a score where you want a text-expression to block out what may be underneath, such as staff lines. To achieve this, when creating the expression, click in the “Enclose Expression” checkbox. In the dialog box that pops up there will be another checkbox marked “Opaque”. Select this, then set a line width of zero.

Unfortunately this method does not block out slurs.

**10. Create Rotated Text through Custom Smart Shapes.**

Sometimes it is desirable to create rotated text in a score. The easiest way to do this is through the Custom Smart Shape tool. In the Smart Shape palette, option-click (Mac) or control-click (PC) on the bottom-most smart shape. The Custom Smart Shape Designer will appear. Click on “Create”.

In the next dialog box, click on “Shape”, and enter a space character. Then further down the dialog box, click on “Center”. You can then enter the text you want to be rotated. It can be any font, size, etc. that you want. Click on the relevant “OK” boxes to get back to your score. Then double-click and drag, and you will find the text entered into your score and whatever angle you please.