April 27, 200620 yr I was editing a piece today. I saved. Ready for playback? No, it stopped at 57% on the message "Processing Hairpins" and crashes. Then it struck me that I have absolutely no idea what a hairpin is. But seriously, what could cause this to happen? More importantly, how do I fix it? Is there a debug filter or something? It still does this, and till now I still cannot hear it through playback.
April 27, 200620 yr Hairpins are graphic representations of crescendo and decrescendo (< and >). Try turning off Human Playback (I assume you're using Finale) and see if it helps the situation. I'm not sure what else to do about that. I've had a bit of trouble in Finale 2005 playback using hairpins...it's pretty annoying, and I hope it's something they've fixed in 2006...but it's never crashed the program. In general, one of my few dissatisfactions with Finale involves its handling of dynamics and other expressions in playback. If Beethoven had had to use Finale to write his 2nd Symphony, the whole thing would be a solid forte from beginning to end, because all those dynamics he wrote would have been too much of a pain in the arse. I'll never understand as long as I live why it's so difficult to interpret a direction like fp or sfz.
April 27, 200620 yr Hairpins are graphic representations of crescendo and decrescendo (< and >). Try turning off Human Playback (I assume you're using Finale) and see if it helps the situation. I'm not sure what else to do about that. I've had a bit of trouble in Finale 2005 playback using hairpins...it's pretty annoying, and I hope it's something they've fixed in 2006...but it's never crashed the program. In general, one of my few dissatisfactions with Finale involves its handling of dynamics and other expressions in playback. If Beethoven had had to use Finale to write his 2nd Symphony, the whole thing would be a solid forte from beginning to end, because all those dynamics he wrote would have been too much of a pain in the arse. I'll never understand as long as I live why it's so difficult to interpret a direction like fp or sfz. If you're entering your fp and sfz markings as measure expressions, you might try entering them as note expressions instead. I forget exactly when these were made to work with Human Playback, but I know they worked first as note expressions.
April 27, 200620 yr I was editing a piece today. I saved. Ready for playback? No, it stopped at 57% on the message "Processing Hairpins" and crashes. Then it struck me that I have absolutely no idea what a hairpin is. But seriously, what could cause this to happen? More importantly, how do I fix it? Is there a debug filter or something? It still does this, and till now I still cannot hear it through playback. There have been crashing bugs with Human Playback (which is what you're running into), but they are much less common in 2005 than 2004, and even less common in 2006 than 2005 (I haven't seen one in 2006 yet). If you haven't already done so, you should download the latest update to your version of Finale from MakeMusic's website. You'll have to create an account there to authenticate your registration.
April 28, 200620 yr Author It must have been the errant fp I put in there during that edit then. But I agree, crescendos and the like aren't really emphasized by HP. I've been working with 2005 since.. uh, 2005, and it's strange how it just showed up this time though. Thanks for the help, and I'll Trade-up as soon as I can. (From the demo though, I don't really like the Piano sound in 06; is that what it is like in the real thing or do they use a substitute for demo purposes?)
April 28, 200620 yr It must have been the errant fp I put in there during that edit then. But I agree, crescendos and the like aren't really emphasized by HP. I've been working with 2005 since.. uh, 2005, and it's strange how it just showed up this time though. Thanks for the help, and I'll Trade-up as soon as I can. (From the demo though, I don't really like the Piano sound in 06; is that what it is like in the real thing or do they use a substitute for demo purposes?) You can get to the old piano in 2006 as well (by doing a bank change in the instrument list). But you actually get a much, much better piano with Finale 2006 since it comes with one of the GPO pianos. Unfortunately you don't get to hear that with the demo.
April 28, 200620 yr Author Oh okay. :D The demo sort of turned me off with its murky dull sound, but if you say so then I'll go ahead and upgrade.
April 29, 200620 yr Oh okay. :w00t: The demo sort of turned me off with its murky dull sound, but if you say so then I'll go ahead and upgrade. Make sure your computer meets the system requirements needed to use the Finale GPO. RAM is the key question. For a solo piano piece, 512MB should be fine. But if you're going to be doing orchestral stuff, you'll need more.
May 12, 200620 yr But I agree, crescendos and the like aren't really emphasized by HP. you need to set the level of dynamic range you want for your hairpins in the HumanPlayback settings. Robert P. (the creator of HP) has worked VERY hard to make HP adjustable and flexible. I also know that the next version of HumanPlayback will include some really nice performance options. As long as you set the HP preferences properly, and notate your score in detail (something many people tend to forget to do!!!!!), you will get a great performance out of Finale and HP.
May 12, 200620 yr That's awesome to hear, because I'm already fairly happy with HP - for a computer program, it does pretty well.
