Arbitrary Glitch Hunters International

So, I've been a composer since I was very young, and I've been using Finale programs almost that entire time (except a few months of trying Sibelius). I have collected a rather large list of strange glitches that appear to be unique to a certain file of composition; they do not appear under the same circumstances in any other of my files. I was hoping that perhaps some of you could explain some of these spooky occurrences; otherwise I will just have to assume that Finale is haunted.

1) On a chamber piece I wrote for strings, percussion, and saxophones, there is a section where the cello plays pizzicato. As soon as it goes back to arco in the playback, there is a low, 8-bit sounding rumble produced that does not happen if I mute the cello. I tried re-entering the arco effect, but the rumble persists.

2) I wrote a vocal/guitar song titled "Friend," and the recording is on this site. In the sheet music, I included some glissandos to show where the guitarist should sweep the strings gradually rather than at once. When I press play, the glissandos disappear and in there place, gigantic lower case letter g's invade the score. This is the only composition where this happens, although I've had trouble with glissandos before (they seem to make Finale crash every now and then)

3) On a piece I wrote for a percussion group, my notes randomly changed into strange symbols that appeared to be Greek and Russian letters. I couldn't get them to change back, so I rewrote the piece in a new file, and that was fine. But I kept the original problem file to see if I could ever undo this mysterious mishap. Any guesses?

4) Dynamics won't work in the playback of some of my pieces, usually only in one instrument and only for a section of the piece. Usually when this happens, regardless of what I have notated, the volume reverts to ffff.

5) Also a playback problem, in a large multi-movement orchestral piece I'm composing, whenever I play it back, certain instruments do not sound at all in sections where many instruments play at a time. Is there anything that can be done about this? And is there any way to make the Glockenspiel not sound like a piece of crap?

6) On my friend's computer, studio view is utterly useless, since two gigantic blue triangles cover most of the notation area. You can see notes and dynamics through the triangles, but the staff lines, numbers, accidentals, and most other things are invisible. WAT is going on???

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!! ~Mert

The blue triangles are a known issue with Finale 2007 and earlier - you can read about that problem in the Finale knowledge base here. If you have Finale 2007 (and not an earlier version), there's a free update you can apply that should fix things.