Finale: Contemporary Music Notation: Help Please

Dear all

I'm starting my experience in Contemporary Music and I crashed with Finale Notation.

Well, I have to write a score for Piano where the left hand accelerates and slows down meanwhile the right hand keep the speed.

Now, I tried to write the related notation in the way is used also in the picture here:

But in finale I was not able to create it. I did similar but not able to add several stem like in the measure above, and there is not gradually faster and gradually slower. I mean: FInale doesn't execute what is written

I'm crashing against this issue. Could you help me please ?

A rule of thumb: just because Finale or Sibelius can't do something, doesn't mean that it can't be done.

Fully agree, that's why I'm asking how to do it.

I mean: I wnat Finale is playing what Im' writing but it doesn't.

I also tried to replicate the picture above. I was able graphically but Finale was playing something else. Thus I decided to knock the door here, to understand if there's some way to "oblige" Finale to execute something like the picture above

I think it should be possible to engrave in finale. You need to let go of the notion that it will be performed in the correct manner. Playback is a cool function but a secondary one. So this ought to be an engraving question only.

Finale is capable of

* alternate noteheads (as in replace the regular with whitespace, or resize from 100% to 0% or 1% (this is how I hide accidentals that are allready there in another layer)),

* re-aligning the stems to indicate the increase and decrease of speed. I think this needs to be done manually

* beam over measure (plug in)

* feathered beaming (plugin as well; EDIT: no there is just the secondary angle tool)

Since your example asks for a combination of the 4 above it might seem a bit hard. But I think when you do the things in the order of the 4 I mentioned above, it should work.

I think it should be possible to engrave in finale. You need to let go of the notion that it will be performed in the correct manner. Playback is a cool function but a secondary one. So this ought to be an engraving question only.

Finale is capable of

* alternate noteheads (as in replace the regular with whitespace, or resize from 100% to 0% or 1% (this is how I hide accidentals that are allready there in another layer)),

* re-aligning the stems to indicate the increase and decrease of speed. I think this needs to be done manually

* beam over measure (plug in)

* feathered beaming (plugin as well; EDIT: no there is just the secondary angle tool)

Since your example asks for a combination of the 4 above it might seem a bit hard. But I think when you do the things in the order of the 4 I mentioned above, it should work.

Thank you jrcramer. Great help.

Yes, about engraving, I was able using finale itself except beam over measure. I'll check it now. I was quite working on these things.

The issue or better the concern was: how Finale can play it? because it plays something else than what I'm writing.

In my experience, Finale often doesn't playback what the notation suggests. That's why I (and several other composers I know) often have to create two different files - one that is correctly notated (but doesn't sound the way it should) and one that Finale plays correctly (but isn't notated the way it should be).

That being said, sometimes you can work around Finale's limitations by hiding extra commands. This method can get over-complicated, though. Perhaps you could set tempo markings for the minimum and maximum speeds of the notes in the left hand, then add an accel. and rit. to smooth out the tempo changes. Then right-click the words and deselect the 'show' command, so that the words will be hidden when you print the score. However, you'll probably have to do some math and input a different, hidden time signature than what is notated (and extra, hidden rests) if you want the overall tempo to stay the same (a tricky process). Alternatively, you could try to hide the barlines and draw them into the score yourself in the right place(s).

There's a thread here that you may find to be useful. Maybe there's an easier way to accomplish what you're looking for, but in the meantime, I hope this helps!

WOW MaqamDjinn ! That's great page (the one you linked). I saved it and I read a long part of it.

I see that: if I want to write something and execute it with Finale, I need to work a lot with """turns around""" but it's definitely possible: or with the 2 scores method, or with the "hidden stuff" method.

Your page gave to me a lot of excellent input. I will need some time and I really want to thank you very much for this help

No problem... glad to help!