Finale Forum

Having used ConcertWare on a Mac Powerbook 520 of the same generation for almost two decennia, I'm now testing NotePad 2011 on a MacBook Pro under OSX 10.7.1 to see if it meets my (humble) needs.
I found out that there are many (not clearly documented) features, that makes the program more versatile than it seems at first sight. Nevertheless, I encounter a problem with entering expressions.
The helpful 'Help'-function promises that 'You can select an expression to put in the score, edit an existing one, or create a new one.' Until now, I've been unable to add expressions like '(poco) rall.' or 'allarg.' otherwise than by creating text boxes. Is there a way to do this properly in NotePad so that the self-created expressions are shown in the expressions dialog box?

In my big jump forward I could consider grading up to e.g. PrintMusic, but I'd like to be quite sure that I'm not overdoing.
Any advice of more experienced users is more than welcome!

Thanking you in advance for every useful remark,

Hubregt Hogerheijde

It's been a while since I have been using NotePad.
Does NotePad have the Expression Tool (icon: mf)?
If it doesn't, then you have found an error in the documentation.
Since NotePad has very limited layout options, it may not be able to neither create nor edit expressions.

The full Finale has buttons for editing and creating expressions.
See the attached screen shot which also shows the so called expression categories which are convenient time savers.
You can edit an expression category - change font, font size, font style, positioning &c. - and all the expressions in the category are updated in one go.

Thank you very much, Peter.
Indeed it must be an error in the documentation: the NotePad Help is mentioning the sidebar showing up in your screen dump, but definitely absent in the dialog I get when using the Expression tool. As I'm primarily interested in printing transposed parts, I could do with entering tempo expressions as text, with no effect on play back. I wonder, however, would PrintMusic enable me to do the things you describe? (Upgrading to a full version of Finale! seems an expensive overkill.)

Hubregt Hogerheijde

Yes, you can create expressions in PrintMusic. However, my recommendation would be to try SongWriter2010. It actually has a few features that PM2011 lacks.

Thank you for your advice and sorry for the delay in my response!