Dealing with Multiple Simultaneous Tempos

[joelgtaylor]

Finale 25.2
MacOS X 10.11 El Capitan

I have a need to enter music that contains multiple simultaneous tempos.
A simple example would be a canon (like Conlan Nancarrow's canons), where each entrance of the theme occurred at a different tempo.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume the music in all parts is in 4/4, but that there are occasional nested tuplets involved.
The 1st entrance is mm= 60, the 2nd is mm= 85, the third is mm= 102.5, the 4th is mm = an irrational number...
Is there a way to keep Finale from flying my notes all over the place when I try to do this?
Is there any way to have Finale automatically place the notes correctly re where they are in the measure?
Is there any way to have Finale attempt an accurate playback?
Any help or suggestion re this would be appreciated.

For what it is worth, I have a Max7 patch that will let me enter and perform such music electronically. But I would like to write some pieces that involve human players as well and am not sure what to do.
I could send the midi from Max to HyperScribe I guess, and then try to fix it up so it makes some kind of sense, or is "proportional notation"...but this is not ideal, the music conceptions are mostly rather simple, and highly rhythmic and metrical.

[motet]

My guess is the only way to achieve that is to record each line separately at the correct tempo, then combine them in an audio editor.

[joelgtaylor]

My guess is the only way to achieve that is to record each line separately at the correct tempo, then combine them in an audio editor.

Yes, that's what I've concluded as far as doing the audio realization goes. That part seems easy enough if you just do all parts completely separately....
But what about producing a composite score? I'm looking to create a composite score that someone can look at while following the audio realization...
Or while conducting a few acoustic players who are part of the work...

[motet]

The few scores I've seen with this sort of thing don't bother the align things vertically, or only occasionally.

[Andreo Basisto]

If it helps, you might have a look at the score I produced in Finale of Evgeni Kostitsyn’s Symphony no 6: www.kostitsyn.org/EvgeniKostitsyn-Symphony6.pdf . This was a complicated polytempo score. It’s laid out for performance but playback wasn’t considered!

Andreo Basisto

[joelgtaylor]

EvgeniKostitsyn-Symphony6.pdf . This was a complicated polytempo score. It’s laid out for performance but playback wasn’t considered!

Andreo, much thanks for this reply. It is encouraging to see this score.
But what I am wondering is if you can tell me what kind of setup steps you took with Finale's preferences and with the template and options for the score before you started doing entry? When I, or another friend of mine who is also a polytempic composer, have tried to do this type of thing, Finale has insisted on rearranging the spacing on the notes and barlines when we try to enter the parts that have different tempos from the 1st part entered. Are there options that can be set so that this does not take place? Constantly having to rearrange the placement of the notes by hand is exhausting. If there was a way of simply entering the notes where they belonged and having them stay there that would be a step in the right direction. Any hints about this would be much appreciated!

Re producing a score which will playback correctly, I'm afraid that at this point it is probably not within Finale's capabilities to do that, though there is nothing technically impossible about producing a program that can do polytempic sequencing.

Thanks again!
Joel G Taylor

[Peter Thomsen]

joelgtaylor,

The general Finale solution to this layout problem is Overlapping Systems.

See the attached example (both as PDF and Finale document).
It is not exactly what you describe, but you get the idea.

By The Way:
A layout of this type is definitely not for “Finale beginners”.

[Andreo Basisto]

Hello again

It’s a while since I completed this score but I do remember it took a long time and tested both me and Finale to our absolute limits! Basically, I used an Excel spreadsheet to plot the location to 3 decimal places for every item that was entered into the score (notes, rests, barlines…). The calculations depended on the metronome speed of each separate polytempo thread and also the visual aspect of the eventual spacing. Entries were made by using Finale’s grids. Each page was taken as one bar (bar lines were also entered manually).

Andreo Basisto

[joelgtaylor]

joelgtaylor,

The general Finale solution to this layout problem is Overlapping Systems.

See the attached example (both as PDF and Finale document).
It is not exactly what you describe, but you get the idea.

By The Way:
A layout of this type is definitely not for “Finale beginners”.[/quote]

Thanks, Peter! I'm a Finale beginner I'm afraid, but an experienced programmer and persistent, so this reply will not go to waste. Just beginning to get the hang of things though, so I'll try to plug away at this patiently for awhile before I pester!

[joelgtaylor]

Hello again

It’s a while since I completed this score but I do remember it took a long time and tested both me and Finale to our absolute limits! Basically, I used an Excel spreadsheet to plot the location to 3 decimal places for every item that was entered into the score (notes, rests, barlines…). The calculations depended on the metronome speed of each separate polytempo thread and also the visual aspect of the eventual spacing. Entries were made by using Finale’s grids. Each page was taken as one bar (bar lines were also entered manually).

Andreo Basisto

Hi Andreo,
This is helpful information. Much thanks to you for this!

Joel G Taylor