dotted quarter in tempo marking

[mark carlson]

I'm editing an old score of mine again. In including a note as part of the tempo marking, there used to be a keyboard way to enter a dotted quarter note, but now the option is only "insert note". That should be fine, but the dot is not like a normal dot--it's like a period, at the bottom right of the note instead of centered to the right of a note head.

How can I fix this? It's a tiny detail that almost no one will notice, but it just looks wrong to me.

The Finale manual includes a keyboard chart for Maestro, and the first thing says "Notes and Augmentation Dots", but I sure can't find any augmentation dots in the chart. (I'm attaching a screen shot of that. Maybe I am missing something).

Attached is a score with the quarter note followed by a period in the tempo marking.

Finale 14.5 Mac
OS 10.11.6

Thanks for your help!

Mark

[motet]

Pick a dotted note from the Insert Note menu--don't type in a dot yourself.

[Vaughan]

If you create your tempo mark as an expression in the category Tempo Marks, there's a popup for choosing the font for correct elements of the marking. I use Minion Pro for the text and Engraver Text for the metronome marking. Using this method you can type everything normally, including the dot.

[mark carlson]

Pick a dotted note from the Insert Note menu--don't type in a dot yourself.

This is actually what I did, but each time I selected the dotted quarter, it would change the font from Maestro to Engraver, and by the time I got it back to Maestro, the position of the dot had changed, too. Weird, I know.

[mark carlson]

If you create your tempo mark as an expression in the category Tempo Marks, there's a popup for choosing the font for correct elements of the marking. I use Minion Pro for the text and Engraver Text for the metronome marking. Using this method you can type everything normally, including the dot.

Right, that's actually what I did, though I use Times New Roman for the text and Maestro Wide for the metronome marking. And I am using the pulldown for "Insert note", choosing the dotted quarter. Unfortunately, it still comes out with the dot as a period instead of a normal augmentation dot. Very frustrating.

I'll attach my most recent attempt, in hopes that someone will see what I am doing wrong.

Thanks,

Mark

[motet]

From the dialog in the expression designer, you can select the period and use "baseline shift" from the Text menu to raise it. Here's what it looks like with a value of 10.

[motet]

An alternative is to use Alt+0107 instead of a period, but you'll need to add a space in front of it, which may affect "Match playback to metronome marking text".

[mark carlson]

Thank you for your help! I adjusted the baseline, and that worked fine.

[Vaughan]

Why are you doing it this way? Finale has an easy way to make this work properly without any need for baseline shifts or other workarounds. In the Expressions window under Tempo Marks, set the three category fonts the way you want, i.e. Times New Roman for the text, Maestro Wide for the music and something like Engraver Text T for the Number font. This is what you'll get when, after typing in the text, you select the Number font and type q. = 88.

Tempo Expression.png (55.94 KiB) Viewed 10138 times

I've attached your file, as well.

[mark carlson]

Thanks! Maybe it's a built-in issue with using Maestro for the font for the note, because even using your suggested method, I end up with the dot looking like a period.

But when I start a new piece from scratch, I'll use a different font for this, but I didn't want to have to redo everything in the piece, which I think I originally copied in about 2000.

Mark

[Vaughan]

I find it a bit strange that the Maestro font set doesn't include a version of the Engraver Text T. The latter is easy to use, the dot's in the right place, and the note is the right size. In tempo markings made with the Maestro Times font, the note is way too large. If you check good editions of printed music, notes used for metronome markings are never as large as Maestro Times' and the numbers are in the same font as the tempo text.

[motet]

I agree the note is too big.

I've always liked the looks of italic numbers, but I have to admit that doesn't seem to be common practice.

[miker]

I find it interesting to notice how some things bother some people, while others never notice. I would never have thought to examine that dot in such detail; yet, Finale's use of an en dash as a hard hyphen makes me crazy!

[motet]

In the bad old days before Finale had the tempo marks category with its three fonts, I went so far as to make my own "Tempo" font to avoid having to mess with mixing fonts.

[Peter Thomsen]

… In tempo markings made with the Maestro Times font, the note is way too large. If you check good editions of printed music, notes used for metronome markings are never as large as Maestro Times' …

Vaughan,

I suspect that what you meant, is not what you wrote.

[mark carlson]

OK You all convinced me. I'm now using Engraver for the note and the number. Thanks!

[Vaughan]

Actually, what Peter just wrote (and what I should have written) is correct. The ugly tempo markings from older versions of Finale are the result of it's not being able to mix fonts in a single expression (as Motet wrote) and before MM released Maestro Times. You can make good tempo markings using the Maestro font family by making sure that the fonts are defined correctly for each of the three categories (Times for text, Maestro for music and Maestro Times for number). It does mean that you have to redefine the tempo expressions from older Finale files.

[motet]

I still have 2005 and you can mix fonts in a single expression, but I'm not sure I knew that at the time, hence my special Tempo font.