Greetings everyone!
I will be getting Finale within the next two weeks or so but I already have a couple of questions. I'm working on a piano piece and am wondering about two issues:
1) The work is actually several short pieces under one title. Is it difficult to set this up as a single file, but each piece has its own title, key signature, time signature, ending double bar, etc.?
2) One of the pieces is at times notated using beaming across the two staves (as if it were played by a single "hand") and at other times the left and right hands are independent of each other, "normal" piano notation. I'm guessing the trick here is how to tell Finale the difference so that it wont' complain of not enough notes per measure when the hands are "combined". A similar issue is if some notes to be played by one hand are added to one staff while stemmed or beamed to the other staff (to avoid ledger lines) I've seen this often in piano music.
I'm not asking on how to do this, just how much trouble is it to make it happen.
Thanks!
Earl
Two beginning formatting questions
Moderators: Peter Thomsen, miker
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at8ax
- Posts: 153
- Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 6:48 pm
- Finale Version: PC 2014.5, 25
- Operating System: Windows
1) The work is actually several short pieces under one title. Is it difficult to set this up as a single file, but each piece has its own title, key signature, time signature, ending double bar, etc.?
Me, I'd do each piece as a separate file rather than deal with hiding lots of cautionary time sigs and keys sigs (the last measure of piece #1 would warn of the upcoming changes, for example) and having to set up all those measure number groups. Not to mention layout and spacing issues.
2) One of the pieces is at times notated using beaming across the two staves (as if it were played by a single "hand") and at other times the left and right hands are independent of each other, "normal" piano notation. I'm guessing the trick here is how to tell Finale the difference so that it wont' complain of not enough notes per measure when the hands are "combined". A similar issue is if some notes to be played by one hand are added to one staff while stemmed or beamed to the other staff (to avoid ledger lines) I've seen this often in piano music.
If you have "fill empty measures" unchecked, you can do pretty much whatever you want. You're right to assume that cross-staff beaming originates in a single staff. Easy enough to put a "real" (i.e., functional instead of default) rest in the target measure and make it invisible so as not to confuse the program. If there are other notes in the target measure, you'll want to look into stem direction flipping.
And you didn't ask, but besides a general recommendation to work through the tutorials, I especially recommend the chapter on Layers. Trust me, you'll be wanting to know how this works.
Me, I'd do each piece as a separate file rather than deal with hiding lots of cautionary time sigs and keys sigs (the last measure of piece #1 would warn of the upcoming changes, for example) and having to set up all those measure number groups. Not to mention layout and spacing issues.
2) One of the pieces is at times notated using beaming across the two staves (as if it were played by a single "hand") and at other times the left and right hands are independent of each other, "normal" piano notation. I'm guessing the trick here is how to tell Finale the difference so that it wont' complain of not enough notes per measure when the hands are "combined". A similar issue is if some notes to be played by one hand are added to one staff while stemmed or beamed to the other staff (to avoid ledger lines) I've seen this often in piano music.
If you have "fill empty measures" unchecked, you can do pretty much whatever you want. You're right to assume that cross-staff beaming originates in a single staff. Easy enough to put a "real" (i.e., functional instead of default) rest in the target measure and make it invisible so as not to confuse the program. If there are other notes in the target measure, you'll want to look into stem direction flipping.
And you didn't ask, but besides a general recommendation to work through the tutorials, I especially recommend the chapter on Layers. Trust me, you'll be wanting to know how this works.
