Piano Sustain Pedal

[craig buhler]

At the end of my piano piece is a two-bar arpeggio followed by a sustained chord with a fermata. I have inserted a two-bar pedal with the old fashioned "PED" + "*" mark, with the newer horizontal line, and with the MIDI procedure. The manual says "human playback must be disabled," but that disables the pedal. If I invoke "Romantic," the pedal engages. However, earlier in the piece, when the left hand is playing a long string of quarter notes, the last beat of each measure becomes an unintended staccato. So I must choose between legato phrasing and no pedal, or pedal and jerky phrasing.

[BuonTempi]

What instrument are you using? Garritan/ARIA?

At the very least, CC64 should trigger the pedal (assuming you're using the 'Notation' bank of instruments, not the "Standard" banks found in some Garritan libraries.)

ButI would have thought that if you've added a Pedal mark, then HP should deal with it.

[motet]

Perhaps you've misunderstood the manual.

A pedal marking involves two separate symbols—one where the pedal is to be depressed, and another where it’s to be released. You can, if you wish, also use a dotted-line bracket. There are two ways to create pedaling indications in Finale. The easiest method is to place them in the score as Smart Shapes using the Custom Line Tool.

If you only want to add pedaling to the playback of your piece (via MIDI), you may prefer to use the MIDI tool. No graphic pedal markings appear in the score, but you’ll hear the pedaling on playback. Human Playback must be set to None to hear sustain indications added with the MIDI tool. See Playback Settings dialog box for details.

The simplest way is to use the Smart Shapes and leave Human Playback on, rather than using the arcane MIDI tool.

Something else must be causing the unwanted staccati. Perhaps you can post a .musx file here and someone can figure it out. Just a few measures exhibiting the problem will suffice.