Finale Forum

Komponist wrote:… I've been trying to figure out how to keep all the treble clef fingering above the staff and all the bass clef fingering below the staff …

Are you using the Articulation Tool or the Expression Tool?

Anyway, I would use two sets of fingerings: one set to position above the staff, and another set to position below the staff.

The come-with-Finale fingering articulations are above the note. It helps to edit each of them and check "Always place outside staff." Like Peter says, you can duplicate these and create a parallel set for below the note.

This of course doesn't address stacks of two or more fingerings, very common, which you'd have to drag up manually. Surely someone has solved this satisfactorily by now, and perhaps will comment here.

motet wrote:… This of course doesn't address stacks of two or more fingerings, very common, which you'd have to drag up manually. Surely someone has solved this satisfactorily by now, and perhaps will comment here.

You can use the Shape Designer to create shapes with all the stacks of two or more fingerings (they are not that many).

Then you can use the “stack shapes” as shape articulations, or as shape expressions.

I wonder if there is a font of the stacked numbers.

motet wrote:I wonder if there is a font of the stacked numbers.

http://ansgarkrause.com/fonts/Piano_Fingering.html

Ansgar Krause has been a member of the old Make Music Forum and possibly this here forum, too. His font also seems to solve the requirement of above and below staff placement.

N.

In my experience, positioning piano fingering is too complex a task to be automated because of various spacing issues, and I insert each one manually using hotkeys. Gould's "rule" is only a generalization, as she implies, and in practice, fingering symbols can be found practically anywhere in relation to the staves. And I find stacking three or four finger numbers a non-issue because it is needed so rarely.

But if two more more numbers are stacked, they're always in the same position relative to one another, even if their distance from the note is variable, no?

Thank you all for your suggestions and links. They have been very helpful. Because I am writing and publishing music for beginning piano students, I need to use more fingering than I would otherwise use, including three- and four-note combinations. I've been using the articulation tool and hot keys to put my fingering in, but I like all your suggestions. I'll try setting up both treble and bass staff versions of fingering and creating fingering combinations as shapes first. I'm very interesting in the new fingering font mentioned in the link, but I'd like to try making the software that I've already bought work for me in this. If I do end of buying the new font, I'll post my thoughts about here so that others can consider that solution for themselves.

Speaking as a person with a shop full of tools, I would say never waste time trying to achieve a good result with a less than good tool. Yes, Finale can do a lot of things, but if, for a few dollars, you can get something that will probably do it better, don’t hesitate.

JMNSHO

motet wrote:But if two more more numbers are stacked, they're always in the same position relative to one another, even if their distance from the note is variable, no?

Sometimes stacked numbers represent alternative fingerings with or without lines between, sometimes one is regular type and one is italicized, sometimes slurs have to run between the stacked numbers, sometimes some are in the staff and have to be carefully coordinated with the staff lines etc. GIven the many situations that arise, and the fact that there are too many combinations for keyboard shortcuts, I find it much easier to insert them all manually. And I only use two or more when absolutely necessary, since one is usually sufficient.