Finale Forum

I have a piece written at 160 bpm with a D.S. al Coda. During playback when it jumps back to the Dal Segno, the tempo slows down dramatically until it reaches the Coda, where it returns to the original tempo. I do not have any written tempo changes anywhere in the piece. Can someone help me correct this so my repeat plays back is at the same tempo as the first pass?

Thank you!

clefmaster wrote:… I do not have any written tempo changes anywhere in the piece …

By your words “written tempo changes” I suppose that you mean expressions with playback effect “Tempo”, right?


Three things control the tempo in Finale:

MIDI Tool (= the recorded tempo changes)
Expression Tool (= the expression tempo changes)
Playback Controls

And they work in a hierarchical fashion.

The tempo in the Playback Controls is overridden by an Expression that sets a tempo.
This is overridden by the MIDI Tool, which is at the top of the "Tempo Hierarchy".


From your description of the problem it is my first guess that the culprit is a recorded Tempo Change.

Try this:
Selection Tool.
Select All.
Edit menu > Clear Selected Items…

In the dialog box Clear Selected Items, de-select everything ecept Tempo Changes.


If that does not help, then I would suspect that the culprit is a hidden expression somewhere.
As a test you can use the same dialog box Clear Selected Items to clear all expressions from the document.

Yes, the only tempo that was part of playback was created during the document wizard when I started the score at quarter = 160. I did not write in any tempo expressions into the score or into playback.

I tried your advice and used the selection tool to clear tempo changes and also all expressions, but it did not change the playback. It is still slowing down after the D.S. al Coda returns to the Dal Segno.

Any other suggestions?

Put another Tempo Mark, Quarter = 160 at the DS.
Take it out for Printing, or maybe there's a way to hide it.

Enter a hidden expression at the segno that is set to Tempo - quarter note = 160. That might just jar it into behaving.

N.

Sometimes, despite all these tricks, HP still causes problems. There are HP settings that can cause this. If we have a file to examine, we can usually find the cause.

Zuill

Success!

I put a tempo marking at the Dal Segno and that fixed the problem!

Thank you all so much for your help!