A single hairpin can be both decres. or cresc.

[Hector Pascal]

Hi all,
I just accidentally discovered something that I had not realised before:

Say I want to place a cresc. hairpin, but I notice the active tool is a decres., it matters not one iota, because one can go ahead and form the decresc. and just drag the RH side back over itself and it magically becomes a cresc. Note that, for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be the opposite of this

So this will save me having to mouse all the way over to the tool palette. Finale is (for me) always full of surprises.

Cheers,
Hector.

[Michel R E]

you know what saves even more time?
simply defining a keyboard shortcut for cresc/decresc in the Smartshapes menu.

I use C and D respectively. no need to drag a decresc in the opposite direction to create a crescendo.
Just activate the Smarshapes tool, select the cresc, hairpin icon, then press Shift+ the key you want to assign.
Then do the same with the decresc. hairpin.

when you come to place hairpins, you can easily skip back and forth simply by holding down the C or the D (well, those are MY shortcuts), or even going back and forth adding slurs and hairpins. (a slur is added by holding down S while dragging the mouse. I don't remember if this is default behaviour or if I defined it myself)

[OCTO]

you know what saves even more time?
simply defining a keyboard shortcut for cresc/decresc in the Smartshapes menu.

I use C and D respectively. no need to drag a decresc in the opposite direction to create a crescendo.

This!
And shortcuts to Smart Shape (F4 I use) it is as quick as with pencil.

[N Grossingink]

On Macintosh, the shortcuts are hardwired into the Smart Shape Tool. Comma (<) is cresc.; Period (>) is dim. In the Southern Hemisphere, you need to be standing on your head.

N.

[miker]

There are metatools for all of the smart shapes, on both Mac and Windows. Like OCTO, I use a shortcut key to get into the Smart Shapes, and then, the metatools.

https://usermanuals.finalemusic.com/Fin ... mart_Shape

[motet]

you know what saves even more time?
simply defining a keyboard shortcut for cresc/decresc in the Smartshapes menu.

I assume you mean metatool.

If you're on Windows, the TGTools menu shortcuts can be programmed to take you directly to the Crescendo tool, for example, so you don't have to hold a metatool down while you click-drag.

[zuill]

I use the built-in metatool in the default document, as mentioned before ( < and > ). No sense to complicate things.

Zuill

[motet]

I have F5 = slur, F8 = cresc, and Shift-F8 = dim, available from anywhere. Not very complicated.