Finale Forum

I'm notating some eighteenth-century music in which the trills are all indicated with a plus sign (+). As far as playback is concerned, is it possibile to get Finale to reproduce a normal trill for the plus sign? I've tried duplicating and then editing the trill symbol in the 'articulation selection' pane, but this does not seem to work in playback.
Florio

Enter the regular trill symbol, then hide it. Does that work for playback?

N.

I'll give that a try, thank you. The problem is that the plus sign actually produces a sort of weak mordent when I use 'Human Playback', even if the 'playback effect' in the 'Articulation Designer' pane is set to 'none'.

Looks like the trill still plays if hidden. HP is independent of the articulation playback settings, looks like. There is a plus sign in the standard articulations that HP ignores, so you could use that.

Thanks motet. The trill still plays even when hidden, but the plus sign plays a type of mordent in HP, and this evidently overrides the trill symbol if the latter is hidden. I could probably insert the plus sign as text, but this would become more time consuming. I'm wondering if there is not a way to turn off HP command for the plus sign.

Try using a plus symbol from another, non-music font. Pick a commonly used font like Hellvetica or Times.

N.

Like I said, the plus sigh articulation in the stock articulations doesn't play back.

HP cues from the character code, so you could look for a symbol in another font that's in a different slot.

So you mean as text ...

No, an articulation can be a character from any font. But you could use an expression; if the placement is defined right, you can easily click it in with a metatool.

Which character is your plus-sign articulation which is playing back as a mordant? What is the character code, in which font?

As far as I can see, the plus sign is Maestro font, Shift + =. I can't see any ASCII code number. On my PC, In the standard Articulation Selection pane it is no. 23.

Florio60 wrote:… I can't see any ASCII code number …

To see a character slot’s code number, use
Text menu > Inserts > Symbol…

In the dialog box Symbol Selection you can see all the characters in the selected font, and when you highlight a character, you can see the character slot’s code number.

Well, it could be no. 43 (U+F02B) or otherwise no. 246 (U+F0F6). They look the same, and it is not clear which one appears in the Articulation Selection pane.

Ah, you must have HP set to Baroque. You can either change to HP = Standard, or else create an expression with that character, which won't play back. You can make it as easy to apply as an articulation, and assign a metatool to it.

Thanks motet. Yes, you're right, I do have HP set to Baroque!! I've not used metatools before; would you be able to talk me through it?

In this example let us say that you need to give the ‘+’ expression a metatool on the letter P key.

To program an expression metatool, switch to the Expression Tool.

Hold down Shift, and hit the letter P key.
Finale will display the Expression Selection.
Select the ‘+’ expression, and click “Assign”.

From now on you can add the ‘+’ expression by holding down the letter P key while dragging across the desired region.
All the entries in the dragged region will get the ‘+’ expression.

By The Way:
You can do the same with the Articulation Tool.

Thank you everyone for your replies. Let's see if I've understood what I should do:

My best bet is to substitute the plus sign that is currently in my score with the standard trill symbol, then hide the trill symbol, and finally reinsert the plus sign (even using a metatool), but setting HP to standard, and not Baroque.

Is there a way to hide all of the trill symbols, or would I have to hide them one by one?

If you set HP to standard, then you can use the built-in plus sign articulation.