Playing back selective instruments

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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Jan 05, 2019 6:29 pm

I've got about 20 staves in my score and would like to play it back to check for errors. With that many staves, playback is often a muddle and a wrong note will not necessarily be heard, so I would like to play it back in chunks of different instruments.

I was hoping that using staff sets, only the visible staves would play back, but that appears not to be the case. I know how to selectively mute things in the Score Manager, but this would be cumbersome since I wish to switch back and forth a lot rather than playing through the whole piece before switching (there are something like 3,500 measures). Is there an easier way?


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miker
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Post by miker » Sat Jan 05, 2019 6:54 pm

I use the mixer for that. Easy to solo or mute selectively. Also, I use scroll view/start at leftmost measure to see what I’m doing.

IIRC, someone said the Windows mixer only shows 16 staves, so I don’t know if that would be a problem.
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motet
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Post by motet » Sat Jan 05, 2019 7:05 pm

I haven't used the mixer much, but it would also seem to involve clicking many things to switch between woodwinds and strings, say. Not much different from the Instrument List.

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miker
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Post by miker » Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:26 pm

Well, it works for me. As always with Finale, YMMV!
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zuill
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Post by zuill » Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:50 pm

Studio View has the settings on the left, but you still have to solo/mute manually. However, it stays in place when scrolling, instead of jumping to the top as in Scroll View.

One thing I have done for this kind of thing is to create a linked part with the subset you want. That way, it is just a matter of switching to a different linked part.

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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Jan 06, 2019 3:11 am

Brilliant--thanks!

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Post by mmike » Sun Jan 06, 2019 8:10 am

There are some very useful Lua scripts that I use all the time for this - see here: https://nickmazuk.com/Resources/JWLua
Solo Selected Staves
Mute Selected Staves
Play All Staves
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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Jan 06, 2019 5:09 pm

I'll look at that--thanks. "Solo selected staves" sounds like what I want, though I think Zuill's idea is dandy.

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Post by mmike » Sun Jan 06, 2019 6:27 pm

I also use Zuill's method often, which works very well, but takes a little more work to set up.
These Lua scripts can be used very quickly by just selecting a measure, or several staves (only adjacent, though - with Zuill's method you can create any combination of staves) for a very immediate and easy (I have keyboard shortcuts set up for these scripts) check of playback in any document, without going through the process of creating parts.
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motet
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Post by motet » Sun Jan 06, 2019 7:42 pm

The LUA scripts work well. Play All Staves is superfluous, though. You can instead run "Mute Selected" with nothing selected

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MikeHalloran
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Post by MikeHalloran » Tue Jan 08, 2019 5:10 am

Like MikeR, I use the Mixer.
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mmike
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Post by mmike » Tue Jan 08, 2019 6:48 am

miker wrote:I use the mixer for that. Easy to solo or mute selectively.
IIRC, someone said the Windows mixer only shows 16 staves
Yes, in Windows it's a problem, using more than 16 staves (the OP is working with 20) makes it quite cumbersome. See this thread re the mixer: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17292&p=64934&hilit=mixer#p64934
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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Jan 08, 2019 6:59 pm

To do what I want in mixer would require at least half a dozen clicks every time I wanted to switch. The plug-ins are great.

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Post by mmike » Tue Jan 08, 2019 8:02 pm

motet wrote:The plug-ins are great.
Indeed they are, I use them a lot. I don't know what you might find useful in your workflow, but I very often use a script that mutes any number of selected measures on one or several (adjacent) staves. It's great if you, for instance, just want to mute a few (or many) measures of an instrument group or a solo instrument, but without muting the whole staff, to see what it'll sound like without these instruments.

It's a Finale script and looks like this:

menu item "edit/move-copy layers"
check "move"
check "contents of layer 1 into"
check "contents of layer 2 into"
button "OK"

It requires that you have, in Document Options, unchecked Playback for Layer 2 (or any layer you wish, subject to adapting the script). I hardly ever use layers, so that's no problem for me. The added advantage is also that you will also always see what you have muted, if you have selected a particular other color for that layer. I have it assigned to a Finale shortcut (Alt-M) which runs the script - and also unmutes a selected muted passage when running it again.
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