Creating directional strummed or arpeggiated chords

[Blacklab88]

I found a post from 2012 about how to do this, but it is so convoluted and tweaky that it's practically useless.
In my piano compositions, I do a lot of faux guitar-strum chords. They change direction often, and sometimes the left hand goes up and the right hand goes down. Is there an easy way to notate this?
If there isn't , there should be.
The pedaling notation in Finale also seems needlessly complicated, since you have to go back into SmartShapes and do 4 steps just to get to one pedal marking. Insane.
Thanks.

[Peter Thomsen]

… In my piano compositions, I do a lot of faux guitar-strum chords. They change direction often, and sometimes the left hand goes up and the right hand goes down. Is there an easy way to notate this? …

You could use a “squiggly” arrow pointing up or down.

I would use the Smart Shape Tool, and create a custom (squiggly) line with an arrowhead.

[N Grossingink]

You can use Metatools (one key shortcuts) to enter the 4 different pedal shapes you want. You can program 1,2,3,4 - A,B,C,D - W,X,Y,Z - etc.

Screen Shot 2019-09-18 at 12.48.52 PM.png

[zuill]

Smart Shapes don't work well for arpeggiated chords for 2 reasons. 1-they don't space as well as articulations. 2-they don't play back with HP.

Creating a stretchable arpeggio for up or down playback is easy with the articulation tool. Because an arrowhead cannot be included in such a setup, I would then just add the arrowheads as a separate articulation. Wingdings 3 has some good choices.

Zuill

[Blacklab88]

Zuill,
Sounds right. Thanks.

[Blacklab88]

And thanks, N!
It looks like I can only program 4 Custom line metatools? I easily use 8 in my piano scores.

[N Grossingink]

You can use all letters (26) and all numbers (10).

[Blacklab88]

Thanks, N. Must have done something wrong, but closed Finale and tried again. Works great.
I'm just going to post these words so other less adept users like me can find this:
Create Smart Shape Custom Line pedaling metatools.