Changing chord font non-globally

[oofers]

Hello forum. Long-time user here, and I have often gotten help here by discovering someone else asking my question. This time, I couldn't find anything about this, so I am asking myself.

I want to be able to italicize some chord symbols (root & suffix) in a chart, and leave the others as they normally appear.

I am aware of Document Options->Fonts->Chord, but that of course changes the font globally.

The only workaround I have come up with is to select the region I want the italicized chords to appear, and do Utilities->Change->Chords.

This brings up the Change Chords Assignments Box, and I add a non-zero value to "Capo". The program's default functionality is to italicize capo-ed chords, but I then have to change the root itself in order to transpose back and display what I want. For example, if I want a "G7#9" to be italicized, I can say it's capo-ed at the 2nd fret and that changes it to "F7#9" in the italicized font I want, but so then I must change the chord to "A7#9" to get it to display "G7#9" in italics. [side note: I was hoping that saying it was capo-ed at the 12 fret would eliminate this last step, but if you do that, Finale just ignores it and puts zero back in]

We all know how Finale is-- there almost always is a way to do what you want, but finding it can be a challenge. The above steps work, but are cumbersome and inelegant. Besides, what if a user wanted something besides just italics? Maybe we want some chords in bold, and others not? Or maybe for some crazy reason we want some in Arial and some in New York Times? Surely there's a way to change chord fonts non-globally?

Thanks in advance. I hope it's something simple I am just missing!

[michelp]

You can create your own suffixes (or modify existing ones), and apply italics to the elements you want. But all the roots will remain in the same font style.

[zuill]

I also don't know of an easy way to do it. For an Italic look, the capo workaround is fine. If playback is needed, that doesn't work. For my money, there are 2 workarounds:

1. Playback needed: Hide the chord symbol and replace it with an expression to look as you want.
2. If playback is not needed, then don't enter a chord symbol, and use an expression to look as you want.

Zuill

[oofers]

Thanks zuill for confirming that I am not missing something.

If you (of all people) don't know how to do something, then it probably doesn't exist. I was considering the expression route as well until I found the capo approach. What a pain that would have been -- every different chord would have to be it's own expression.

I am surprised by this one area of inflexibility.

Thanks again.

[zuill]

Maybe Peter Thomsen has an answer. Here's the real expert around here.

In exploring this, I discovered something very cryptic. In the Chord Definition box, in the Chord Symbol slot, I right clicked to see if there were any options. I saw some items there that I have no idea about. Maybe someone here can answer that one. I thought maybe it was for the programmers, and they forgot to get rid of them when they were done.

Zuill

[Peter Thomsen]

Maybe Peter Thomsen has an answer …

Sorry, I have no other ideas than what has already been suggested.

… In exploring this, I discovered something very cryptic. In the Chord Definition box, in the Chord Symbol slot, I right clicked to see if there were any options. I saw some items there that I have no idea about. Maybe someone here can answer that one. I thought maybe it was for the programmers, and they forgot to get rid of them when they were done …

This may be a Windows - Mac difference.

In my own copy of Mac Finale a context-click on any text field (in any dialog box) gives a Mac OS context menu (= not a Finale menu).
This happens in all programs (not just in Finale).

[oofers]

In exploring this, I discovered something very cryptic. In the Chord Definition box, in the Chord Symbol slot, I right clicked to see if there were any options. I saw some items there that I have no idea about. Maybe someone here can answer that one. I thought maybe it was for the programmers, and they forgot to get rid of them when they were done.

Zuill

Wow, that is odd. At least the "unicode control characters" items seem to actually have options (functionality?) associated with them. The real head-scratcher is "Open IME". It appears to do nothing, yet after selecting it, it's spot in the context-menu becomes "Close IME".

One great thing about Finale's online help menu is that, if you search any menu-item term, you'll find what you're looking for. "Open IME" returns nothing. Very strange.

I keep an old version of Finale (2014) installed because I import TIFFs all the time. I can confirm that this behavior exists in that version too.

[HaraldS]

The real head-scratcher is "Open IME". It appears to do nothing, yet after selecting it, it's spot in the context-menu becomes "Close IME".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method. An IME is used mainly for writing non-western languages on a computer keyboard.

One great thing about Finale's online help menu is that, if you search any menu-item term, you'll find what you're looking for. "Open IME" returns nothing. Very strange.

It's a Windows thing, not a Finale thing. If you were writing Chinese, you probably would notice a difference.

[oofers]

An IME is used mainly for writing non-western languages on a computer keyboard.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.