Finale Forum

I sometimes make arrangements of pieces that have 6 or 7 sharps or flats in the key signature at various places. I would like to globally add cautionaries to all C-flats, F-flats, B-sharps, and E-sharps. Any way to do that? If there are more than one instance of a given pitch in a measure, I would only want it on the first.

Hello Motet!

This is an interesting question! Here’s one idea which may help a little. For a piece in, for example, C flat major, tell Finale to change the key signature to D flat major, but select ‘Hold notes to original pitches’. At least that way all the C’s and F’s will have their cautionary flat and they only appear once in the bar (measure) as they should.

However, brackets need adding to the cautionaries and the original key signature should be re-instated. So I don’t know whether this is of any help!

Someone else might be able to develop this idea.

Andreo Basisto

I'm afraid that sounds dangerous! I wish JW Navigate should search for a pitch. I think I'll try the venerable NoteMover Search and Replace, which will search without necessarily replacing. Alas, you can't escape the tool to add the cautionary when you've found one, but these are rare enough that I think a pencil and paper will do.

I certainly can’t do it, but I’ll bet one of the JW Lua pros could.