cautionary accidentals without the plug-in

[lynndavidnewton]

Is the cautionary accidentals plug-in something added in a newer version? I've used Finale for maybe 20 years and don't remember ever seeing this plug-in before.

I've used hundreds of cautionary accidentals in the past, but in music where I decided myself where I need one or don't, e.g. in atonal music. I recall there being a speedy entry key that would put one in for you. (As I recall, it forced it to be parenthesized, which I didn't care for. Actually, my preference is for cue-size cautionary accidentals, but I guess you can't do that in Finale.)

Now I'm working on a more traditional tonal project (a voice and piano song) and was hunting for that speedy entry key when I stumbled across this plug-in. When I tried it, it threw in dozens of reminder accidentals from beginning to end, most of them not even vaguely necessary.

Not what I wanted. Then I found I'm unable to undo or remove all those unnecessary accidentals. So ... two questions:

1) Does anyone know how to back out those changes?

2) Can someone remind me of the old way in speedy entry to add a cautionary accidental? (I'll keep looking on my own.)

Thanks as always to this generously helpful group.

[motet]

Always make a backup copy in case you do something you think better of. Undo should work, also.

The plug-in has been there for decades.

Plugins/Scoring and arranging/Canonic utilities with Clear Frozen Accidentals as below should remove the cautionary accidentals the plug-in made. The Speedy key you want is A for Accidental.

[mmike]

The Speedy key you want is A for Accidental.

Or * on the NumPad

[motet]

The * key (in both Speedy and Simple) will remove a real accidental, and thus one needs to be careful. The Speedy A key will only add or remove cautionary accidentals and is safer.

I don't recommend using smaller, cue-sized accidentals, if that's what you mean. I've never seen that in published music.

The plug-in has some goofy options as it sounds like you've discovered. Also some odd terminology ("Courtesy naturals" for example applies to all cautionaries, not just naturals; "Courtesy accidentals" seems to mean within in the same measure only, which is seldom needed for anyone but novices). Here's what I use, for what it's worth:

[lynndavidnewton]

I'm glad to know that the Cautionary Accidentals plug-in has been there forever. I'm not as much of an expert on some of the finer points as I'd like to be. I should take some time to familiarize myself with more features.

> Always make a backup copy in case you do something you think better of. Undo should work, also.

Yes, I always make progressive backups. Undo would normally work, but I saved the document and closed it in the meantime plus have also done a couple of other things before going back to trying to figure it out.

That sounds like bad procedure, but it's not a big deal in this case. I'd opened the project to make a handful of editing changes that I'd hand-marked on a previous version. That's when I discovered the plug-in and experimented with it but it didn't do what I thought it might. I thought backing out of what I'd done would be something simple.

> Plugins/Scoring and arranging/Canonic utilities with Clear
> Frozen Accidentals as below should remove the cautionary
> accidentals the plug-in made.

I did that exactly as shown and it produced no discernible change. I've kept my previous backup hoping to use it for experimentation if I get an explanation. Meanwhile:

> The Speedy key you want is A for Accidental.
> (Or * on the number pad)

The A works sometimes. The * works all the time, including to toggle off the accidentals inserted as described above that I don't want. (One at a time, but I can live with it.) That'll get me going again. Thanks as always.

[miker]

Maybe I'm completely missing the mark, here, but I insert the courtesy accidentals as I go, in Simple. The P key will toggle the accidental in parentheses, and another tap removes them. That key used to have a third toggle, to not show the accidental. Since they took that option out, I programmed a hot key to remove it. I work with so many scanned scores, I have to look for missing accidentals a lot. Especially when tied over a barline, sometimes the XML misses it.

[motet]

On the Mac in Simple entry, I believe Command+Shift+hyphen will toggle courtesy accidentals on and off without have to go through the unwanted parentheses.

I don't know why the A key would only work sometimes, Lynn. The Canonic utilities work for me, but I have an older version and it wouldn't surprise me if they broke it in later versions and didn't bother to test it. It's happened more than once before.

[lynndavidnewton]

Everyone has provided such good input. I should never have to ask about this again.

The P key with parentheses toggle in simple indent mode is the obvious way to do this. That's how I would work, too. Good grief.

In the case of the project I'm working on, I pulled out an old manuscript (of my own) from about 1982 and was interested in just slam dunking the music into electronic form, with details to be added later. It's an incomplete work, and the original MS is quite difficult to decipher. I thought I'd get what I could in there, leave empty measures for new stuff to be inserted where I'd originally intended it, and just use it in place of my old original manuscript to see if I can make any more meaningful progress on it. Therefore, because I knew that a lot would be changed anyhow, I wasn't fussy about some things. Courtesy accidentals was one of them. So in this case I didn't enter them as I went since I'd forgotten how and guessed I'd add them as needed later.

No more input needed on this topic for my sake. I'm in good shape now. Thanks to all.