Dynamic Placement

[dtoub]

So I’m with the folks who feel that Finale should handle dynamic placement correctly, out of the box. I’m not sure why it doesn’t seem to. I’ve never actually invoked the TGTools dynamic positioning plugin or at least never got it to do what I wanted. I’ve either manually tweaked dynamics or more recently, let PL do its thing.

But just to be clear, PL doesn’t mean the user can completely sit back and let it do its thing. You do need to tweak the (extremely complicated and massive) PL settings in some cases. In some use cases, it didn’t get it all right; I had a particular situation that, after discussing with Jan at Elbsound, got rolled into the PL 3 beta, which was appreciated.

Where I luck out is most of my music for years only uses one dynamic level. But my music from decades ago does involve a lot of varied dynamics and other markings. That is where PL really shined, at least in my experience. Here is a score of a work of mine from the early 80’s that I entered into Finale from my handwritten scrawl over my holiday break from work: https://dbtmusic.files.wordpress.com/20 ... bles-3.pdf

The audio, which is all NotePerformer, rocks. But PL did a really good job of dealing with proper positioning of various elements. Now, keep in mind, I really don’t care about notation “standards” and didn’t even know there was such a thing until a few months ago. I just care that my music looks legible and is not confusing. PL does help in that regard.

[motet]

Finale's default dynamic placement is pretty good if you apply with metatools, unless they collide with accents on below-the-staff notes, hence my alternate set. Contrary to what ebiggs says, the alternate set is no trouble at all. I did it about 15 years ago and put it in a template.

That said, I might get PL. I spend a lot of time formatting parts. But I want a fully-functional downloadable demo to make sure I can get the results I want, which he doesn't have yet.

[dtoub]

Good point again re: metatools. I do concur; it works well in terms of placement. I find accidental placement more of an issue when applying to several staves at once.

In terms of Perfect Layout; I had debated for quite some time since I just wasn’t sure it was going to be that useful for me personally, and it is not cheap. Jan does have a sort of demo in the sense that you can send him a score to process and see how it comes out. I made the mistake of using a recent score at that time, and PL made one very minor adjustment. That said, it was very useful with many of my older scores, although I did raise some issues with Jan and he graciously incorporated the fixes into PL. Old Finale scores can pose some challenges but overall can work well with PL.

At the same time, the number of items in its preferences is daunting. Most never need user intervention (indeed, most don’t even have any applicability to my own scores), but some definitely can. Because it relies on Lua rather than Finalescript, it isn’t as fast as it might be, although I find it slow only on my larger scores (some of my works are 1-4+ hours so I’m not too surprised).

So consider taking a Finale file of yours that has a fair number of markings and see if PL makes a difference by sending it to Jan via his website (https://elbsound.studio/perfect-layout/buy.php). It looks like the “personal demo” isn’t available now until after March 13; I suspect Jan might be away until then.

[motet]

I did send him a file at some point.

Having a lot of settings is good--otherwise, the program is making design decisions for you, as someone was saying about Dorico. I would like to demo a full version and play around with those. I'm particular about how things look. I imagine he hasn't found a way to prevent someone from turning the demo into a non-demo without licensing it.

I've managed to set up things in Finale over the years to minimize collisions and such, but it's still a hassle to make parts, which can run to 50 pages apiece (it's opera).

[dtoub]

Agreed. I don’t like some of the decisions it makes. So it is important to tweak its default settings.

[ebiggs1]

Key word in your argument "unless". PL doesn't care about "unless".

[Brent]

I did check out ebiggs score and it appears that PL placed the dynamics perfectly. I tried Motet's suggestion and adjusted the baseline of one of the parts. When I used meta tools after that to insert a dynamic in a section of instruments it, once again, placed some perfectly, some on top of the staff, and some too far below to be useful. Do I need to set that baseline in every part? I assumed that when I adjusted one it would adjust all.

This issue isn't earth shattering for a smaller score, but when editing, say, a concert band score manually positioning all of the dynamics is a laborious chore.

[N Grossingink]

I tried Motet's suggestion and adjusted the baseline of one of the parts.

I think you need to adjust the baseline on the score only - that will fix all of the parts as well.

[motet]

It looks like moving the baseline of the top staff in the score, using the left-most triangle, will fix all staves in both score and parts.

This issue isn't earth shattering for a smaller score, but when editing, say, a concert band score manually positioning all of the dynamics is a laborious chore.

As the risk of setting ebiggs off again, I do 3,000 to 4,000-measure operas with upwards of 15 parts and do very little manual positioning. You just suffered from the baseline somehow getting moved, a very uncommon problem. But if Perfect Layout works for you, go for it!

[elbsound]

Thank you, ebiggs1, for suggesting the Perfect Layout approach here.
This is Jan, the developer of Perfect Layout.

To make it a bit easier to see the differences, here is a PDF comparison of the score before and after using the latest version of Perfect Layout (v3.0121).

Just browse backwards/forwards in your PDF viewer to see the differences.
As ebiggs1 said: it was done "with one click" - using the default settings of Perfect Layout.
The plug-in examines the score style first and adjusts many options automatically.

Perfect Layout not only improves the dynamic baselines and horizontal and vertical placement here.
It also eliminates collisions, optimizes some Finale settings, aligns the tempo mark with the time signature, improves the placement of hairpins and other expressions, aligns the staff systems on page 1 and 2 according to the page margin and more.

BeforeAndAfterPerfectLayoutPDF.zip

(112.87 KiB) Downloaded 38 times

[Brent]

Very cool. Thanks for that!

...Brent

[ebiggs1]

Brent,
I was not going to reply further because of motet's rather rude comment but since Jan opined, I will add one more thing motet's method doesn't do which is the parts. PL also fixes dynamics in your linked parts and does a really nice job of them too. All automatically.

I have no affiliation with Perfect Layout or Jan. I simply report on what I see and how it works for me using Finale. I make the same positive claims with some other plug-ins like the J W Change and J W Polyphony and Patterson. To me these plug-ins are essential for Finale users. MM saw fit to include some JW plug-ins in the latest upgrade, 27.3. but not PL. Why? Who knows, not me for sure, because Finale sorely needs it.

[motet]

My dynamic placement is inherited by the parts.