How do we double note values in a passage?

[BurtGoldstein]

Does anyone know how to double the note values in a section? The directions from Finale tech (if I'm following them correctly!) produce a fantastic unfixable mess in subsequent bars!
See if you can put me out of my misery by watching this video and coming up with a solution!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hh827ov4 ... 46euy&dl=0

[miker]

Burt,

I don't understand. If you want to double the note durations, you have to rebar, or you have too many notes in a measure.

I selected 2 measures of a score I'm working with, which contain eights, dotted quarters, dotted eights, sixteenths, quarters, and half notes: pretty much everything. I went to the Utilities menu > Change... > Note Durations... > went to 200%, Rebar.

No problems. Everything was doubled in two new measures.

[BurtGoldstein]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the quick response.

I learned from your method that there's no need to change time signatures - Finale will create the new bars.

HOWEVER - your method produces the same unfixable errors in subsequent bars in my piece.

If I am doing your method correctly! Here's my attempt:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7r1ftzu5j3q0p ... s.mov?dl=0

Are you sure you are checking subsequent bars after doubling values in earlier bars in a piece?

Thanks,

Burt

[miker]

Yep, no change. It jammed up one measure, but a simple Music Spacing took care of it.

What happens if you work in Scroll View, instead of page view?

[BurtGoldstein]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the tip.

I tried ScrollView but the same unrepairable errors occurred. No Music Spacing commands can fix the horrific problems throughout the piece caused by simply doubling thew note values of one bar!

Finale 27.4.1.146 MacOS 10.14.6

See "BEFORE" and "AFTER" pix.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2br262vf ... p0sem&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6o1xncdt ... q3dp1&dl=0

PS This site still prevents me from attaching a 500k file, complaining it is "too big".

[motet]

It's probably because you're changing time signatures. If you double the note values in a 4/4 bar, it's pushing things into a 7/16 bar down the road. Seems like instead you want the 4/4 bar to turn into a 4/2 bar, 3/4 to 3/2, 7/16 to 7/8, etc.

[Peter Thomsen]

BurtGoldstein,

I took a look at the video in your first post.


What comes to mind:


1) Before you try to double the 3/4 measure, the document is already quite complicated, with tuplets and many different note values.
It may very well be possible that somewhere a measure does not contain the correct number of beats.

You could try some tests (on a backup copy!) - before you try to double anything:

A. a simple test: Utilities menu > Rebar > Rebar Music
If everything is in order, then a Rebar Music should not do any harm.

B. Plug-ins menu > Note, Beam, and Rest Editing > Check Region for Durations…
If everything is in order, then the plug-in should not find any duration errors.


2) In the video you try to select a measure stack by clicking and Shift-clicking.
When you do so, you may not select the entire measure - and that (= not selecting the entire measure) can be the culprit of trouble.
As a matter of fact, I can see in the video that your clicking and Shift-clicking does not select the entire measure stack - since the highlighting does not go up above the measure stack.
To select a measure stack (true Stack Selection), double-click the measure - and note the highlighting above the measure.


3) In the video I can see that you, when doubling the note values, in the dialog box Change Note Durations, do not de-select {Rebar music}.
This, too (= Rebar music selected), can be the culprit of trouble.
Try de-selecting {Rebar music}, and see if that helps.

[BurtGoldstein]

Peter,
Thank you so much for the detailed help!
You were right on A, B and 2).
I fixed the Note Durations problems and tried your #3 - i.e. NOT clicking rebar.

The result is that the 3 quarters in m26 become 3 half notes, and there are too many beats in the bar.
The good news - there is no other damage to subsequent bars as in the previous trials.

1. What can I do about the extra beat - do I need to create new bars in the middle of the piece to accommodate the extra note values caused by doubling m326? If so, how.

2. How do I fix the horrible problems I see when I try Utilities menu > Rebar > Rebar Music?
a. I reverted to a good-appearing version, before the Rebar and copied a test bar into a new blank document. I applied Rebar to that and it was fine!
BUT I lost the 8va sign and the dynamic marking seems to have a different font, so it appeared as an odd character.

I will forever adopt the habit of double clicking to select measure stacks!! Thank you!

Here's what happened when I tried your advice:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8wgodnj2 ... ekf0i&dl=0

[Peter Thomsen]

BurtGoldstein,

I have watched your latest video.

This is an easy one.
I almost dare not say the following - please don’t smack me.


You forgot to change the 3/4 measure to a 3/2 measure (which you did in your first video).

What you see, is that the 3/4 measure now contains to many note values (worth 3/2).
The excessive notes display to the right of the 3/4 - as if they were in the following measure (4/4).

I could be wrong, but my guess is that the following measure (4/4) is unharmed.
You can check the 4/4 measure in Scroll View, by having the 4/4 measure displaying as the leftmost measure in the document window (so that the “overfilled” 3/4 measure is not shown).

If you had changed the time signature to 3/2, before you doubled the note values …

By The Way:
I get the impression that you seldom use Scroll View ?!?
Many users find it easier to
a) enter (finish) the music from Scroll View,
and
b) not use Page View until it is time to work on the layout.

[BurtGoldstein]

Peter,

Thank you - that worked! I smack only my own forehead for not try that permutation of possible settings!
This workaround

However, when I do rebar for the whole piece, even after fixing all bars' durations, I get horrible distortions that are unfixable.

Finale's tech told me that this is "expected" for old Finale files! (Mine was started in F2010).

For over a decade I have complained about the errors in opening old files in new versions, but the mess shown in the attached pic is apparently yet another thing we have to look forward to as our files age.

Since you have proven yourself INDISPENSIBLE in solving my duration-doubling problem, I can't help but ask you:

what are your thoughts about this more systemic and pervasive underlying problem?

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/uj740epo ... dfqgx&dl=0

FYI _ I almost always use BOTH score and scroll views at the same time. Especially when proofreading or altering an old document. In this case, I am reconciling my Digital Performer file with the score, to make sure my recording follows the score. And in the process, fixing or improving the score itself...
In this case, I already had a good layout, and editing in scroll view each part one at a time, I wanted to be sure I wasn't messing up my score page layout...

[Peter Thomsen]

Burt,

The hyperlink in your latest post is a link to a graphic, not to a video - right?

If I understand you correctly, the Finale document that gives you trouble, was created in Finale 2010 - right?

Indeed you can get trouble when opening old Finale documents in a newer Finale version.

However, in this case I suspect that editing the document in Finale 2010 would give you the same mess.
It seems that the trouble is isolated to specific regions, like e. g. the Piano part, Layer 1.
And it seems that the trouble is isolated to the rhythmic values.
I have experienced similar trouble in old Finale documents.
In Other Words:
The culprit may not be a matter of, what Finale version you are using, but rather something in the document (file corruption? who knows? does it matter?)

My thoughts:

1) When you know, in what measures/staves/layers the rhythmic values are corrupted, you could try re-entering those measures.
That step might fix the problems.
But it is time consuming.

2) Rather than re-entering the values manually you could try a more “automatic” solution:

a) Export as MusicXML, import into a fresh, new document.
This way will often solve the problems, and “clean up” the corruption.

b) In case the MusicXML way mentioned in a) does not solve the problem, try with a Music OCR scanning program.
There are things that an OCR program can't know, like e. g.
- that staff lines really are drawn as lines,
- that a notehead is a musical font character.
Unlike the MusicXML way, the Music OCR program will try to interpret the “dots” as music notation.
From the “interpretation” you will get a MusicXML version which you can edit inside the Music OCR program before exporting.
You can expect to spend some editing time with the Music OCR program, correcting reading errors in the MusicXML (as always with OCR).
When you are done, you can import the corrected MusicXML into a Finale document.

[BurtGoldstein]

Hi Peter,

Please disregard (or postphone) my request for you to solve Finale's inability to open all old documents correctly.

Your workaround (not selecting Rebar) is so successful I am going to finish this project by using it.

HOWEVER - What if one tries to double the note values of, say, 5 bars of 3/4 and have 10 bars of 3/4 result?

I tried:
1. Creating 5 blank bars after the 5 bars which will have their note values doubled
2. Changing all whole rests to "real".
3. Doubling the "Beat Durations" of all instruments in the 5 bars [without the dreaded "rebar" selected!]

Then my question is:
A. What is the best way to flow the extra durations into subsequent blank bars?
(1) If I click Speedy Note entry into the first bar with doubled values, and tell it to "keep adding notes to the next bar until all are filled", there are 3 problems:
a. I have to do this separately for each instrument (? is this true?)
b. FInale pushed all subsequent notes in that instrument 5 bars to the right - EVEN THOUGH it has filled the 5 blank bars I gave it with all the notes in the doubled passage
c. Finale detaches all Expressions, even those attached to a note, from the passage following my doubled bars, and leaves them floating 5 bars earlier...

Hopefully my description will spare you the need to see my suffering, which I have made videos of :

Here's me trying to double the values and double the number of bars, and failing to flow extra beats to the right properly:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/veel5wy6 ... t4zt1&dl=0

expressions get detached!:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1tqoijxj ... xt0tz&dl=0

[Peter Thomsen]

Hi Burt,

1) In the video you filled the blank measures with Real Whole Rests.

When you used Speedy Entry to reflow, you had selected the option {Check for Extra Notes}, causing the dialog box
There Are Too Many Beats in This Measure
to appear.

Then, when you selected the option
{Keep moving the extra notes until all measures contain the correct number of beats}
Speedy Entry also moved the Real Whole Rests in the “blank” measures.

Had the measures been truly empty (= containing only Default Whole Rests), then the notes after the blank measures would not have moved “far to the right”.

2) In the violin part the selected region ends with a G♯ tied to the next measure (which is not selected).
It may not be necessary, but just to “play it safe” I would remove that tie, and put the tie back when the {doubling job} has been finished.

3) Anyway, your method seems quite time consuming.
Here is a faster way.
I just tried it, and it worked without problems, at least for me.
Obviously I can not promise that it will work well in your document:

- Select the 5 measures (Stack Selection!)
- Time Signature Tool. Double-click the selected region. The dialog box Time Signature appears.
- Change the Beat Duration to Eighth (so that the time signature becomes 3/8) - this time with Rebar Music selected. Click OK.
Now Finale changes the 5 measures of 3/4 to 10 measures of 3/8 - and the following measures are not affected (at least for me).
- Now, select all the 10 measures of 3/8 (Stack Selection!)
- while still in the Time Signature Tool, double-click the selected region. The dialog box Time Signature appears (again).
- Change the Beat Duration to Quarter (so that the time signature becomes 3/4) - this time with Rebar Music de-selected. Click OK.
- Finally, use the utility to double the rhythmic values in the selected region - with Rebar Music de-selected.

4) Unfortunately expressions are attached to beats, not to notes.
That some “clean-up” of misplaced expressions may be needed, is well known.
But try my method described in 3) - the expressions may not move so much with 3).

[BurtGoldstein]

Peter!

I am so grateful to you! This works like a charm! WIth no side effects in subsequent passages! Fast and easy! Great clear directions from you also helped.

Every few years I have asked Finale about this issue and decided I was too busy, and skipped it.
NOW I can perform this editing trick easily!

For now I will finish the current project before testing your theory that even in 2010 finale my piano parts would freak out if Rebar were applied. I tend to want to get to the bottom of a problem no matter what, but I have grown to wonder if it's not best to focus on what works for the moment.

Thanks again!

Burt