Finale Forum

Greetings everyone! I have been having a severe problem and I have scoured the forums for help only for me to finally sign up and ask this myself.

I have multiple instruments that are required to playback an 8th-note swing feel. However, a simple expression mark from the expression tool > tempo alteration doesn't help at all. In fact, it doesn't even give me the playback required unless I manually change the Human Playback Style from standard to jazz. That would be fine if I need the entire piece to be in swing but I need a section or a bar to be in 8th-note straight feel. I am having an extremely difficult time achieving this. Here are some pictures: https://imgur.com/skuwHLE & https://imgur.com/WLJLezc

I could use help, please!

Swing should be independent of HP and works even when HP = none. To turn off swing, use a tempo expression with this playback:

Because of the known bug, the Score List needs to have all the parts checked to get swing (or straight after swing) on all staves in a score. In a part, swing works without the workaround, but not in then score.

Zuill

zuill wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 6:18 pm

Because of the known bug, the Score List needs to have all the parts checked to get swing (or straight after swing) on all staves in a score. In a part, swing works without the workaround, but not in then score.

Zuill

Okay, I fixed half of it. I no longer have to fidget with the HPS and I have it on all staves at the beginning (all instruments), the swing is 100 and everything sounds good. Now, for my measure 19, I want it to be straight 8ths. Can you help me?

To turn off swing, use a tempo expression with this playback:

Again, I can’t imagine why that isn’t already there...

Since the way to turn it off is pretty arcane, it should be!

AbhiBass96 wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:54 pm

zuill wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 04, 2021 6:18 pm

Because of the known bug, the Score List needs to have all the parts checked to get swing (or straight after swing) on all staves in a score. In a part, swing works without the workaround, but not in then score.

Zuill

Okay, I fixed half of it. I no longer have to fidget with the HPS and I have it on all staves at the beginning (all instruments), the swing is 100 and everything sounds good. Now, for my measure 19, I want it to be straight 8ths. Can you help me?

If you would attach the file in question here, I'm sure someone can find the answer very quickly.

Zuill

motet wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:40 am

Since the way to turn it off is pretty arcane, it should be!

It shouldn’t take them twenty minutes to add this as an expression, and send it out as an update. There is no excuse. And I’m not buying the Covid b.s. either, for as many years - decades, even - that this hasn’t been addressed.

When the Handwritten Font is chosen in the Wizard, the Expressions needed are included. That's why I asked to see the file in question. Seeing that could put this to rest pretty quickly.

Zuill

The list of Maestro tempo marks in the category have not changed since at least 2011.

None of the marks that have a metronome value take advantage of "Match playback to metronome marking text" and they really should. I think the marks predate that feature. Seems like it would have been good to switch to that when the feature was introduced.

I notice also that the metric modulation marks have no playback effect, though the absence of the "(no playback effect)" that you see in the others sort of implies that they do. I guess those are rarely used, but I wonder if that's caused confusion.

In the Maestro Font default file, the Swing Expression does have playback set to Swing at 100. There is no Straight Expression, but that takes 5 seconds to create. Once the Score List is set correctly, playback should be fine.

Zuill

I suggested the "straight eighths" solution above, so I'm not sure whether he ignored that or somehow didn't get it to work.

If I were doing this, I think I'd make a separate "Swing" category for swing and straight marks with an all-staves sfaff list, and make those marks playback-only, i.e. no displayed text, and use an additional, normal mark for the text, with no playback effect.

motet wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:46 pm

I suggested the "straight eighths" solution above, so I'm not sure whether he ignored that or somehow didn't get it to work.

If I were doing this, I think I'd make a separate "Swing" category for swing and straight marks with an all-staves sfaff list, and make those marks playback-only, i.e. no displayed text, and use an additional, normal mark for the text, with no playback effect.

Since you are only checking the staves for Parts, and they will show anyway on the top staff only in the score, there's probably not a need for a separate category. Funny that MakeMusic acknowledged the bug years ago but still haven't fixed it. Then again, that is their MO for bugs.

Zuill

Do you mean checking "all staves" for parts affects score playback?

Absolutely. This is a known bug, and I believe MM added a KB article about it, based on my findings (I think it was my discovery). Maybe it was Peter. It was some time back.

Zuill

Funny thing. I just looked in the KB and the first article that shows up is the workaround that is much more cumbersome, involving creating an expression in Misc category, applying them to all staves, and them hiding them. As I recall, that was the first workaround suggested to MM, but the better one is the Score List solution.

Zuill

P.S.: I can't find any documentation that I reported this to MakeMusic, so maybe my recall is fuzzy. Here's a thread from the old MM forum: https://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=5&m=457617

P.P.S.: And an even earlier thread where i suggested applying the hidden expressions to all staves, which is the workaround in the MM KB article: https://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=6&m=374647

Another old thread from 10 years ago: https://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=5&m=336435

Zuill

How the heck did you ever discover the Staff List solution? Seems counter-intuitive!

As I said, I am not sure I was the one who discovered it. I thought I was.

What I recall is that I had discovered that when I was in the linked parts, all the staves would swing. That caused me to guess that the expression needed to be applied to all staves, so my first workaround was the misc. category hidden expressions workaround. Then, I thought maybe applying them manually to the parts in the Score List would accomplish the result needed when in the score.

So, I recall going through this thought process. However, there's always a chance someone else had discovered this and I just picked up on it. 10 years is a long time.

Zuill

Instead of using/creating a Tempo Mark for this it's far easier to create or edit a Technique Text expression. In my case I copied the straight eighth notes tempo marking and moved it to the technique text section. Set playback to swing THEN set the the value to 4 zeros. Once you hit okay, Finale will reset the value to a single zero but playback will be straight.

Understand that I tried doing this with the Tempo Marks and Expressive Text settings and even setting playback as above produced no change in how the file played back. The beauty of my method is that you can choose to only mark certain parts/sections or an entire score.

Questions? Hit me up!

KM

I use Measure Expressions.
No muss, no fuss.