Rolled chord symbol, getting the bottom of it right

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mark carlson
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Post by mark carlson » Mon Aug 12, 2019 6:27 pm

One thing I have never been able to figure out is how to get the bottom of the rolled chord symbol to end where I want it to. Part of the problem is that the bottom handle obscures the bottom of the wavy line, so you can't really see where it ends. And the other problem is that it just seems to be inconsistent: I see that rolled chord symbol X ends exactly at the right place (say, with the top of the handle just at the line where the bottom notehead sits), so I do all of the others with that as a guide. Alas, they end up all manner of lengths in relation to the bottom handle. The only way I can see where they actually end is by trial and error and then printing it out, and having to do that for each of the rolled chords wastes a lot of time and paper.

Is there some good way to do this that I (obviously) don't know about?

BTW, it's WAY better than the early days of Finale, when the wavy lines would literally wave back and forth while you were trying to adjust them. What a pain that was!

Thanks,

Mark

Finale 26.1
OS 10.14.5


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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:03 pm

I recently had to do a lot of these and investigated things. With the settings below, if you press the metatool and click on the bottom note of the chord, the top of the symbol is correctly placed (go figure). You then only may need to raise or lower the bottom a bit. It's true that the bottom handle obscures the line, but the handle itself defines approximately the bottom of the symbol. It's a little bit funky because the symbol is actually made up of repetitions of a single squiggle, but you get used to it. You can use the arrow keys rather then the mouse.

This saved me a lot of work.

(I ended up making two more of these with different horizontal offsets for use if there are accidentals present, which for the most part saved me having to move them horizontally.)

mark carlson
Posts: 527
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 2:04 am
Finale Version: Finale 27
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Post by mark carlson » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:12 pm

motet wrote:I recently had to do a lot of these and investigated things. With the settings below, if you press the metatool and click on the bottom note of the chord, the top of the symbol is correctly placed (go figure). You then only may need to raise or lower the bottom a bit. It's true that the bottom handle obscures the line, but the handle itself defines approximately the bottom of the symbol. It's a little bit funky because the symbol is actually made up of repetitions of a single squiggle, but you get used to it. You can use the arrow keys rather then the mouse.

This saved me a lot of work.

(I ended up making two more of these with different horizontal offsets for use if there are accidentals present, which for the most part saved me having to move them horizontally.)
Thank you, motet!

This looks great. Have you figured out if the bottom, top, or middle of the bottom handle defines approximately the bottom of the squiggly line? That seems inconsistent to me, but I hope to be wrong about it.

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:28 pm

It is inconsistent because as I said the shape is made of discrete squiggles and the whole arpeggio has to be a multiple of the distance between staff lines (if you drag the bottom handle to the side you can see this). So you can nudge the handle up or down and the shape won't change until you've moved a certain amount, at which point it will jump. I don't worry too much about the position of the bottom, just that it's at the bottom of the lowest notehead or a bit lower.
Last edited by motet on Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Anders Hedelin
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:35 pm

motet wrote: With the settings below, if you press the metatool and click on the bottom note of the chord, the top of the symbol is correctly placed (go figure).
[The figure above.]
Which measurement units were you using?
Last edited by Anders Hedelin on Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Finale 26.3, 27.4.1
Windows 10

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:38 pm

You might want to make sure you've specified transparent handles in Preferences/View. I use a size of 8 (EVPUs?).
Last edited by motet on Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:38 pm

Anders Hedelin wrote:
motet wrote: With the settings below, if you press the metatool and click on the bottom note of the chord, the top of the symbol is correctly placed (go figure).
[The figure above.]
Which measurement units were you using?
EVPUs.

Anders Hedelin
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Post by Anders Hedelin » Mon Aug 12, 2019 8:41 pm

Thanks.
Finale 26.3, 27.4.1
Windows 10

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elbsound
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Post by elbsound » Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:22 pm

The technical problem is the "double squiggle" symbol in Maestro.
If you use a single squiggle symbol instead, you won't have this problem.
This is described, demonstrated and solved here:
https://elbsound.studio/elbsound-music- ... p#arpeggio

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