Selecting a single note -- why?

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montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:59 am

Often when I try to select a measure with the Selection Tool, I hit a note, and then only that note gets highlighted, and not the full time-zone of the note, just the note. Despite everything I have learned about Finale -- lots of it here, thank you -- I have never found a use for Selection Tool selecting a single note. What is it good for? Everything seems to freeze up except for unclicking the note, which seems to be what happens when you do anything else.


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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:10 am

I think I know what you mean. I don't think it's good for anything--it seems like a mistake. To select the measure, click between notes or at the very beginning or end, within the staff.

To select a single note, by the way, you need to drag a rectangle around it. Click and hold down the mouse starting outside the staff, and draw the dotted rectangle around just that note. It takes a little practice to know where to start, but it's easily learned.

montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:36 am

Thanks, motet. I think I have all of the other measure & note-grabbing Selection-Tool actions down. This single-note thing happens when I'm in a hurry, say, to copy a measure to the next measure, or transpose it, or other, and I don't look carefully to avoid notes themselves. Maybe I will ask at Finale help to suggest they get rid of it if it doesn't do anything, so it won't be an annoyance. :)

True, selecting the full value of a note or note sequence in a hurry sometimes comes out a 16th or so off. They could color code or something to help here.

Thanks!

mmike
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Post by mmike » Mon Sep 20, 2021 5:58 am

motet wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:10 am
I don't think it's good for anything
It's actually quite useful if you need to transpose only one (or several) notes quickly. I use it quite often. Select the note(s) and use the Transposition Metatool:
6 Down major second
7 Up major second
8 Down octave
9 Up octave
Or - select and right-click for choosing the Transposition dialog box
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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:53 am

montedoro44 wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 12:59 am
… I have never found a use for Selection Tool selecting a single note. What is it good for? …
If I understand you correctly, you are clicking once on a note - right?
And the staff gets highlighted at the note, but only along the stem - right?

Double-clicking a note takes you to the Simple Entry Tool, with the note highlighted (= notehead highlighting, not staff highlighting).

This is quite useful when you need to modify an entry with the Simple Entry Tool.

If you want to double-click a note, and you - by mistake - only click the note once, Finale will highlight the staff at the note stem, rather than highlight the notehead.
This is Finale’s way of telling you that you only clicked the note once.
When the selection only goes along the stem, the note is not selected for editing.

You can double-click the note, for editing with the Simple Entry Tool.

You can drag a selection rectangle of the staff, to select the staff in the area of the note’s duration.
As motet points out, you must begin the dragging outside the staff.
In this case you select the staff, in the area of the note’s duration, rather than you select the note itself.
This means that you can copy not just the note but also everything else in that area, such as expressions, articulations, smart shapes, chord symbols, lyrics, &c.
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:56 pm

It's actually quite useful if you need to transpose only one (or several) notes quickly. I use it quite often. Select the note(s) and use the Transposition Metatool:
6 Down major second
7 Up major second
8 Down octave
9 Up octave
Or - select and right-click for choosing the Transposition dialog box
Absolutely. :) I use it all the time and then some.
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President, The Shawnee Concert Band, Composer/Arranger, retired Music Teacher.

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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:35 pm

mmike wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 5:58 am
motet wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:10 am
I don't think it's good for anything
It's actually quite useful if you need to transpose only one (or several) notes quickly. I use it quite often. Select the note(s) and use the Transposition Metatool:
6 Down major second
7 Up major second
8 Down octave
9 Up octave
Or - select and right-click for choosing the Transposition dialog box
What the O.P. is talking about is not selecting the note in the required way for that to work.

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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:40 pm

I have never found a use for Selection Tool selecting a single note.
Seems pretty plain to me. What am I, we, missing.
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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Sep 20, 2021 3:43 pm

Actually, montedoro44, if you click in the same place again, it looks like it selects the whole measure like you want.

If you meant to double-click and single-clicked by mistake, double-clicking again will select the whole measure rather than take you to the simple entry tool, so instead you must clear the condition by clicking outside the measure.

Given that, I think the single-click behavior is useless. it might as well either select the whole measure or select that note for its full duration as if you had drawn a box around it. That in fact would be useful but I don't see them doing it.

montedoro44
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Post by montedoro44 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:40 pm

Indeed, I see it now -- I had tried double-clicking the note-head before, per the ever-present definition of Selection Tool at the bottom of the screen, but apparently I wasn't fast enough, as nothing happened -- my hand is sometimes a bit unstable. Now it flips to Simple Entry, and I have another useful tool. Thank you all!

As for its practical utility, I wonder -- the alternative, what I am used to, is click Simple Entry followed by CTRL-click the note, which I have done a million times, and so it takes about a second. In Simple Entry, there is a larger target area, so until I improve my aim (or if I CTRL+ the screen), the likelihood of hitting the notehead with Selection Tool isn't as great. This tiny difference gives new meaning to sharpening my Finale skills.

Thanks again for clearing up this little mystery!

edit: actually, I don't mean that nothing happened with a too-slow double-click -- that selects the measure, the same as if I had single-clicked anywhere but a notehead.

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