Two Finale Questions

[Jerry W.]

OK,
Here are two very specific questions about Finale 2007.

I have been really loving this - but there are a couple of things that bother me.

When I am in the middle of writing, and want to hear back, everything plays just fine. But when I stop and then resume writing, the volumes (MOD wheel data) are way low. Is there a setting in HP to reset the modwheel data to the default value after playing has stopped? I have tried having an empty measure in the beginning to do that, but unless I go into the MIDI tool and set the modwheel data for each individual staff in that beginning measure, it doesn't reset.

Also - How does one create expressions that are keyswitches? I see that the technique names and definitions are in the HP preferences, but how to create expressions that trigger those? It is already done with the "pizz" and "arco" expressions. Pizz automatically triggers the correct keyswitch and plays pizz samples, arco triggers the correct KS to play arco again.

How can I do this? Thanks Everyone!!
Jerry

[Nickie Fønshauge]

Jerry, this is going to be a long shot, since I have not upgraded to F07, but if you load the "Technique Expressions with Abbr" library you should get most of the Technique expressions you will ever need. If they are not covered by HP, it is my impression from looking at screenshots of HP, that you can define the behaviour - incl. which KS to trigger - of new expressions here.

[Jerry W.]

Thanks Nickie!!



I loaded that library and there is pretty much everything I will need. (except for half trills and whole trill specifications)
However, when I choose "edit" in the menu, to look at how these expressions might affect playback, they are always set to "none" What gives? They don't affect playback either - or at least not without some sort of definition of what those expressions will be doing.

Even before I loaded that library though, the default library has pizz and arco in it, and those expressions trigger the appropriate KS samples - and yet their playback values are also set to "none."

Just a puzzling thing. I think it is awesome that you can trigger KeySwitches with an expression, rather than having to have an actual KS note in the score to trigger them. But how to create them, or assign them, that is a mystery.

Thanks for your reply - maybe this is one for the Finale forum?

Jerry

[Nickie Fønshauge]

However, when I choose "edit" in the menu, to look at how these expressions might affect playback, they are always set to "none" What gives? They don't affect playback either - or at least not without some sort of definition of what those expressions will be doing.

Even before I loaded that library though, the default library has pizz and arco in it, and those expressions trigger the appropriate KS samples - and yet their playback values are also set to "none."

Just a puzzling thing. I think it is awesome that you can trigger KeySwitches with an expression, rather than having to have an actual KS note in the score to trigger them. But how to create them, or assign them, that is a mystery.

Hi, Jerry

Human Playback maintains a dictionary of known keywords, that are interpreted by HP during playback. You can view the list in the Manual's Appendix under "Human Playback Dictionary". These keywords should have Playback style set to "None", when they are defined as Expressions.

In case HP does not interpret an expression, you will have to define its playback behaviour yourself. In the olden days (pre F07), this was done in the expression's Playback tab. For KeySwitches, you would choose "Dump" with the parameters (top-down) 3,$90,<KS>,1 where <KS> = MIDI note number of the KeySwitch (starting with "$": hexadecimal; starting without "$": decimal). To see an example, take a look at one of the KeySwitches from the Finale library, that came with the G Strings script package.

Finale 2007 may have introduced a new way to define playback behaviour in the Human Playback Preferences. If you take a look at

clicking "New" may open a dialog for specifying playback behaviour.

And you are right, these questions would be appropriate to take to the Finale Forum. I didn't upgrade to F07, but a lot of people did, and they are mostly to be found at the Finale Forum. And F07 specific questions are more easily answered by someone, who did the upgrade.

Good luck

[Jeff Turner]

Jerry,

Nickie's right. That's the menu where you can add or edit techiniques. Although in my version of 2007, I don't see a button labelled "New". Hmmm?

I have a button labelled "Duplicate". Just experiment. Either create a new techinique or dup. an existing one. Then double click the technique name itself. An editing menu will appear that let's you change the way that technique works.

JT

[Jerry W.]

Thanks Nickie and Jeff.
That helped me in the right direction. i.e. I need to read up on the manual. I was just being lazy and wanted easy quick aswers. Reading up on it now. It really seems pretty straightforward.

Thanks to you both.

Jerry