Finale: doubling note values while preserving time signature changes
Here is what my situation was, and what I did to fix it:
I had a piece of music with alternating sections of 3/4 and 4/4.
To double the music I did the following:
1. Highlight the entire piece
2. Go to Utilities > Change > Note Durations
3. Select 200% and UNCHECK rebar music
4. Your piece now looks ridiculous
5. Highlight a section of music in one time signature
6. Click the Time Signature tool, set it to the correct time signature (should already be there), and make sure Rebar is checked
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for each section of a different time signature
8. Since this tool fails at putting music in the same relative position (i.e. it ignores whole rests, and even if you use the plugin that fills with real whole rests it interprets them as 4 beats when seen in a 3/4 measure), you will probably have to move some of your music around using the mass move tool
9. Move your expressions to the new correct locations
Finale 2010 Swing
I can’t make a section of my piece swing. I tried everything in the manual, none of it works. Checked the Finale forums and apparently this is a known issue. So I guess I’ll have to change the Human Playback style to “Jazz” for the entire piece of music, and switch it back to “Standard” when I’m working on the straight sections. Not sure how I’ll get a recording that way. Is this what happens when your business model involves releasing a new version of your software every year without backwards compatibility?
EDIT: Composer J.R. Trimpe sent me an e-mail with a possible solution. He says that he was able to work around the problem by creating a blank misc expression that sets the swing value and assigning it to every staff. He then uses a normal expression to take care of the text. I have not tried this yet (the arrangement I was working on is finished), but hopefully it will work for anyone else with this problem!