Articulations

Articulations indicate performance information including the style of attack, delay, and manner or extent to which notes are connected or disconnected. These indications are represented by accents, staccato marks, or harmonic symbols, for example.   

Articulations are generally added with the Articulation Tool or Simple Entry Tool , but can also be applied to notes with the Selection Tool . You can also use the Selection Tool to quickly and easily move or delete articulations.

They are positioned in relation to that entry either above or below the note/entry.

In Finale, articulations can be applied either one note at a time (see To put one articulation mark in the score), or to a whole group of notes at once (See To apply an articulation to every note in a region). Finale will automatically center the markings, if you wish, and place them the proper distance from the noteheads; you’ll even hear their effect on the music when you play it back.

The Articulation Tool is also used for creating and editing the appearance of these markings. Each consists of a single character (letter) from any font or a shape; most of the time, you’ll want to use Finale’s Maestro music font, in which all the characters are musical symbols. A complete list of Maestro characters appears on the Quick Reference Card.

An articulation must be attached to a note (or a rest); you can’t insert one into an empty measure. The marking maintains its position relative to that note, even if you transpose it; in fact, the symbol will automatically flip to the opposite side of the note if the stem changes direction, and even switch to a different symbol if the new stem direction warrants (as when a fermata symbol flips upside-down).

Most markings commonly regarded as articulations fall into Finale's definition, however, some others used to articulate musical passages, such as slurs and dynamics , are added with different tools (see Slurs and Expressions respectively).

Working with articulations globally (by document)

• Designing an articulation

• Defining an articulation for playback

• Creating an articulation metatool

• Articulations in linked parts

• Removing an articulation from the list

Working with articulations by region

• To apply an articulation to every note in a region

• To copy markings based on a rhythmic match

• To center and reposition existing articulations

• To erase articulations from a region

• To copy articulations

To put one articulation mark in the score

1. Click the Articulation Tool  . Click on, above, or below a note. (If you are using voices, click above the staff for Voice 1 and below for Voice 2.) The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Double-click the symbol you want.

Or, to add an articulation while entering music in Simple Entry:

1. Choose the Simple Entry Tool  .
2. Select a note and press numpad * or Option-A and press an articulation metatool key to add an articulation to the note. For example, A for an accent, S for staccato, etc. Click Select (or press Enter) to open the Articulation Selection dialog box where you can choose from a list of articulations. (Note the metatool assignment appears in the upper right corner of each articulation in the Articulation Selection dialog box.)
3. Press Command-numpad * or Command-Option-Shift-A and then press an articulation metatool key (or click select or press Enter to choose an articulation) to add a sticky articulation to the caret and mouse cursor. Now, the chosen articulation will appear on all notes entered until the sticky articulation is removed. Press Command-numpad * or Command-Option-Shift-A again to remove the articulation from the caret and mouse cursor.

To move or delete an articulation

1. Click the Articulation Tool  .
2. Drag the handle to move the marking. Select it and press the arrow keys to "nudge” it for fine positioning; select it and press delete to remove it.  

To change the articulation character

1. Select the Articulation Tool   .
2. Select the articulation’s handle and double-press the desired metatool key. The articulation changes to the definition assigned to the metatool key you used. (A "double-press" simply means pressing the keystroke twice in rapid succession). Or, double-click the articulation handle to open the Articulation Selection dialog box where you can choose from a number of articulations.
3. Double-click the desired articulation.

To design an articulation

Follow these steps to add a new symbol to the Articulation Selection dialog box.

1. Click the Articulation Tool  , and click a note in the score. It makes no difference what note you click; the symbol you’re about to design won’t appear in the score until you want it to. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Click Create. The Articulation Designer dialog box appears. If the symbol you want to create is not a musical symbol in the Maestro music font, click Set Font to specify a different font.
3. Next to the Main Symbol display, click Main. The Symbol Selection dialog box appears. Use the scroll bars to view all the musical symbols available in the font.
4. Double-click the marking you want. You return to the Articulation Designer dialog box.
5. Describe how you want this marking to appear, using the Positioning Options.            

   How you use these options depends upon the type of music you’re notating, and your own preferences. If you make these settings carefully, you’ll save an immense amount of time when you place articulations into your scores, because Finale’s articulations don’t merely snap into place on a note—when a note’s stem direction changes, its marking even flips to the other side, and, as in the case of a fermata , even turns upside down automatically.

    

   Note: As you read about the following options, remember that all of these placement options have already been established for the basic set of articulation markings included in your Finale package. You can safely skip this entire section, unless you want to learn to edit these settings (or create new articulations of your own.

    

   In some jazz and popular music, it’s standard practice to place certain markings consistently above the staff, regardless of stem direction. If that’s the case, choose Above note from the Position popup menu.

   In other music, you may decide that a symbol should appear either above or below the note, depending on the note’s stem direction. In that case, choose either On note side or On stem side from the Position popup menu.Finally, you’ll find some additional placement options in the form of checkboxes. Click Avoid Staff Lines if you don’t want Finale to place a symbol so that it falls on a staff line. (Since symbols are different sizes, Finale will attempt to place the symbol’s handle so that it doesn’t fall on a staff line. This may mean, however, that the handle of a marking is between lines, but part of the symbol itself crosses a line. In that case, click the Handle Positioning button, and use the H: and V: controls to further adjust the symbol’s positioning within the staff lines.) Click Always Place Outside Staff if you want Finale to place this marking as close as possible to a note, but never within the staff. Finale can accommodate either notational convention: With Always place Outside unchecked, articulations are placed a certain distance from the notehead whether or not they’re inside or outside the staff. With Always Place outside checked articulations are placed as close as possible to their noteheads without appearing within the staff lines.Click Center Horizontally if Finale should neatly center the articulation with the notehead automatically. Finally, click Attach to Top Note if, when you attach this marking to a chord, you want Finale to measure the marking’s distance from the top note instead of the bottom one.

6. If this marking is supposed to flip "upside down" when the stem direction changes, click the Flipped button and select the flipped character. Some symbols, such as are supposed to appear inverted when below a note. Finale can’t turn a symbol upside down; instead, Maestro and other music fonts contain both the normal and inverted versions of each such symbol. When a note’s stem direction changes, Finale can substitute the appropriate "upside-down" symbol automatically.
7. Find the popup menu that begins, "When Placed Below a Note, use the…", and choose Flipped Symbol. See Finale Libraries in the Appendix for the settings for typical markings.
8. Define the marking for playback, if you wish. Your marking can affect key velocity (i.e., volume—an accent, for example) or timing (a staccato mark, for example). See To define an articulation for playback.
9. Click OK (or press return). From now on, you may click as sloppily as you wish when attaching this marking to a note; Finale will neatly center it, place it on the correct side of the note, and substitute an inverted symbol when necessary—if you’ve set the marking up that way. Once you’ve placed an articulation on a note, of course, you’re still free to drag it to a new position.

To define an articulation for playback

Human Playback interprets and performs articulations during playback automatically. See Human Playback. To hear manual changes to the MIDI playback definition of any articulation you must first set Human Playback to None in the Playback Controls dialog box.

1. Click the Articulation Tool  . If you haven’t yet placed the Articulation in the score, click any note. When the Articulation Selection dialog box appears, click the desired symbol and click Edit; then skip to step 3.
2. Double-click the handle. The Articulation Designer dialog box appears.
3. To specify how the marking will affect playback, make a selection from the Playback Effect popup menu. You have three playback choices: Change Attack, Change Duration, and Change Key Velocity. Choose Change Attack to shift the attack point forward or backward in time—a useful option for producing rolled chord effects.

Choose Change Duration to affect the note’s length by changing its release point—to create a staccato mark, for example.

Finally, choose Change Key Velocity for accents, stress markings, and marcato markings—symbols that affect a note by striking it with more or less force (generally making it louder or softer).

4. In the Top Note Value and Bottom Note Value text boxes, enter the amount of playback effect you want this Articulation to have.

When Change Attack is selected, the numbers you enter in these text boxes are 1024ths of a quarter note. To create an Articulation that strikes a note earlier or later than notated, therefore, enter numeric values large enough to create a noticeable rhythmic difference on playback: 256 (a sixteenth note) and higher, for example.

A Change Attack marking makes especially good use of the Top Note Value and Bottom Note Value text boxes. These text boxes come into play when you’re attaching an Articulation to a chord, because the top and bottom notes can have different values; Finale scales any middle notes proportionately. With this setup, it’s easy to create effects such as rolled chords. For example, you might enter -256 as the Bottom Note Value, and 0 as the Top Note Value. Finale would roll the chord from bottom to top, and the top note would land on the beat.If you’re creating a Change Duration marking, the numbers in these text boxes are, once again, 1024ths of a quarter note. Generally, however, you wouldn’t use the Change Duration setting to lengthen or shorten a note’s notated value by a fixed amount. Instead, you’d want an articulation to change a note’s duration by a percentage—a staccato mark should shorten a note’s playback duration by 50%, for example, regardless of whether it’s a quarter note or an eighth note. Therefore, click the Values Are Percentages checkbox, so that the numbers represent percentages of the note’s written value. You’ll usually want to leave the Bottom Note Value blank, so that the Top Note Value affects the entire chord to which it’s attached.Finally, if you’ve selected Change Key Velocity, the numbers you enter are MIDI velocity values. These range from –127 to 127, where a negative number will make the affected note softer than unaffected notes, and a positive number will make the affected note louder (0 = no change). If you’re creating an accent mark, for example, you could enter, say, 40 into the Top Note Value text box; if an affected note has an original MIDI velocity value of 60, it will now play back with a velocity of 100.

Of course, it may be easier to click the Values Are Percentages checkbox, so that the numbers you enter represent percentages of the note’s original value. If you enter 200 into the Top Note Value text box, the note would be twice as loud as an unaffected note.

5. Click OK (or press return). The changes you’ve just made affect all occurrences of this Articulation, even those you’ve already placed into the score.

To apply an articulation to every note in a region

1. Click the Articulation Tool  , and drag-enclose a region of notes. The Apply Articulation dialog box appears. If you have programmed a metatool for the particular articulation press the metatool while drag-enclosing the notes, and you’re done! See To create an Articulation Metatool.
2. Click Select. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
3. Double-click the symbol you want.

At this point, you can specify a number of other parameters. Click Notes within Range of Durations to select a range of note values you want affected by the marking—for example, you might want the articulations to appear only on eighth notes and quarter notes; you’d click the eighth note in the upper palette and the quarter note in the lower one. You can also specify whether or not Finale should place the articulation mark on notes beginning or ending a tie (since an accent mark, for example, doesn’t mean much on a note at the right end of a tie). Select Include Notes that Start a Tie or Include Notes that Continue or End a Tie, respectively.

Finally, you can specify an additional amount of distance added to (or subtracted from) the marking’s usual distance from the notehead. See Apply Articulation dialog box for more information.

4. Click OK (or press return). You return to the document, where Finale places the marking on every selected note.

To erase articulation from a region

1. Click the Articulation Tool  .
2. Press delete while drag-enclosing a region. The articulations in the selected region are removed.  

To center and reposition existing articulations

When you place an articulation marking onto a note, Finale automatically centers it and places it a precise distance away from the notehead. Once the marking appears in the score, you’re free to drag it into a new position.

To restore the markings’ original positions, eliminating any hand-positioning you’ve done, drag-enclose the desired articulations and press the Clear key (laptop users Fn-6).

The following procedure can be used to move a specific marking into a new position, such as moving breath marks a uniform distance to the right of the notes to which they’re attached.

1. Click the Selection Tool   and select the region of music you want to affect. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
2. From the Utilities Menu, choose Change, and then Articulation Assignments. The Change Articulation Assignments dialog box appears.
3. If you want Finale to reposition all articulations in the selected region back to the default position, click OK.
4. If you want Finale to reposition only a certain articulation marking, click Position Selected Articulations; click Select, and double-click the symbol you want.

You can also swap one marking for another throughout the selected region: select Change All Articulations (or Selected Articulations) to Articulation, and click Select to specify the replacement symbol.

You can also specify new positioning information by entering numbers into the H: and V: text boxes. You’re adding distance to either the usual or existing positions of the selected markings, depending on your selection from the popup menu. The units are whatever you’ve selected using the Measurement Units command (Edit Menu). For articulations designed to be placed On Notehead Side, or On Stem Side, positive numbers move the symbols to the right (H:) and away from the staff (V:); negative numbers move them left and in toward the staff. For articulations designed to be placed Manually, Above Note or Below Note, positive numbers move the symbols to the right (H:) and upward (V:); negative numbers move them down and left. See Change Articulation Assignments dialog box and Articulation Designer dialog box for more detailed explanations of these options.

5. Click OK (or press return). Finale neatly positions every articulation mark in the selected region, according to your specifications.

To quickly change an articulation

1. Select the Articulation Tool .
2. Select the articulation’s handle and double-press the desired metatool key.

The articulation changes to the definition assigned to the metatool key you used. (A "double-press" simply means pressing the keystroke twice in rapid succession).

To copy articulations

You can copy any musical elements—such as articulations—from one passage to another. In this discussion, the source region is the music that contains the articulations, and the target region is the music to which you want to copy them.

1. Click the Selection Tool  .
2. From the Edit Menu, choose Edit Filter. The Edit Filter dialog box appears.
3. Select Articulations; then click OK (or press return). You’ve just told Finale to copy and paste only articulation markings, and to leave all other musical elements alone.
4. Select the source region. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
5. Drag the selected region so that it’s superimposed on the beginning of the target region. If the first target measure is offscreen, scroll to it; then, while pressing option and shift together, click it.

The “How many times” dialog box appears (unless you drag to a region directly above or below the source region). In that case, specify the number of times you want the articulations copied, and click OK.

Finale only copies articulations to notes that fall on the same beats as they did in the source measures. The articulations maintain their positions relative to the noteheads.

To copy markings based on a rhythmic match

1. Click the Selection Tool  .
2. Select a region.

Click or drag-enclose any region of music to select it. Add additional measures to the selection by shift-clicking. Double-click to select a full measure, and double-click a second time if you want to include all other staves in your selection. The selection must occur on a single staff, not spanning multiple staves. Only rhythms and markings in the current layer of the source region are used for the pattern matching and painting process.

3. From the Edit Menu, choose SmartFind and Paint, then Set SmartFind Source. An outline box appears around the selected region. If you selected the wrong region, choose Deselect SmartFind Source from the SmartFind and Paint submenu, and try again.

Select a target region to paint. If no region is selected, SmartFind will assume you wish to scan the entire document. You may include partial measures in your target region.

1. From the Edit Menu, choose SmartFind and Paint, then Apply SmartFind and Paint. The SmartFind and Paint dialog box appears. See SmartFind and Paint dialog box.
2. Check the box for the markings you want to copy.

If you’ve already entered some markings into your document, you may wish to check "Delete Target Markings Before Paint." With this box checked, SmartFind will erase the markings before painting the new markings, so you get an exact duplicate. Note that checking this option will only erase markings checked to paint. For example, if all markings to paint were checked except articulations, SmartFind would erase markings in the target but leave articulations untouched. The checked marking types will be deleted regardless of whether the markings appear in the source region.

3. Click Find.

SmartFind shows you the first match, if any. SmartFind will look for matches in all layers of the target region, regardless of the source layer. SmartFind will search the first measure of the top staff selected to the last measure of the top staff in the region, then continue through layers, then down through the rest of the staves. SmartFind will search for a match based on the rhythmic or note durations and therefore will consider tied notes. SmartFind will ignore grace notes, Voice 2 and mirrored notes.

4. Click Paint to apply the markings to the match, or Paint All to apply the markings to all matches, or click Find Next to skip this match. SmartFind copies the select markings from the source region onto the rhythmic match target region. Only the first note of a tied note will receive copied markings.
5. When you’re finished, click Cancel or Close. You return to the document.

To create an articulation metatool

A Metatool is a keyboard equivalent for a certain Articulation. By creating a Metatool for a symbol, you can pop it into the score with a single click of the mouse. You bypass the selection box that would otherwise appear.

1. Click the Articulation Tool  .While pressing shift, press the letter or number key you wish to use for your metatool.

It makes no difference whether you use the top row of the alphabet keyboard or the numeric keypad with num lock on to use the numbers. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears. If the marking you want isn’t present in the Articulation Selection dialog box, you can create it in the usual way; see To design an articulation for instructions. (Predefined metatools are in parentheses in the Articulation Selection dialog box).

2. Double-click the desired marking. 

You return to the document, having successfully prepared the Metatool for use. You’ve just assigned a specific Articulation mark to a number or letter key; you might want to write down which symbol you assign to each number. Repeat this procedure for other number or letter keys, if you wish; you can re-assign your Metatools at any time by repeating this procedure.

Here’s how to place the marking in the score:

3. While pressing the appropriate letter or number key, click the note on which you want the marking to appear.

The Articulation appears in the score. By pressing a different key each time you click a note, you can rapidly add articulations to your score. You can also drag-enclose a number of notes while pressing the metatool key and apply the articulation to all the notes at once.

To remove an articulation from the list

1. Click the Articulation Tool  . Click any note. The Articulation Selection dialog box appears.
2. Click the symbol you want to remove; then click Delete. If the item is being used in the score, the Delete Element dialog box appears. Select whether to replace the articulation with a different articulation, or simply delete all instances from the score. See Delete Element dialog box.
3. Click Cancel.  

See Also

Articulation Tool

Articulation Selection

Articulation Designer

Symbol Selection

Handle Positioning