Staccato marks

The staccato mark (.) is an Articulation. For complete instructions on creating and manipulating articulation markings, see Articulations . Human Playback interprets and performs staccato marks during playback automatically. SeeHuman Playback.

Note: To hear changes to the playback definition of articulations, you must first set Human Playback to None in the Playback Controls.

To define a staccato mark for playback

1. Click the Articulation Tool  . If you haven’t yet placed the mark in the score, click any note. When the Articulation Selection dialog box appears, click the desired symbol and click Edit, and then skip to step 3.
2. Double-click the handle. The Articulation Designer dialog box appears.
3. From the Playback popup menu, choose Change Duration. Select Values Are Percentages. Enter 50 as the Top Note Value; leave the Bottom Note Value blank. You’re telling Finale that a note affected by this mark should last only 50% as long as it normally would. You can use any percentage you like instead of 50%—just be sure Values Are Percentages is selected.
4. Press return to exit the dialog boxes.

To create staccato playback with the MIDI Tool

If you want to create a staccato playback effect but you don’t need an actual staccato mark on each of the affected notes, you can use the MIDI Tool to achieve the same effect by altering the Start and Stop Times of the notes.

1. Click the MIDI Tool  , and select the region to be affected. Click to select one measure, shift-click to select additional measures, drag-enclose to select several on-screen measures, click to the left of the staff to select the entire staff, or choose Select All from the Edit Menu.
2. If you want to edit only particular notes on a single staff, double-click the highlighted area to enter the MIDI Tool window. Select the specific notes whose durations you want to edit. Once in the MIDI Tool window, you can select entire regions of notes by dragging through the “graph” area of the window. You can also choose specific notes to edit by selecting their handles (in the notation display at the bottom of the window). Select one handle by clicking, additional handles by shift-clicking, a group of handles by drag-enclosing, and additional groups by shift–drag-enclosing.
3. From the MIDI Tool Menu, choose Edit Note Durations. If you’re in the MIDI Tool window, you can click the Note Duration icon instead.
4. Choose Percent Alter from the MIDI Tool Menu. The Percent Alteration dialog box appears, letting you specify how much shorter you want each note to be.
5. Enter 50 (or any other percentage). You’re telling Finale how much to shorten each note relative to its notated full value (50% of full value, for example).
6. Click OK. Close the MIDI window if it’s open by clicking the MIDI Tool. To restore the affected notes to their full values, select the affected measures and press clear or use the Selection Tool to erase Performance Data.