Whole rests

To save you extra work, Finale automatically places a default whole rest in every blank measure. It’s important to understand the difference between one of these default whole rests and a real whole rest that you’ve entered yourself using any of Finale’s music input methods.

For example, a chord or a lyric syllable may be attached to a real whole rest (although Finale automatically skips rests when assigning lyrics by itself). Only a real whole rest can be moved up or down with the Speedy Entry Tool.

Finale considers a “real” whole rest an entry—something you placed in the score—just like a note or another kind of rest. Therefore, a real whole rest will not be part of a multimeasure block rest in a part; it will be placed in a measure by itself. Furthermore, a real whole rest counts as “music” when you optimize staves (suppress the display of blank staves within a given system to produce a more compact and readable full score). Even though a staff appears to be empty, Finale won’t hide it if it contains a real whole rest—a fact you can use to your advantage if you want to “force” an otherwise empty staff to appear in a certain system when you’re optimizing systems. Just add a real whole rest, and Finale won’t hide the staff.

Default whole rests are always centered between barlines.

To add a real whole rest

1. Click the Speedy Entry Tool , and click the measure in question. The editing frame appears.
2. Press the 7 key. Unless Use MIDI Device has been turned off in the Speedy Menu, a whole rest appears. (If not, a whole note appears; click it and press clear or shift-delete to turn it into a whole rest.)

To move a real whole rest

1. Click the Speedy Entry Tool  , and click the measure in question. The editing frame appears.
2. Drag the rest up or down. You can drag the whole rest to any line or space. It always appears with a short staff line segment when drawn in the score, so it won’t be confused with a half rest.

To turn off the default whole rests for a staff

If you prefer blank measures to be completely empty instead of displaying the default whole rest, follow these steps:

1. Click the Staff Tool , and double-click the desired staff. The Staff Attributes dialog box appears.
2. Click Display Rests in Empty Measures to de-select it. If you want to perform this operation on other staves, click the up and down arrows to scroll through the staff attributes for each.
3. Click OK (or press return).

To fill measures with rests

1. Click the Selection Tool  , and select the region of music to fill with rests. Refer to Selecting music for different methods of selecting regions.
2. From the Utilities Menu, choose Check Notation, then Fill With Rests. Finale scans each measure in the selected region, and automatically fills incomplete measures by adding the correct number of rests. Note that Finale does not convert empty measures to measures with actual whole rests.

To change the character for default measure rests

1. From the Document Menu, choose Document Options then select Notes and Rests.  
2. Select Default Measure Rest from the Rests Characters popup menu and click on Select.
3. Select the rest symbol you would like to use from the Symbol Selection dialog box. Any characters selected other than rests will be ignored.
4. Click Select.
5. Click OK. All your default rests are now displayed using the selected character.