Playback Controls

 

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How to get there

Choose Playback Controls from the Window Menu.

What it does

Playback Controls is a floating window that give you tape-deck–like buttons for controlling the playback of your score. By clicking the expand arrow, Playback Controls expands to display a number of playback options, such as the tempo, range of measures to be played, overall volume level, and so on. Also, Playback Controls give access to the Playback Options dialog box, where you can further specify Finale’s playback behavior.

Playback Controls supports Finale’s HyperScribe recording and playback functions as well. To start recording, you can click Record in Playback Controls after selecting “R” for a staff in the Mixer, Staff Controls or Instrument List. You can also define the tempo of the metronome click for playback, set the number of measures to count off before starting to record or play back, and access the Click and Countoff dialog box from Playback Controls.

Note: As a shortcut you can click a measure in your score to start recording, instead of using the Record button. Finale will start recording into the measure you clicked, according to the click and countoff settings, just as if you clicked the Record button. If Multitrack Record is selected in HyperScribe’s Record Mode submenu, you must set up the Instrument List to specify the recording information (which staves or layers to record into, and which channels to receive from).

If the music is already playing back when you click this button, Finale will stop playback for a moment, play the last measure of the score, and stop.

Click the up and down arrows to adjust the measure. To specify a start point within the measure, simply enter the desired measure, beat, and EDU separated by “|”s [measure]|[beat]|[EDU]. (See Equivalents for an explanation of EDUs). Note that when you do this, the beat and EDU may temporarily disappear from the display.

You can enable or disable human playback by region by adding expressions defined for Human Playback On and Human Playback Off in the playback tab of the Expression Designer dialog box.

 

Note that hidden tuplets created while generating beaming over barlines may corrupt the Human Playback performance in regions where the Beam Over Barlines Plug-in has been applied.

Also note that Human Playback interprets articulations for the note they are attached to. For Human Playback to interpret articulations and other compatible note-attached items properly, ensure they are attached to the appropriate note (and not attached, for example, to the previous note and dragged to the right as is the case with items such as breath marks and cesuras). See Articulations and Expressions for details. Human Playback also interprests certain words added as expressions. See Human Playback Dictionary.

 

Using the Play From and Play Through options, you can even tell Finale to play measures that aren’t on the screen. Or, by entering a small range and repeatedly clicking the Play button, you can, in effect, “loop” through a certain segment.

Not every tempo is measured in quarter notes per minute, of course, so you can select the basic unit of the tempo pulse (Half Note, Dotted Quarter Note, and so on) from the Tempo popup menu. To set the number of beats per minute—the actual tempo—either type a new number into the text box, or click the arrows to increase or decrease the displayed number.

See Also:

Playback

Playback/Record Options

Click and Countoff

HyperScribe Tool

 

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