Tutorial 2: Adding Details

There’s a lot more to music than just notes. In this tutorial, we’ll cover how to add details—key and time signatures, lyrics, repeats, chords, and more. Open the Document called “Tutorial 2” in the Tutorials folder: We’ll use this version of “Oh, Susannah” to explore Finale’s prowess in creating a lead sheet. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to create a simple lead sheet.

Changing the Key

If you use the Setup Wizard, you should start off with the correct key signature for your piece every time. But let’s say you change your mind after entering in the music. We’ll change the key for our folk song “Oh Susannah.”

Click the Key Signature Tool $image\Key_Signature_Tool.gif$ .

Double-click the first measure (within the staff lines to the right of the time signature). The measure highlights and a dialog box appears. Finale displays a dialog box when it’s requesting some information from you. In this particular dialog box, you use the scroll bar to select a new key. Click the up arrow to add sharps to the key signature or subtract flats. Click the down arrow to add flats or subtract sharps.

Click the up arrow on the scroll bar twice, so that no sharps or flats appears. Now look at the bottom of the dialog box: Finale lets you specify whether or not you want to transpose the notes when you change the key signature. Leave the settings as they are; you’re transposing the song up a whole step, to C.

Now specify what region of measures you want to be affected by the new key.

Click the radio button for “Measure 1 Through End of Piece.”
Click OK. The dialog box goes away, and your piece is instantly transposed to the key of C.

Changing the Time Signature

If you use the Setup Wizard, you should start off with the correct time signature, too. But let’s say you decide your folk song would work better in cut time.

Click the Time Signature Tool $image\Time_Signature_Tool.gif$ , and double-click the first measure. Make sure you click the middle of the measure (within the staff lines). There are two scroll bars in the Time Signature dialog box: the upper bar controls the top number of the time signature, and the bottom bar controls the bottom number.

On the upper scroll bar, click the left scroll bar arrow twice, to change the upper number from 4 to 2. You want the meter to be 2/2 two half notes per measure—so you decrease the upper number, which governs beats per measure.
Now click the right scroll bar arrow twice on the lower scroll bar. The lower scroll bar sets the rhythmic pulse—the lower number in the time signature. You increase the value from a quarter note to a half note (by changing the lower number from 4 to 2).
Click the radio button for “Measure 1 Through End of Piece.” The Time Signature dialog box looks like this:

Uncheck Rebar music.Rebar Music redistributes the barlines to fit the same music given the new time signature.
Click OK. That’s it. You’ve now put “Oh, Susannah” into cut time. (Finale defaults to displaying the cut time symbol for 2/2 . If you’d prefer 2/2, see the User Manual under Cut Time.

Entering Lyrics: Type into Score

One of Finale’s greatest powers is its ability to handle lyrics intelligently. If you provide the lyrics, complete with hyphens between syllables, Finale can automatically distribute them to the melody line, neatly avoiding tied-over notes and rests, and centering every syllable under its note. Each syllable is attached to its note; if the note moves horizontally, the syllable moves with it. Finale also adds word extension underlines for melismatic passages automatically.

There are two ways to create lyrics within Finale. You can type the lyrics directly into the score, so that you know at all times where you are in the music—a feature called Type Into Score. Or you may prefer the faster Click Assignment method—where you type the lyrics in Finale’s text processor, and then paste them into the score all at once. The Click Assignment method also offers you the option of pasting your lyrics in from another program, such as a word processor.

In this tutorial, you’ll try both techniques.

Click the Lyrics Tool $image\Lyric_Tool.gif$ . A new menu, called Lyrics, appears and a row of four positioning triangles appears to the left of the staff.

From the Lyrics Menu, choose Type Into Score, if it’s not already selected.
Click on the staff above the first melody note. You don’t have to click the notehead. Instead, click anywhere within the staff lines above it. A small blinking cursor—the insertion point—appears beneath the first note.
Type: “Oh, I come from Al-a-ba-ma, with a ban-jo on my knee.” Each time you type a space or a hyphen, Finale automatically moves the insertion point to the next note in preparation for entering the next syllable. Finale automatically scrolls the music as you enter the lyrics, so you always know where you are when in Scroll View.

As you type, there are a few things you should know. If you make a mistake, just backspace over it by pressing the key (Mac: ). (If you backspace to the previous syllable, Finale highlights the whole syllable for you, so that you can replace it all at once with anything you type.) If you want to change a word you’ve already typed, click in the staff above the syllable in question so that it’s highlighted; then type in your correction.

As you type the rest of these lyrics, you’ll encounter some syllables that are supposed to be held through two melody notes:

In such cases, just skip past the sustained note by pressing the space bar. Finale will create word extensions for you when appropriate. Use the space bar to skip past rests.

Finish typing the first verse:

I’m [space] goin’ to Lou’-si-a-na, my [space] true love for to see. [space]

Oh, Su-san-nah, now don’t you cry for me,

Oh, I come from Al-a-ba-ma with a ban-jo on my knee.

The four small triangles at the left edge of the screen controls the baseline of the lyrics (the imaginary line upon which the bottom edges of the words sit). If you drag the leftmost triangle, you’ll find that you can move the baseline (and all the attached lyrics) up and down.

The four triangles (from left to right) move the baseline horizontally for: 1.the entire piece, 2.this staff, 3 this staff, this system only, 4 next syllable entered

As you typed, Finale stored each syllable in a built-in text processor, the Edit Lyrics window. Let’s take a look.

From the Lyrics Menu, choose Edit Lyrics. Sure enough, there are your lyrics in their raw text form. It’s important to understand that the Edit Lyrics window and the lyrics in the score are dynamically linked. If you change a syllable in the Edit Lyrics window, that syllable automatically changes in the score—and vice versa.

While the Type Into Score process is handy, it’s not the fastest possible method for entering lyrics. When you’re working with very large scores, or when you want to import lyrics from another program (such as a word processor), you might want to use the Click Assignment method, whereby you enter the lyrics directly into the Edit Lyrics window. No matter which method you prefer, Type Into Score is always handy for making quick changes to lyrics already in the score.

In the next section, you’ll learn about the Click Assignment method. To restore your melody to its wordless form, you’ll use Finale’s Clear Items command, which you can use to selectively remove lyrics (or other items) from the score without touching the notes.

Click OK. The Edit Lyrics dialog box closes.
Click the Selection Tool $image\Selection_Tool.gif$ .
From the Edit Menu, choose Select All. Finale highlights all of your music. We want to remove all of the lyrics we assigned through Type into Score. Lyrics in Finale are made up of two parts: the word or syllable itself and its “footprint” or assignment to a particular note.

When you Type into Score, you’re entering the word into the Edit Lyrics box and assigning it to a particular note at the same time. When we use the Selection Tool to clear the lyrics, we’re only clearing the assignments. The words remain in the Edit Lyrics box, available for the next time we want to assign them to notes with Click Assignment. You can even assign the same word to multiple notes. A handy feature when you don’t want to type “Alleluia” twenty different times!

From the Edit Menu, choose Clear Selected Items. The Clear Selected Items dialog box appears. This dialog box lists the many pieces that make up your music. You could erase all of the chord symbols in your score, or every articulation in a selected region. For now, we just want to remove the lyrics.
Click None. All check marks disappear.
Click the Lyrics checkbox and click OK. You return to your score, where your lyrics have disappeared, but your notes remain.

Entering Lyrics: Click Assignment

With this method, you’ll enter the complete set of lyrics beforehand in Finale’s text processor. Because the computer doesn’t have to redraw the music to keep up with you (as it did with the Type Into Score method), you’ll find that you can type much faster in this mode.

Click the Lyrics Tool $image\Lyric_Tool.gif$ . The Lyrics menu appears.
From the Lyrics Menu, choose Edit Lyrics. The Edit Lyrics window appears with your complete set of lyrics.

You can edit your lyrics in the Edit Lyrics window just as you would text in any word processor. For example, you can correct mistakes by backspacing over them with the key (Mac: ). You can copy and paste text as you’ve just done, using -C (Mac: -C) to copy selected text and -V (Mac: -V) to paste it. You can also cut selected text, so that it’s removed from the Edit Lyrics window but placed on the Clipboard ready for pasting in another place; the Cut command is -X (Mac: -X).

Click OK. You return to the score.

Assigning Lyrics

From the Lyrics Menu, choose Click Assignment. A small window appears, containing the lyrics you just typed. If the window obscures your view of the music, you can drag it by its title bar to move it to a new location.

The four triangles are again at the left edge of the screen. Remember that these control the baseline of the lyrics. Drag the leftmost triangle up or down to move the lyric line closer to or farther from the staff.

Position the cursor on the staff at the location of the first melody note. Click in the staff once. The first syllable, “Oh,” jumps out of the Click Assignment window and attaches itself to the first note.

Move the cursor to the second note, and click in the staff. The next syllable is now attached to its note.

This click-by-click assignment of lyrics to notes is all very well and good, but it takes time when you have lots of lyrics to assign. If you use the (Mac: ) key, you can distribute all the lyrics with a single click.

While pressing the (Mac: ) key, click the third note. Finale now rips through your entire set of lyrics and distributes them to the notes of the song automatically.
Click the Close button in the upper-right (Mac: upper-left) corner of the Click Assignment window. Take a moment to scroll through the lead sheet and check Finale’s work. You’ll probably notice a problem right away: Starting at measure 5—the lyric “I’m goin’ to Lou’-si-a-na”—the lyrics haven’t been assigned to the proper melody notes. They’re off by a syllable.

That’s because you weren’t able to skip the extra melody notes by pressing the Space bar, as you did when you used Type Into Score, so Finale didn’t know when to skip over a note.

You can correct this problem in a flash. At each spot where a syllable is held through more than one note, you need to tell Finale to push all the syllables to the right by one note.

From the Lyrics Menu, choose Shift Lyrics. The Shift Lyrics dialog box appears, letting you specify the direction you want the syllables to be shifted. The default, to the right, is what you want.
Click OK. You’re going to click within the staff lines above the first syllable you want shifted.
Click in the staff above the syllable “goin’.” Finale shifts the “goin” syllable, and all subsequent syllables, to the right. Now scroll until you can see the word “true,” where the lyrics are again misaligned.

Click the note above the word “true.” You’ve successfully aligned the lyrics to the notes.

Adding a Second Verse

As it happens, “Oh, Susannah” has two verses. If you don’t work with lyrics much, feel free to skip this section. If you plan to be working with vocal music, though, this section will show you how to add multiple verses.

From the Lyrics Menu, choose Edit Lyrics. Your lyrics appear in the text window. Note that at the bottom of the dialog box you see a drop-down list (currently set to Verse) and a text box (currently set to 1), indicating that you are viewing the lyrics for verse 1.
Click the up arrow next to the text box. The text box now says 2, indicating that Finale’s ready for you to type verse 2.

This time, as an experiment, you’ll anticipate the passages where one syllable is sustained through more than one note, so that you won’t have to use the Shift Lyrics command after placing the lyrics.

To do this, you’ll create an invisible syllable within the lyrics. This syllable is simply a blank character, sometimes called a hard space. By pressing and holding down the key, typing 0160 on the numeric keypad, and then releasing the key (Mac: + spacebar), you produce an invisible character that Finale thinks of as a syllable, even though it’s invisible on the screen.

Remember that Finale looks for a space or a hyphen to indicate the end of a syllable—whether invisible or not. To convince Finale that this character is a syllable, you need to follow each invisible syllable with a space.

Click in the text box, and type the second verse exactly as you see it here. Create an invisible syllable ( 0160 or + spacebar) where indicated below. Don’t forget to type a regular space before and after each one.

It [invisible syllable] rained all night the day I left, the wea-ther it was dry,

The [invisible syllable] sun so hot I froze to death, Su-san-nah, don’t you cry.

Oh, Su-san-nah, now don’t you cry for me,

I [invisible syllable] come from Al-a-ba-ma with a ban-jo on my [invisible syllable] [invisible syllable] [invisible syllable] knee.

Click OK. Scroll to the beginning of the music.
Choose Click Assignment from the Lyrics Menu.
-click (-click) in the staff above the first note. If you’ve typed the lyrics correctly, Finale should enter the entire second verse without a hitch. Now, if you need to adjust the positioning of the second lyric line, drag the leftmost of the four positioning handles up or down.

The invisible syllables you added should make all syllables align with their notes. Finale also adds word extensions for you automatically. We added three invisible characters before the last syllable to skip measure 17, which we’ll be skipping over the second time through (we’ll talk about creating the repeat markings in the next section). Let’s delete this extra word extension.

From the Lyrics Menu, choose Edit Word Extensions. The word extension handles appear. You can use these handles to manually adjust the length of each word extension.

To tell Finale to always break a Smart Word Extension at a particular barline, choose the Measure Tool, double-click the measure to the left of the barline, check Break Smart Word Extensions and click OK.

Click handle on the right edge of the word extension in the second verse and press Delete. The word extension disappears.

The Repeat Tool

To be truly complete, your lead sheet needs a first and second ending, requiring the use of the Repeat Tool.

In Finale, a repeat barline is simply a signpost that directs the flow of music playback back to another earlier measure.

A repeat barline doesn’t necessarily direct music backward; it could make the music jump to a later measure, as it does if you’re using a coda sign. You can build nested repeats, multiple endings—even purely graphic repeat barlines that have no playback functions at all.

In your “Oh, Susannah” lead sheet, you’ll actually need several repeat barlines—one at the beginning of the score, plus a first and second ending. To make these endings work properly, you need to amend the beginnings and endings of the music itself, adjusting the lyrics and inserting the first ending measure, so that the lead sheet looks like this:

You’re welcome to perform these modifications yourself, if you want; you’ll have to delete the first syllable in the second verse, type it at the end of the first verse (in the Edit Lyrics window), and then click it into the end of the score with the Click Assignment option (Lyrics Menu). You’ll also need the Speedy Entry Tool $image\Speedy_Entry_Tool.gif$ to change the music in the first and second endings, and the Measure Tool $image\Measure_Tool.gif$ to create the extra measure.

If you’d rather not bother, open the document “Tutorial 2a,” in which these changes have already been made. Open this document now.

In either case, scroll back to the beginning of the piece; now you’re ready to proceed.

The repeat tool is designed to allow you to add standard repeat barlines and endings easily using context menus. By context-clicking (Windows users right-click, Macintosh -click) measures and selected regions, you can easily and edit repeats without taking focus off the score. Now, let’s add a repeat with a first and second ending.

Click the Repeat Tool $image\Repeat_Tool.gif$ . Measure 1 is a pickup measure, so you want the first repeat barline to appear at the beginning of measure 2.
Windows users Right-click (Macintosh users -click) measure 2. A context menu appears which offers several repeat options.
Choose Create Forward Repeat Bar. A forward repeat bar appears at the beginning of measure 2. Note that you could also click measure 2 and from the Repeat Menu choose Create Forward Repeat Bar to perform the same task.

Now, let’s create the first and second ending. You want the first ending to appear at measure 17. Scroll down so measure 17 is visible.

Windows users Right-click (Macintosh users -click) measure 17. For a first ending longer than one measure, you would select the measure region and then right-click.
Choose Create First and Second Ending. Finale places a first ending over the highlighted measure and also places a second ending over the following measure. That’s it! This repeat is already defined to play as shown, upon reaching the backward repeat bar, playback will jump back to measure 2, and then, the second time through, skip over measure 17 to the second ending.

To remove a repeat barline or bracket, click the Repeat Tool, then click the measure. Click the square handle at the bottom of the barline and press Delete.

Don’t be concerned if your lead sheet ends with a single measure stretched over an entire staff system. Such layout issues will be discussed in Tutorial 4.

Finally, please note that Finale also offers a number of text repeats, such as D.S. al Coda. These text repeats are purely graphic, so they do not affect the playback of your score.

While the context menu items are great for creating basic repeat barlines and endings, you might want a more in-depth discussion of the Repeat Tool and its various capabilities including multiple ending passes, defining three or more endings, or adding a Coda, D.S. al Coda, D.C. al Coda and more. Consult the User Manual under Repeat Tool.

Chord Symbols (Optional Section)

No true lead sheet would be complete without chord symbols. With a little help from your MIDI keyboard, the process of adding chords can be extremely quick. You can also apply similar techniques with the Type into Score feature, which doesn’t require a keyboard. (If most of your work won’t require chord symbols, you can skip this section.)

To enter chord symbols without a MIDI keyboard, click on the Chord Tool, then choose Type into Score from the Chord Menu.

This section assumes that you’ve completed the “Oh, Susannah” lead sheet up through the last section. If not, choose Open from the File Menu; open the document called “Tutorial 2b,” which is complete to this point.

Scroll to the first measure of the piece, if necessary.
Click the Chord Tool $image\Chord_Tool.gif$ . The Chord Menu appears. The top five commands in the menu are chord input options: Manual Input (you type letters and numbers into a dialog box to create a chord symbol); Type Into Score (functions in the same way as the corresponding Lyric option); MIDI Input (which has you play the chord on the MIDI keyboard); One-Staff Analysis (in which Finale examines the notes of each chord you click in the staff); and Two-Staff Analysis (in which Finale examines a complete chord, even if it spans two staves, as with a piano voicing). You can also choose Edit Learned Chords, in which you can teach Finale to recognize unusual or especially complex chords.

From the Chord Menu, choose MIDI Input. If you don’t have a MIDI keyboard, don’t despair; it’s almost as easy to put chord symbols into your score without MIDI. See Chord Symbols for instructions.
Click the first note of the second measure. A little ear appears above the staff. It indicates that Finale is ready for you to play the chord.
Play a C triad, root position, on the MIDI keyboard. It doesn’t matter how the chord is voiced or what octave it’s in; just make sure that the bottom note is a C.

Finale puts the chord symbol, C, above the staff. (If the chord symbols appear too low or too high in your score, remember that, just like lyrics, you can drag the leftmost positioning triangle up or down to move the baseline of the chords.)

So far, so good—now you need to advance the cursor to the right, in preparation to enter the next chord symbol. To signal Finale that you want to move on to the next chord, you play any MIDI keyboard key above middle C.

Play a single note—any note—above middle C. If you want to move backward, play a single note below middle C.
Play three more single notes above middle C. You’ve just moved the ear cursor to the next downbeat, where there’s another chord.

Play another C chord, this time in first inversion (E on the bottom).

This time, Finale writes C/E—a C triad with an E in the bass.

Continue adding the chords this way: advance to the next spot by playing a single key above middle C, and then play the chord. If you don’t play the chord in root position, Finale notates the chord symbol as a triad over a bass note, separated by a slash. You can add any chord symbols you want; one example is shown here.

You’ll find that Finale has no problem transcribing the G7 in measure 5. You can play seventh chords, ninths, augmented, diminished, and even more complex chords, and Finale will have no problem understanding you. As a matter of fact, you can even teach Finale to understand new chords. See Edit Learned Chords.

If you make a mistake, choose Undo from the Edit Menu, click the note, and play the chord again. Here’s how you tell Finale that you’re finished entering chords:

Click any blank part of the screen. Go ahead—play it back! (Click Play on the Playback Controls.) You’ll discover that Finale plays the chord symbols wherever they occur. (You can also disable the playback function of chords, if you like; see the User Manual under Chord Symbols.)

To move a chord symbol, be sure the Chord Tool is selected. Choose Manual Input from the Chord Menu. You’ll see square handles appear, which you can then drag to move chord symbols. If you click a handle and press delete, you’ll delete the chord; if you double-click a handle, you’ll enter the Chord Definition dialog box (see the User Manual under Chord Definition dialog box for more complete information).

Now suppose you’re just about ready to print, when you find out that this “Oh, Susannah” is going to be a piece of popular sheet music, with guitar fretboard diagrams above the staff. No problem:

From the Chord Menu, choose Show Fretboards. Finale instantly places full-blown fretboard diagrams underneath the regular chord symbols. They’ll even transpose if you change the key!

To adjust the distance between the fretboard diagrams and the staff, choose Position Fretboards from the Chord Menu, and drag the leftmost triangle up or down. See the User Manual under Fretboard Diagrams for full instructions.

Working with Inner Voices: Layers

In this example, let’s suppose that you’ve decided to add a few harmony notes.

Finale lets you have up to eight voices—independent lines of music, each with its own stem—per staff. (Within each of the eight voices, a chord can have up to twelve notes—a total of 96 notes per staff on any given beat.) Most of the time, you’ll probably need only two voices, stems up and stems down. You’ll find such music especially easy to notate in Finale, because every staff can have four completely independent layers of music. You can think of them as clear plastic overlays, because each layer is utterly independent—each can even have its own MIDI channel for playback. You can flip easily from one layer to the other, and even hide the ones you’re not working on.

If you do need more voices, you’ll discover that each layer can have two voices of its own, Voice 1 and Voice 2, giving you a total of eight to work with. The Voice 1/Voice 2 mechanism is more complex, however; save it for the times when you need more than four voices per staff.

From the Document Menu, choose Document Options, then select Layers. You will see the Layer Options on the right side of the Document Options dialog box. Here is where you control the behavior of each voice.

For Layer 1, Freeze Stems and Ties should be checked, and Up should be selected from the drop-down list by default. Also, Freeze Ties in the Same Direction as Stems and Apply Adjustment Only if Notes are in Other Layers are checked. Choose Layer 2 from the Settings for drop-down list.
For Layer 2, select Freeze Stems and Ties, and then choose Down from the drop-down list. Next, select Freeze Ties in the Same Direction as Stems and Apply Adjustments Only if Notes are in Other Layers. Also click Adjust Floating Rests by, and type –6 into the text box. Don’t panic! You’ve simply told Finale that whenever there are two independent voices, Layer 1’s stems should automatically flip up, and Layer 2’s stems should flip down. In such cases, ties should flip the “wrong” way to avoid collisions with the other voice. You’ve also said that when Layer 2 has a rest, it should appear four lines or spaces lower (–6) than its usual position (the middle B line). You’ll see the effects of your settings soon.
Click OK. Now let’s put in the harmony notes. You want to enter them in Layer 2.
For Windows, click the Layer 2 push button in the lower left corner of the screen. For Macintosh, choose Layer 2 from the pop-up menu in the lower left corner of the screen. You’ve just made Layer 2 the active layer of every staff.
Click the Simple Entry Tool $image\Simple_Entry_Tool.gif$ .
Click the half note icon in the Simple Entry palette (or press 6 on the numeric keypad) to select a half note duration.
Position your cursor on the A below middle C on the first beat of measure 10 and click. Do the same for the second half note in measure 10. You can see that the stems are properly flipped. (Note you could also enter these notes with the Simple Entry Caret with the same results).
Press --1 (Mac: --1) to return to Layer 1. The editing frame now displays Layer 1, and Layer 2 is dimmed. --# (1-4) (Mac: --# (1-4) is a keyboard shortcut used to change the active layer while entering.

There are two special cases you should be aware of when working with layers. First, there are times, often found in keyboard music, when the second voice doesn’t begin until the middle of a measure (below right). The solution is to fill up the beginning part of the measure with rests (below left):

To create the appearance of a Layer 2 voice that begins in mid-measure (right), first create “placeholder” rests (left). Use the letter h key to hide the rests.

In Simple Entry, /-click each rest and press the letter h key. The rest dims to indicate it is hidden (and will not print); now it’s merely a placeholder to align the notes of the second voice. (Press the h key again to make the entry reappear.)

The second problem you may encounter is when the notes in each layer are an interval of a second apart, like this:

You need to offset one of them to avoid the collision. One solution is simply to drag either note to one side when you’re editing with the Speedy Entry Tool. (You can drag notes both vertically and horizontally when you’re editing. If you want to make sure you don’t inadvertently move the note sideways when you want to drag it up or down—or vice versa—press the d key as you drag. Finale will constrain the cursor to perfectly horizontal or vertical movements.)

Another solution is to let Finale's Automatic Music Spacing feature work for you. From the Document Menu, choose Document Options, then select Music Spacing Options; make sure that Seconds and Unisons are selected in the Avoid Collision Of section of the dialog box. See Music Spacing in the User Manual for more information.

When You’re Ready to Continue

This tutorial has covered a lot of ground; if you’ve made it to the end, congratulations. Finale offers a lot of power, and you can harness it! Choose Save from the File Menu, if you haven’t already done so. If you think you’ve done enough for one session, choose Exit (Mac: Quit) from the File Menu, and you’ll return to the desktop.

If you want to go on, close this document and turn to the next tutorial.