Cue notes

Cue notes are reduced-size notes in a score that a player under normal circumstances isn’t meant to play. Usually they indicate musical material being played by other instruments, and are used as an aid for keeping track of one’s place in the music, especially during long rests. Or they may appear in one player’s part for him or her to play in case the primary instrument or player isn’t available. See also Add Cue Notes Plug-in

In addition to the method described here, you can reduce note sizes in several other ways—only the notehead, for example. See Note size for more information.

To create cue notes on a full-size staff

Enter the music at normal size.
Select the layer your cue notes are in from the Select Layer submenu View Menu.
From the Document Menu, choose Show Active Layer Only.
Click the Selection Tool $image\Selection_Tool.gif$ and select a region. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts. You can select as little as one note, or as much as an entire piece.
From the Utilities Menu, choose Change, then Note Size. The Resize Notes dialog box appears.
Indicate how small you want the cue notes to be by typing a number into the number box. This number is expressed as a percentage of normal-size notes, so “50%” would give you notes that are half size; numbers between 50 and 75 generally produce good results.
Click OK (or press enter). To restore the notes, repeat the process but set the notes’ size to 100%.

To create a cue staff

You can also create an entire staff at a reduced size.

Enter the music at normal size. If you’re not in Page View, choose Page View from the View Menu.
Click the Resize Tool $image\Resize_Tool.gif$ , and click on the desired staff. The Resize Staff dialog box appears.
Enter the desired reduction value. For a cue staff, 60% to 75% of full size would be a typical reduction.
Specify the range of systems in which you want this staff reduced. You can also reduce an entire system. Follow these same instructions, but instead of clicking on a staff, click between two staves. You’ll be offered two extra options: Hold Margins (to ensure that the horizontal dimension of the system doesn’t get reduced) and Resize Vertical Space (to reduce the space below the system as well). For a further discussion of these options, see Resize Staff System dialog box.
Click OK (or press enter).

To restore a cue staff to full size

Follow the instructions above, but when the Resize Staff dialog box appears, type 100 (%). Specify the range of systems you want affected.
Click OK.

To prevent attached lyrics and chord symbols from shrinking

When you shrink notes, Finale automatically shrinks anything attached to them proportionally—lyrics, chord symbols, articulations and expressions, and so on. Under some circumstances, you may not want these attached items to change size along with the notes.

Note: For lyrics, a simpler alternative to the method below is to specify a Fixed Size when you select a type size; see To set the font for lyrics globally.

For chords, a simpler alternative to the method below is to specify a Fixed Size in Document Options-Fonts.

Enter the cue notes in Layer 2, 3, or 4. If you’ve already entered them in Layer 1, use the Move/Copy Layers command in the Edit Menu to put them into another layer. If you’ve already attached the lyrics, chord symbols, or other elements to the cue notes, remove them; you’ll be inserting them into a different layer.
Enter normal-sized “dummy” notes in Layer 1. It makes no difference what the pitches are; in a moment, they’ll be invisible. Make sure they match the rhythm of the cue notes.
Attach your lyrics, chord symbols, or other markings to the dummy notes.
Click the Staff Tool $image\Staff_Tool.gif$ .
From the Staff Menu, choose Apply Staff Styles.
Select Blank Notation: Layer 1, and then click OK. The Blank Notation setting hides all notes in Layer 1, but preserves anything attached to them. In short, you now have cue notes in one layer (unaffected by the Blank Notation setting), and associated lyrics and markings at normal size in another layer—but they appear to be attached to the cue notes.