Mirroring

To create a mirror (intelligent copy)

You can only make mirrors in measures that are currently empty.

1. Click the Mirror Tool  , and from the Mirror Menu, choose Dragging Mirrors Measures.
2. Select the music that will serve as the source of the copies.
3. Drag the selection so that it’s superimposed on the first target measure. Remember, the target measures must be empty. If the first target measure is offscreen, scroll to it; then, while pressing ctrl and shift simultaneously, click it. In either case, the Mirror Attributes dialog box appears.
4. If you want the mirror to be transposed in relation to the source measure, click Transposition, specify the interval, and click OK. For example, if you’re doubling a violin line in the cellos, you’d probably want to transpose the mirror (the cello copy) down an octave or two. In this case, you’d choose Down, Diatonically, and Octave from the drop-down lists menus.
5. Specify any elements of the source music that you don’t want to appear in the copy. To do so, click Don’t Draw, and then click the elements you don’t want to appear (Lyrics, Chords, or Beam Extensions, for example).
6. Click OK (or press enter).

To identify mirrored measures in the score

• From the Window Menu, choose Advanced Tools. Click the Mirror Tool  . A mirror icon appears on any measure that’s a mirror of a “normal” measure.

To convert mirrored measures into “normal” measures

1. Click the Selection Tool   and select a region. See Selecting music for some region-selecting shortcuts.
2. From the Utilities Menu, choose Check Notation, then Convert Mirrors. A dialog box appears, asking you to confirm your decision.
3. Click Yes.

To create a composite mirror

Using the Mirror Tool, you can create a measure that contains intelligent copies of individual notes from several normal measures. The resulting patchwork measure is called a composite mirror.

Note: Composite mirroring combines notes from different measures into a single measure. If you want to create a mirror consisting of selected notes from a single measure, copy the entire measure (see “To create a mirror,” above), and see To rebeam or edit an existing mirror,” below, for instructions on choosing selective elements of it. 

1. From the Window Menu, choose Advanced Tools. Click the Mirror Tool  ; then double-click an empty measure (the target measure). The Tilting Mirror dialog box appears, so called because it can be made to “reflect” the contents of any other measure in the score. At the moment, the Tilting Mirror dialog box is blank.
2. Click the up, down, left, or right arrow buttons to maneuver your “window” on the score to the measure whose notes you want to mirror. Click the up arrow to move up a staff, the right arrow to move to the next measure, and so on. As you proceed, you’ll see the contents of each measure you view, adjusted for the target measure’s clef. (If you move your “view” to another mirrored measure, it appears blank in this window.)
3. When you’re viewing a measure whose notes you want to mirror, drag the “cut bar” handles inward to enclose the desired notes. The “cut bars” are the dotted lines at each end of the window, whose handles you drag to move them.
4. Click Next. Finale keeps track of the notes you just selected and restores the cut bars to the ends of the window, ready for another set of notes.
5. Repeat the last three steps, as necessary. Use the arrows to locate the measure, the cut bars to identify the notes, and click Next to add the selected notes to the target measure. To remove one of the elements of your composite mirror, click the Prev (or Next) button until the notes appear in the window; then click Delete. If you want to insert a new selection between two existing ones, click the Prev or Next buttons until you’re viewing the selection after the insertion point; then click Insert. Use the directional arrows and cut bars as usual.
6. Click OK. The Mirror Attributes dialog box appears. Specify a transposition, and specify musical items to ignore (Don’t Draw), as needed.
7. Click OK (or press enter). The composite measure appears in the score with a mirror icon. If any of your measure-fragment selections were blank, any selections after the blank selection are ignored.

To rebeam or edit an existing mirror

1. From the Window Menu, choose Advanced Tools. Click the Mirror Tool  , and shift-double-click the mirrored measure. The Mirror Attributes window appears.
2. If you want to rebeam the notes in the measure, click Rebeam, and specify a rebeaming option. Rebeam to Time Signature beams the notes in the usual way, correcting any peculiar beaming that arose from the use of composite mirroring. If you click Rebeam to Beam Chart, a window appears with a handle on each eighth (or smaller value) note in the measure. In this window, you break the beam to a note (from the previous note) by clicking its handle. Any notes whose handles you haven’t selected will be beamed when you return to the document. (To beam all notes together, select the first handle in the measure.) Click OK when you’re finished.
3. If you want the mirror to display only selected notes (instead of all notes) from the source measure, click Selective Mirror ID. A picture of the complete composite mirror appears, with a handle on every note. Click the handles of the notes you want to include in this sub-selection of your composite mirror, known as a selective mirror. Any handles you don’t select will be omitted from the final display of the measure (or turned into rests). You can use a selective mirror to select the melody notes within a triadic passage, for example. Click OK when you’re finished selecting handles.
4. Specify a transposition, if desired. Click OK.