Finale 2011 comes bundled with a diverse collection of high-quality VST/AU instrument samples created by Garritan Libraries. In addition to instruments from their flagship Garritan Personal Orchestra, Finale also includes instruments from other Garritan libraries including Jazz and Big Band, Concert and Marching Band, Authorized Steinway, and more.

Because the Garritan sounds included with Finale are so comprehensive, providing a full orchestra and more, it’s unclear to some Finale users what would be gained from the additional purchase of the full Garritan Personal Orchestra, or any of the other Garritan libraries. Each individual Garritan library offers expanded instrument choices and techniques. In this post, we’ll highlight some of the expanded features offered in the latest version of Garritan Personal Orchestra, or GPO 4.

GPO 4 is a collection of instruments commonly used in a symphony orchestra. While Finale contains a sample subset of these instruments, the full GPO 4 offers expanded woodwind, brass, solo string, section strings, percussion, keyboards and harps, and choir samples. GPO 4 also includes a number of brass samples from Project SAM, another collection of extremely high-quality orchestral sounds, used in many film-scoring and commercial projects. A full listing of the instruments contained in GPO 4 can be viewed here.

GPO 4 also includes full support of Finale’s Setup Wizard, which means that all of GPO 4’s instruments will appear in your Setup Wizard, and these instrument sounds will be automatically configured when you create a score with the Wizard: Just as when using Finale’s built-in Garritan library, no manual loading of sounds is needed!

In addition to a wider range of instruments, GPO 4 offers expanded control for key switches and continuous controller effects. GPO 4 allows you to tailor the sound of your orchestra to your liking, right in Finale 2011. Finale 2011’s Human Playback® feature contains optimized playback effects for GPO 4, so simple markings such as pizzicato and tremolo will automatically trigger the proper sounds with no extra setup needed. You can hear some samples of GPO in action here.

GPO 4 is available for $149.00, directly from the finalemusic.com.

Have additional questions about Garritan sounds? Are there other topics you'd like us to cover? Please let us know by clicking on "Comments" below.

Last weekend I was in my garden pulling weeds. I expected my wife to be delighted with the results, but she sadly informed me that I’d removed some “good” plants as well. They looked the same to me!

Or, rather, my expertise wasn’t such that I could tell the difference. So, with that in mind…

What’s the difference between these two measures?

“Nothing,” you say.
Okay, I agree, they do look the same, but the measure on the left contains a default whole rest while the measure on the right has a “real” whole rest.

What is the difference?

• A default whole rest is purely visual, and one that Finale automatically places in every blank measure.
• A real whole rest is an entry—something you placed in the score—just like a note or any other kind of rest.

In other words, Finale starts out every piece with default whole rests, and these change to real whole rests only when we consciously enter a whole rest. Because the default rest doesn’t quite have the clout of something you’ve intentionally entered, they work differently:

• Lyrics, articulations, and other note-attached items cannot be attached to a default whole rest.
• Only a real whole rest can be moved (in either Simple or Speedy Entry).
• Only default whole rests can be consolidated into multi-measure rests.

The lesson learned from the third bullet above? When creating a score from which you’ll want to generate parts with multi-measure rests, don’t enter real whole rests; just leave those default whole rests alone.

As I re-read what I’ve written above I suspect that someone is going to read this and think, “Dang, now I have to keep track of what kind of whole rests I’ve used,” and that’s not the case. For most of what we do in Finale it doesn’t make a bit of difference. The only time it matters is when you plan to make multi-measure rests or are having difficulty attaching items to a whole rest. My approach is to only enter real whole rests when I know I want to attach something to them. Done!

Should you ever need to change a real rest to a default whole rest, simply click on a full measure or group of measures and press the backspace key (Windows) or the clear key (Macintosh) to make sure it contains only default whole rests. If you need to convert multiple rests, there are two related plug-ins in the Note, Beam, and Rest Editing folder called “Change to Default Whole Rests” and “Change to Real Whole Rests.”

Would you like some more detail on their use or anything else in this post? Please let me know by clicking on “Comments” below!

At a recent Finale training session, I met a music minister who asked how he might quickly turn hymns into brass quintets. He was so jazzed with my answer I decided to share it with you as well.

The answer is: “Explode Music.”

While I’ve mentioned Explode Music briefly in the past, this week I’d like to cover its use in more detail.

Finale’s Explode Music feature allows you to instantly orchestrate existing music by taking music from one or two staves and automatically distributing it over multiple staves. We’ll start with my friend’s hymn as our example. The following could have been entered via scanning, or any other note entry method in Finale:

Here is how I would use Explode Music to turn this hymn into an arrangement for brass quintet:

1. Launch Finale’s Setup Wizard, and on the first page select the “Garritan Brass Quintet” or the “Brass Quintet” Ensemble (the former sounds best, the latter works better on slower machines or when you’ll share the completed file with others who may not have Finale). From here, follow the prompts in the Setup Wizard, or simply press Next, Next, Next, and Finish.
2. Paste the music above into the top two staves of your new brass quintet chart. The first half should now look something like this: 

3. With the Selection tool chosen, select the top two staves. To do this, click to the left of the top staff’s instrument name (Trumpet in Bb 1), then shift-click to the left of the second staff’s instrument name. Then, from the Utilities menu choose Explode Music, or use the Selection tool shortcut of typing 2.
4. Configure the resulting Explode Music dialog box as I have below. Specifically, split the music into 4 staves and place the music into existing staves starting with Trumpet 1:

5. Click OK and the music is instantly exploded.

In looking at the result, you may notice that the tuba staff remains unpopulated. One quick solution is to copy the trombone part to the tuba part, then lower it an octave. To do so, select the tuba part and type 8 to utilize the transposition shortcut mentioned in last week’s post. Having done that, the first system should look something like this:

That strikes me as pretty quick and easy.

As a final tip, you might consider using the Check Range plug-in if you’re unsure of the ranges of any of the instruments in your arrangements. If you’d like more detail on how to do that, or on anything else Finale-related, please let us know by clicking on “Comments” below!

Ever wish you had a numeric keypad on your laptop to facilitate faster note entry into Finale? If you have an iPod Touch or iPhone Edovia has an app for you!

The Numpad app contains layouts for many keyboard configurations, including one for Finale Simple Entry. 

For more information, visit edovia here.

Looking to create Gregorian Chant or other meterless music in Finale 2011? Need help setting up a MIDI keyboard in Finale? Wondering if your version of Finale will work in the latest version of Windows?

Check out the Finale Knowledge Base!

The Knowledge Base offers answers to frequently asked questions, from “How to” tutorials to troubleshooting tips. 

If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the Knowledge Base, simply click the “Submit a Support Case” link and one of our technical support agents will help you get what you need!

Let us know how the Knowledge Base is working for you by clicking on "Comments" below.

The Garritan Aria Player in Finale 2011

In part because I think its interface makes for a nice blog photo, I thought I’d talk about the cool Garritan Aria Player included with Finale 2011.

This updated player is the same one found in Garritan Personal Orchestra 4.0, and has a new user interface with clearer controls. Plus it looks nice. The most signifigant improvement is likely the “Save Ensembles” feature. This lets you quickly load multiple sounds, even when you’re configuring the player manually. 

“Great,” you’re thinking, “what does that mean?”

If you’re mostly using Finale to create new music, probably nothing – to you. If you set up your scores with the Setup Wizard, all your sounds are automatically configured for you, so you may never use this feature.

However, if you have a lot of older scores, which you occasionally dust off and put to use, this might be a big deal. When you open an older file that wasn’t configured to use Garritan sounds, you have to manually configure which staves play which sounds. It’s actually pretty easy in the Aria interface, but if you have larger scores it can get to be a bit of clicking, and this new feature allows you to bypass the tedium.

If, for example, you have a library of marching band scores, all with the same instrumentation, once you’ve configured one of these in the Aria Player, you can save that configuration as an “Ensemble.” The next time you open a similar file, you can simply load that same Ensemble and you’re done; every staff is configured.

Of more general interest, Finale 2011 also includes an expanded collection of Garritan sounds. Recent additions include bass trombone, brass section, children's choir ahs, flute section, electronic drumkit, synth space voice, synth warm pad, and steel drums. The complete collection appears here.

Please let us know how the Garritan sounds are working for you by clicking on “Comments” below.

While Finale 2011 includes a pre-made handbell template, some customization is often required to adapt the template to your specific ensemble, such as the range of your bells. If this is the case you may prefer to use a plug-in, included with Finale, to automatically create your list of bells used.

To do so, enter the notes of your handbell piece first, then select all and invoke the plug-in from here:

Plug-ins > TG Tools > Create Handbells Used Chart

This is what the plug-in looks like:

Select or adjust any options needed, then press Go. The plug-in will automatically create a handbells used chart at the top of the score, parenthesize any accidentals, resize the staff and notes, and reset the measure numbering.

Want your handbell piece to sound as great as it looks? I'd suggest using the Garritan handbell sounds included with Finale.

Have any questions about how to do that, or anything else? Please let us know by hitting the “Comments” button below.

Expanding upon the improved percussion notation features introduced in Finale 2010, Finale 2011 now allows for quick percussion doubling or instrument changing on the same staff.

A new playback effect was added to the Expression Tool which allows users to change the Percussion MIDI Map, changing the way Finale handles the playback of the percussion staff.

Need to switch from drumset to an orchestral percussion instrument on the same staff?

No problem.

First, create an expression that assigns the Percussion MIDI Map to playback your desired library:

Then create a Staff Style to adjust Staff Attributes (like the number of staff lines) and your Percussion Layout (which controls playback as well as which notes appear as options when you enter notes).

Let us know how this is working for you by clicking on “Comments” below!

The Finale 1.0 box (which held three manuals and more) and the Finale 2011 Quick Reference Guide

Finale has had many different user manuals in the course of the last 22 years. As I’m looking at the new Finale 2011 Quick Reference Guides (Mac and Windows in a small back-to-back booklet), I am amazed at how far Finale has come, not only in its maturity and depth, but also in its ease of use.

Back in 1988 Finale 1.0 included three books that rivaled the Manhattan Yellow Pages in size and weight. Like the program, they were a bit dense and complex: Their bulk certainly didn’t create an impression of being easy to use. They did, however, contain a lot of helpful information. The “Tutorial” volume walked you though sample projects to get you started. The “Reference” volume let you look up any item you encountered in a menu or a dialog box and learn exactly what it did. The “Encyclopedia” volume was my favorite – it listed musical terms alphabetically (so you’d find “crescendos under “C”) and explained how to achieve them.

A new set of manuals was created for Finale 3.0, and these were written by David Pogue, who has since become a technology columnist for The New York Times, a tech correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning and CNBC, and the author of many For Dummies books. (Finale trivia: Some say characters in his novel Hard Drive resembled members of the Finale team…)

The 3.0 manuals were, in my opinion, much better written and organized than their predecessors, but they still came in three large volumes which must have represented a significant percentage of the worldwide paper industry output in those years.  Further complicating matters was that we continued to update the software faster than we could update the manuals, so we would create additional printed “addendums” for our users to lug around.

The next phase occurred with the release of Finale 97, when the User Manual became electronic and integrated within the program, so even when you were on your laptop at the coffee shop, you had access to the entire user manual. The electronic version was also searchable AND easily updated. At the same time the printed materials were reduced to one slim Installation and Tutorial Guide.

Finale 97 clearly represented several steps in the right direction (especially from the perspective of trees), and over the years the electronic component has become more and more refined and augmented by our web-based Knowledge Base, QuickStart Videos,  and a world of support offered on-line. I like the fact that when I invoke the user manual from within Finale today, Finale looks to the web (to access the latest version) but if web access is not available it will automatically reference a locally installed version without any action on my part. This seems like a great implementation, allowing users to be connected to, but not dependant on, the web. Updated Tutorial, Reference, and Encyclopedia information can all be found electronically these days – they can be searched individually or all at once – and they are always up to date.

Finale 2011 represents the next sea change in documentation in the form of the new Finale 2011 Quick Reference Guide. Different than a tutorial, it offers quick answers for how to complete common tasks, and as such is more likely to be referenced again and again, instead of just in the first few weeks of use. The information is presented in a graphic format so you can see at a glance how to do things without reading a lengthy text description, and everything is presented in an amazingly easy-to-understand manner.

If you haven’t seen the Quick Reference Guide you can get a quick peek here, or you can order Finale 2011 or a Finale 2011 upgrade today; both the upgrade and the full version include this handy guide. I think it’s a great way to learn to use software, but then I’m not holding any paper industry stock.

Let us know what you think of the new Quick Reference Guide – or anything else – by clicking on “Comments” below.

Every December for the last twenty years or so I have represented Finale at the Midwest Clinic – the annual International Band and Orchestra Conference held in Chicago. While in the process of talking about Finale at this show, I’ve developed countless friendships over the decades, and look forward to seeing many familiar faces there each year.

Among those faces are Winona and David Holsinger. Talking with them is one of the highlights of the show for me: in part because of my admiration for David as a composer, but also because they are both such delightful people. David loves to talk Finale and always has some suggestions he’d like to see in future versions. Today two specific examples come to mind.

David has a penchant for writing great rhythms: 5/4 and 7/4 are old friends to him. If, like me, you’re a fan of his music you know it simmers and moves with a rhythmic insistence that is quite unique. I have a vivid recollection of him requesting, long ago, a faster way of indicating both a time signature and the desired beaming.

I wish I could have seen his face the first time he right-clicked on a time signature in Finale 2006 and saw this expanded contextual menu:

Options like 5/8 (2+3) and 7/8 (2+2+3) just strike me as soooo David-esque!

More recently, I wish I could have seen David’s face when he first saw the Finale Percussion font included with Finale 2011; I recall him requesting just such a font.

For today’s blog post however, I’d like to recall a specific visit to the Midwest Clinic back in December, 2008. As I arrived in Chicago on Thursday, I was looking forward to the warmth of all the friendly faces to counteract the cold, blustery weather. When I awoke early on Friday, however, I discovered that I had no movement in my left hand, and it didn’t seem to be getting better as the morning passed.

As a pianist, this was a less-than-ideal realization. I showered, laughing as I attempted to wash my hair with a limp hand. While I have a very strong “the show must go on” work ethic, a call to my wife, who is a critical care nurse with a doctorate in nursing, confirmed that I had better take a cab to Northwestern Hospital instead of the tradeshow floor as I had planned.

There I was diagnosed with something called “honeymooner's palsy.” Yup. Apparently some newlyweds, rather than move their sleeping partner off their arm, will endure a night of discomfort only to wake up with some nerve damage. This can also occur to folks who’ve drunk too much and fall asleep in what would otherwise be a painful position. While neither situation described my previous night, I was nevertheless relieved to learn I hadn’t had a stroke, but still a bit apprehensive about the prognosis that I’d probably be fine in a few weeks – or months.

I left the hospital in a bit of a daze to find a text from David:

“The world has too many one-handed concertos already. Get Well!”

This bit of humor was very welcome that day. In time I made a full recovery.

While December is very far off, and I’m not eager to trade snow for today’s sunshine, I’m still looking forward to seeing David, Winona, and everyone else at Midwest again this year As always I’ll be all ears for suggestions of what anyone would like to see in future versions of Finale.

Did Finale 2011 contain answers to items on your Finale wish list? Please share by clicking on “Comments” below!