Dear folks,
David Fenton brings up valid questions concerning the mysterious and illogical Tempo Tool. It has remained virtually the same since it's first appearance in Finale 2. Many of you have said that you never use it. You don't have any way to know what it is actually doing. The management of tempo has always been a mine field in Finale. It is subject to 1) any expression that has been set up to affect tempo, 2) it can be set in the Playback Window (but only for the first tempo, and when is that setting overridden?), 3) it responds to the arcane settings for executable shapes, 4) the Tempo Tool itself (and when are its settings "on" or "off"?), 5) Human Playback (which of your tempo settings are honored, and which are inferred from expressions without tempo settings you attached?) and finally 6) various plug-ins (such as JW Tempo, which worked so well and intelligently, but is no longer available to Mac users).
The Repeat Tool was another mystery, but finally it has been reworked and greatly improved in Finale 2005. Why has the Tempo Tool remained unchanged, mysterious, and counter-intuitive all this time? For several years I have advocated a straight-forward tempo management in the form of a tempo track that would show tempo settings by measure number (and beat) as well as changes, including rit. and accel. When you view it, you see exactly what the tempo history of a piece will be for playback, and you would be able to enter new tempo settings where you want them as well as rit., accel., or swing.
I'm really happy to have JW Space Systems, thanks to Robert Patterson. If we could get JW Tempo ported to Mac, I'd be really happy and could ignore the Tempo Tool until something is done about it. How about it, Robert?
Thanks for listening. Typing this hasn't been easy since my left hand is in a cast, and it's been hunt and peck since the surgery last Wednesday.
Hal -- Harold Owen 2830 Emerald St., Eugene, OR 97403 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit my web site at: http://uoregon.edu/~hjowen FAX: (509) 461-3608 _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
