Lora Crighton wrote:
Is there any way to make Finale do gregorian chant?
Depends upon how authentic you want your chant to appear. If you are
wanting to do Chant for a schola skilled in reading and singing from
square notation, the "Medieval" plug in is capable of accomplishing
this, for a fee. If I need a plainsong melody, for an "average choir",
(average in this case, meaning NOT particularly skilled in square
notation), I define a large meter signature (50/4 for example), and
start notating the chant in half and quarter note values, with half
notes used for longer durations, and quarter notes used for shorter ones
[NB: I disfavor equlist interpretations of note values in plainsong],
and when I come to the end of the phrase, I trim the meter signature to
what is actually in the measure, select special tools (stems), click the
measure, select all the stems, and remove them. I change the barlines
to tick barlines as needed. Then, when singing the work, I advise the
singers that open noteheads are longer than solid ones, but not
necessarily twice as long.
If I want full square notation, and also want to provide an
accompaniment, I make use of the square note fonts available from St.
Meinrad. These fonts map the characters needed for Square note notation
across three sets of Character fonts, assigning the various notational
elements to keys of the keyboard. What I do here, is in setting up the
score, define a staff for the schola, with no lines, and displaying
nothing, no key signature, no meter signature, no clefs. I fill this
staff with eighth notes, and prepare the accompaniment in the staves set
up for that. I enter the text, using type into score, assigning the
text to the eighth notes in the staff for the schola; when the lyrics
are entered for each phrase, I go back to the beginning of the measure,
and using the "o" key, in Finale, hide the eighth rests. Then I define
a text block assigning it to the measure of the staff containging the
notes for the schola, and setting the text for the block to the
appropriate Meinrad font, in the approppriate size, and create the chant
line above the lyrics. When each line is finished, I adjust the
position of the of the text block so it exactly lines up with the system
bar line at the left side of the page.
As I recally, I could not figure out any way to make the method above
provide playback; I seem to recall trying hidden noted to hand the
lyrics on, instead of hidden rests, but hidden notes don't play back,
and I can't recall ever seeing any way to make them do so.
If all you need is a plainsong line, with square notation, the St.
Meinrad fonts by themselves will do the trick.
ns
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