On May 22, 2006, at 4:58 AM, Mark Q. Simos wrote:
Thanks so much for the various responses to my query. I think the "layers" approach Michael Cook recommends below may be the cleanest technique to use; I haven't made heavy use of layers up till now. From a notation standpoint, there is a "grey area" in this kind of writing where some double-stops are really thought of as chords, and thus would belong in one layer logically; and these drone passages where describing what's going on as two voices is at least visually (with different-directioned stems) helpful for the player. Yet these passages may be interspersed in a single piece, so committing to a layer approach feels a bit like a "workaround" to me if the only purpose is to control stem direction where voices may cross.
Depending on how the piece works, you might consider a combination of layers with hidden rests (hit letter O in Speedy Entry to hide a rest). Some prefer voices to layers in this situation, as voices can come and go without requiring a complete measure, unlike layers, where the rests would have to be hidden.
I assume you got my previous message, where I mentioned that flipping stem direction is L in Speedy Entry? Depending on how complex the situation is, this might be easier than exchanging layers all the time to control stem direction.
From a usability standpoint, I think the "semantics" of how the various stem operations work in the context of either a chord or a polyphonic texture could be more clearly explained in the references. I've found that other operations, like erasure of notes, seem to behave a little unpredictably applied to stacked notes in a chord, and in Speedy vs. Simple Entry - sometimes you can erase just one note of a chord, sometimes the whole chord (and thus its rhythmic position) go.
As for erasure of individual notes in Speedy Entry, if the cursor is aligned directly on a note, hitting Clear on a Mac (backspace over the Enter key on a PC) will remove only that note. If the cursor is NOT aligned on a note, then the entire chord is cleared (turned into a rest.) Hitting Delete on a Mac (the other delete key on a PC) will remove the entire chord regardless, and not leave a rest.
I never use Simple Entry, so I don't know the behaviour in that case. Perhaps someone else has an answer.
I agree that this behaviour could be better explained in the manual. Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
