Trent J:
I've got a couple of items with figured bass that I eventually intend to
set in Finale. When I get to these, I expect to follow the suggestion
in the Finale Users guide about using the facilities of the Chord tool
to try to implement the figured bass. I expect that this will involve
developing new chord libraries, and if there is a good tutorial on this,
I have yet to find it. More daunting, I don't know of anyone who has
been happy with the results that they have obtained setting Figured Bass
in any method. Intuitively, it seems to me that the chord tool is
probably the way to go, but I suspect those most knowledgeable about the
chord tool have are least interested in figured bass, and those most
interested in figured bass are perhaps among the least interested in the
chord tool. One of the reasons in favor of my using the chord tool, is
that the chord tool will support playback while text blocks do not.
While articulation and expression tools also affect playback, I don't
know if these tools can effectively manage figured bass.
A couple of months ago, I bought my first digital camera, and I've been
spending some time looking at the digital processing of images, in
particular the amount of meta-data that is recorded in and for digital
images. One of the reasons I was interested in this, is that I had
begun approaching the same thing with Finale. Finale already has a
small amount built in, in the form of the "file info", the title,
composer, copyright info, &c. But it has been an irritation of mine,
probably since 2k1 (which was just a couple of months after I started
using Finale; I bought 2k in May, and 2k1 came out in August) that
Finale does not have more meta data designed in than it does. Since
most of my work has been choral, I would have liked metadata for source
/ lyricist, and translator. And while there was some improvement in the
amount of "file info" over the years, I still find it insufficient, to
the point that a couple of years ago, I decided to abandon the set-up
wizard, in favor of use of more templates as starting points for
compositions. What I have evolved at this point, is that the first
couple of pages at the very beginning of my file with all of the text
blocks I need for a piece of choral music. There are predefined blocks
for headers, footers, page numbers, Titles, Subtitles, Composer,
Arranger, Lyricist / translator, dedication line, publisher, &c. I also
include special information about the file in these pages: a block
usually details printer settings, how the paper is oriented, what the
settings in the dialog are, and in what order the pages are printed,
and if there is a reference to a graphic, a text block on these pages
details where the graphic is found, and where it is in my file system.
It is trivial in this instance to add "style blocks" if I need one for
special purposes, where the contents can be copied into a "real" text
block that might be placed later in the score.
It seems to me that one thing which might be a time saver in what you
are attempting to do is to adjust your work flow procedures. If you put
all of the figured bass in at one time, just before you start, you can
change the default text block font to the font and size you prefer for
figured bass, and then when you are done entering the figured bass,
change the default fonts back.
ns
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