I had mixed feelings about the new expressions scheme. On the one
hand I was delighted that the positioning had been expanded with
multiple levels of definition instead of the simple X,Y for each
expression; but on the other hand I felt it fell far short of what it
might have in terms of making things easier for my own use.
In particular, I was disappointed with the UI. It's hard to tell how
much of it is due to unfamiliarity with the new, and how much is just
the design, but I felt like I spent an awful lot of time clicking
around between windows to put things where I wanted them, as opposed
to the old system where I could just type the Y position directly and
be done with it. As with so many things in Finale, I get the
impression that they're trying to shove all this "under the hood",
devoting a great deal of effort to trying to make it so that ordinary
users would rarely or never visit the definition dialogs at all, but
very little effort to making it more efficient for those who do visit
them regularly.
I think I had an unrealistic expectation that once I got all my
definitions in how I wanted them, I'd be able to just place
expressions and have them land where I want >75% of the time, but it
never worked out that way for me. The main thing is that every
expression just has a single definition for default Y positioning.
That's fine for an orchestra part, but nearly all of my work is piano
vocal. In general, I'm going to want to put most markings in the
voice part above the staff, whereas in the piano part most markings
are going to go between the staves, at a Y position that will vary
depending on what's going on in each hand. The new system just can't
handle that.
I experimented for a while with two separate definitions for all my
expressions, one above the staff and one below, but that proved more
trouble than it was worth. I like using metatools for my dynamics and
having two keystrokes for each one was taxing both my memory and the
supply of available characters on the keyboard. Ultimately I went
back to just one definition for each, defined for the voice part
(which I could define to be correct ~90% of the time), accepting that
I'll just have to specify Y position for anything in the piano part.
That means that placing expressions in the piano part is now slower
for me than it were before. In the old system clicking took me
straight to the X Y positions and since I usually knew exactly where
I wanted it, I just entered the numbers and was done. Now I have to
place the expression by default, then shift-click to change the
positioning. Also, the math is harder now because my default Y is
based on staffline or entry, so if the entry is bumping it up, I have
to work that in and net the offsets in my head to know what number to
enter as Y. I could avoid that by defining the Y just to the staff,
but for my voice part I do want staff-and-entry so that would bring
me back to the problem of having multiple definitions for
expressions, which again is more trouble than it's worth.
But after a while I've started to get used to the extra clicks and
extra math, and I'm OK with it. It's still a significant improvement
over all. I really like having much more levels at which to define
things; I am completely satisfied with horizontal position, which is
wonderful and much more powerful than it was before; and I like
having what amounts to multiple typographic and positioning defaults
for a new expression by way of the categories.
On the whole, even with its flaws, I think it's still my favorite
improvement between v04 and v10. Perhaps I'm forgetting something, I
can't think of any other change between the two that I much care
about. It seems like the big things were part extraction and
playback, neither of which I ever use.
mdl
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