Hello List, [FinMac 2014 working on a file initiated in 2014.] More of a rant than anything else but if anyone has suggestions to fix these issues, they will be most appreciated! I have reported some of these issues since the company was called Coda Music but nothing has really happened to fix this area of the program.
The Lyrics Tool must be one of the most frustrating parts of Finale… I have a number of problems that are driving me to distraction and i have struggled with them for years. Unless I am missing something, the Lyrics Tool really only functions properly if you are entering a song (verses and chorus). Choral music where multiple voices sing in counterpoint with similar or different text is not handled at all well. My current problem: I am trying to enter lyrics in a short piece for six voices (about 50 bars long). Sometimes the text in each part is identical and in rhythmic unison; at other times, the text and rhythms are different. Because each part sings a slightly different text, I have tried different ways of entering the text: Type into Score and Type into the Lyrics window followed by Click Assignment. In each method, just when I think i have the text set, it goes awry: text appears in the wrong place, formatting is lost, etc, etc. For example: In Type into Score, I type each voice in sequence which results in all text being in Verse 1 with no gaps and looks like ‘stream of consciousness’ gibberish. Having inadvertently left out a hyphen, my attempt to edit in the Lyrics Window resulted in chaos across all parts when the hyphen was added, i.e., text re-assigned itself to incorrect positions and voices. I tried another method where i typed text in each voice on each page in order…again, chaos and gibberish as above. My latest attempt is to Type into Score line by line but now I have a new problem: The text is macaronic...Latin and English...and I wish to have the Latin in italics. Finale constantly ‘forgets’ the italics and I have to go back and re-do the italics. Just as i think things are fixed, I check the piece and find some italics are forgotten again; the more corrections I make, the more Finale seems to mess up! Finally, an issue that has bugged me for a long time: why is there a limit to the number of words that can be entered? Last year, I was working on a one act opera which had nine independent vocal parts plus the orchestra, formatted 92 pages of music. I discovered a problem when I reached the apparent limit of text input for one verse, sections of lyrics were simply dropped without warning. In such a long piece, it was disastrous. My eventual work-around was to enter lyrics in different verses which meant I had to move the base-line of the text for each verse. Any ideas for avoiding these issues? Stephen ________________________________________________________________________________ ars est longa, vita brevis Stephen Cronin's home page: http://www.stephen.cronin.name <http://www.stephen.cronin.name/> {real+imagined} http://www.real-imagined.com.au <http://www.real-imagined.com.au/> _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
