A video tutorial series teaching a comprehensive understanding of Finale Music Notation Software
**Work Space**
23-6B The Missing Link(ed) Parts Lesson 6B (Advanced)
27.2 Update: Fixed-Sized H-Bars
In the 27.2 update, Finale managed to sneak in an extra option into the Multimeasure Rest Document Options and Multimeasure Rest Edit window that allows you to not stretch the shape. This makes it much easier to get Fixed-Size H-Bars for your Multimeasure Rests in Finale!
Finale V27.2
Subscriber Request #11
Tacets During Cadenzas
Cadenzas can be tricky in Finale to set up in the first place, but also tricky is what to do with the other instruments that are resting during a cadenza. Barry Nitikman had asked me how to do this, and although there are actually several ways to accomplish this, I’ve come up with a somewhat novel approach when the cadenza covers more than one bar using a custom shape as a Multimeasure rest character!
Finale 27.2
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Finale 27 was released on June 15th, 2021.
Many of the videos on this site were created using Finale 26, but unless otherwise noted, they are all still very relevant to version 27. The videos here will summarize the changes made in version 27 and will also serve as addendums to several of the categories that may have been impacted by those changes, particularly the addition of the SMuFL fonts.
You can also check out the official Finale 27 Review I did with Philip Rothman at Scoring Notes:
Finale version 27 review: SMuFL and MusicXML 4.0 support
And the Podcast:
Finale 27 and the SMuFL Shuffle
On 11/16/21, Finale released the first maintenance update, Finale 27.1
Check out the Scoring Notes review here:
Finale version 27.1: SMuFL burrows deeper
On 3/2/22, Finale released the second maintenance update, Finale 27.2 (Anchor Link)
Check out the Scoring Notes review here:
The Latest News
9/9/24
On 8/26/24, MakeMusic announced that they are ending development of Finale after 36 years.
Conquering Finale will therefore be winding down operations as well.
This will (likely) be the last video in the Conquering Finale series, I have a lot to say so it’s a bit on the long side. Feel free to use the chapters to skip around as needed. There’s a bit of news and facts about the Finale's end and then there is a very long discussion about MusicXML; what it is, how to export it out of Finale, and how to import it into both Sibelius and Dorico. There’s also some final words and some thank you’s to be said towards the end. Thanks to all the viewers for sticking with the series!
Finale v27.4.1
Sibelius v2024.6
Dorico v5.1.51
Spotlight on Plug-ins #17
JW Staff Polyphony...
Brand new in the 27.3 maintenance update is the newly refreshed, de-bugged, and native to Apple Silicon version of JW Staff Polyphony…! For those of you uninitiated into the wonderful world of 3rd party plug-ins, eight of the JW plug-ins are no longer “3rd Party”, they are now natively installed with Finale, so there’s no excuse not to know about them and use them! The JW Staff Polyphony gives you four categories of things to do to help you transform the material in your staves in unique and powerful ways allowing you to quickly create four Horn parts out of block chords, or transpose, add, or delete a single line of notes from a series of chords, or even simply swap the contents of one staff with another! There’s a lot it can do with Layers, Staves, Chord Lines, and Percussion Lines. And there are a lot of sub-options and filters as well, making this plug-in almost unimaginably flexible in a myriad of scenarios. At (23:11), I give a nice demo of how to turn block chords in a Violin I staff into a fully realized string section. That’s just one of the many practical things you can do with this incredible plug-in
Finale V27.3
Spotlight on Plug-ins #14
Chord Kerner
To download the Chord Kerner Lua script, visit this page on Michael McClennan’s website:
https://michaelmcclennan.com/macros/finale-lua-scripts/
Michael McClennan has created an incredible tool for editing chord suffixes called Chord Kerner. Chord Kerner, which runs on RGP Lua, effectively replaces Finale’s built-in Chord Suffix Editor. If you’ve ever tried to use that editor, you’ll understand how horrible it really is. Michael’s Chord Kerner does everything that the Chord Suffix Editor does (and a little more) except with a much better user interface! Changing the positions of individual characters (4:24) is a breeze, as is adjusting fonts, styles, and the characters themselves (9:30). There’s even a (nuclear) option that will show you every chord in your suffix library in your score (13:56). There’s some bonus material towards the end of the video that’s definitely worth watching if you’re curious about James Darcy Argue’s Jazz chord library. I even demonstrate a version of his library that I created using the Arial font (19:08).
I’m making that Arial Chord Suffix Library available for free to anybody that wants to have it! It was an INCREDIBLE amount of work (all done with the Chord Kerner tool), so although it’s free… a donation to the Conquering Finale series is always welcome! Click the link below to download the ZIP file. When you open it, you’ll get a .lib file as well as a PDF with instructions on how to install the library and some other recommended settings for the Document Options to give you the best results. This library will only work with v27.2 and later.
Finale V27.2
Jason's Arial Chord Suffix Library