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| MakeMusic Forum > Public Forums > Finale - Windows > Chord-Only Charts | Forum Quick Jump
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Aaron Latina
Registered Member
      
Date Joined Oct 2008
Total Posts : 11
| Posted 6/24/2009 6:45 PM (GMT -5) |   | Hey guys, long-time Finale user. I upgraded to 2010 last week.
The finale website states "Easily create chord-only charts".
I can't find any documentation on this new feature.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
Aaron | | Back to Top | |
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Zuill
"The Troll"
Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 11751
| Posted 6/24/2009 9:33 PM (GMT -5) | | | |
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Edward Palamar
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2007
Total Posts : 82
| Posted 6/25/2009 9:18 AM (GMT -5) | | | I don't see how you can use the word 'un-intuitive' to describe the necessity, for the sake of clarity, mind you, of attaching the chord to something visual to take the guess work out of when to play the chord. The beginner needs to understand rhythm as a communicative skill - if one desires only lyrics and chords, then Windows Notepad can suffice, but that is more a digression if one is actually trying to teach Finale to a beginner - so I agree that non-attached chords have some merit - but how intuitive is the introduction of this feature for the long run - for instance, say you're teaching a beginner to place chords on only '1' and/or '3', when the user's skill develops to the point of adding a melody line, does Finale 'intuit' the simplicity and attach (and/or place) them as needed?
As a reminder, the tertian harmony chord library and .MUS file containing it (with updated playback parameters) may be found at
http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=5&m=225441
As a further question, is this library found in releases past 2008 as I attempted to 'swami' it in via the knowledge base / tech questions?
Elias (of Jesus [John {Resurrected}])
AKA St. John the Baptist;
AKA St. Elias Post Edited (Edward Palamar) : 6/26/2009 2:10:11 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Davidmorehead
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2000
Total Posts : 2048
| Posted 6/25/2009 10:43 AM (GMT -5) | |
Edward Palamar said...I don't see how you can use the word 'un-intuitive' to describe the necessity, for the sake of clarity, mind you, of attaching the chord to something visual to take the guess work out of when to play the chord. The beginner needs to understand rhythm as a communicative skill - if one desires only lyrics and chords, then Windows Notepad can suffice, but that is more a digression if one is actually trying to teach Finale to a beginner - so I agree that non-attached chords have some merit - but how intuitive is the introduction of this feature for the long run - for instance, say you're teaching a beginner to place chords on only '1' and/or '3', when the user's skill develops to the point of adding a melody line, does Finale 'intuit' the simplicity and attach (and/or place) them as needed?
Right from the beginning, Finale should have given the option to attach the chords to beats when there are no notes or rests in the bar. But, having to put quarter rests in another layer and then hide them with a staff stlye seems like over kill when you only want on or two chords over a blank bar.
The good news is you can always enter your chords the old way if you like. But, for people that are just learning Finale, now they can open up a blank score, select the chord tool and start placing chords on a blank stave without ever opening up the manual. This is much less intimidating, and dare I say, it IS intuitive.
I have been talking to a lot of my arranger/composer friends lately and they say they have tried Finale and Sibelius and they prefer Sibelius. I asked them why. They say it is because Sibelius makes things easier. I don't know because I have never tried Sibelius but this is what my friends are telling me. I am glad Finale is making an effort to make things easier. Granted, some of the people that say Sibelius makes things easier never really took the time to learn Finale's vast amount of shortcuts. They admitted this when I started asking them how they were entering the music. But, most people might not even have tried Sibelius if they were able to get up and running on Finale without a huge learning curve. It is very difficult for me to judge Finale's learning curve these days because I have been using it for 19 years. That is why I like to get feedback from new users. Thankfully, Makemusic is including a lot of tutorial videos with the program these days. I think that will help a lot.
Back to chord entry...The best of both worlds would be if Finale would tell you what beat you are attaching a chord to. (when there is no music in the bar) Maybe this will be in a future update. In the mean time we still have the old way of attached to something in the measure so you know exactly when your chord will play. I always shut of the chord playback feature so this isn't an issue for me. There are many times when the chord playback is wrong so, if I want chords playing in the score, I enter them on an extra staff or in hide them with slash and rhythm notation in the piano part.
David Morehead
Finale 2006, 2008 & 2009 on a Sony Vaio Laptop
Facebook.com | | Back to Top | |
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CreoleJazz
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2000
Total Posts : 139
| Posted 6/25/2009 12:11 PM (GMT -5) | | | This new feature is the main reason I upgraded and I'd have paid twice as much for it. Chord entry is much easier and takes far less time.
It used to be that after entering a chord, you'd hit TAB and it would take you to the next note (or rest) so you could enter the next chord (or not). Now hitting TAB jumps you to "one" of the next measure. SPACE BAR will take you to the next beat. Very cool. Makes perfect sense.
Of course, I deal primarily with 4/4 time and chords always fall on the beat. I suppose if you had chord changes every eighth note (half a beat), and needed more than four chords within a measure, there may be some challenge there. I haven't looked into it but maybe there's a way to adjust the increment.
I agree with those who say this is long overdue. Love it.
"It's a treat to beat your feet." The New Creole Jazz Band
3.0 GHz Dell, 4GB RAM, Windows XP; Finale 2010 | | Back to Top | |
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petey forrest
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 1999
Total Posts : 511
| Posted 6/25/2009 7:24 PM (GMT -5) | |
Davidmorehead said...
Now, we need to be able to hold the control key, click on a chord, and then drag to make a copy. (This is a standard windows shortcut) Actually, it should work for articulations, expressions, crescendos, etc...Once you have an item on screen you should be able to hold down control, click on it and then drag a copy to a new location.
I've had to return to using Sibelius for my ukulele lead sheets for that very reason -- creating chord fretboards anywhere in the measure. However, I cannot control click a fretboard to copy it in Sib. I must click on the fretboard, then press the ALT key and click and drag. It superimposes a copy of the fretboard and I can't really drag it anywhere. I then have to click elsewhere, then click on again on the new chord and drag it. Alternately, I can easily click on a fretboard, do a CONTROL C and then click on the measure and do a CONTROL V so I get my chord copy.
Finale really needs to make copying fretboards already in the score easy like that. I usually notate the melody line first and then add the uke fretboards later. Simple copying is a must!
petey
finale 2008 | | Back to Top | |
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Bertrand Person
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2009
Total Posts : 11
| Posted 6/27/2009 2:53 PM (GMT -5) | | | I am relieved to be reading these forums before laying down my money to buy Finale!
I am a guitar player, I compose by playing a chord sequence whilst thinking up a melody line.
When I think I have something useful, I write down the chords and notate the (still incomplete) melody.
So there is probably no middle-8, no intro, just fragments of ideas.
But I would still want to write down the chords for the full length of the song to show to my collaborators, and I would prefer to do it without having to create hidden layers of notes. That would take time, not save time!
I guess if you want to create a score of a completed song for, well, even a full orchestra! - Finale is the right tool.
But if you are a guitarist and need a notation tool to accompany you during the composition process, I think I need something else? | | Back to Top | |
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Jetcopy
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2000
Total Posts : 2691
| Posted 6/27/2009 4:03 PM (GMT -5) | | Bertrand Person said...
I am relieved to be reading these forums before laying down my money to buy Finale!
I am a guitar player, I compose by playing a chord sequence whilst thinking up a melody line.
When I think I have something useful, I write down the chords and notate the (still incomplete) melody.
So there is probably no middle-8, no intro, just fragments of ideas.
But I would still want to write down the chords for the full length of the song to show to my collaborators, and I would prefer to do it without having to create hidden layers of notes. That would take time, not save time!
I guess if you want to create a score of a completed song for, well, even a full orchestra! - Finale is the right tool.
But if you are a guitarist and need a notation tool to accompany you during the composition process, I think I need something else?
Maybe I'm confused, but Fin 2010 does exactly what you're asking. You can put chords on an otherwise empty staff and fill in melody and/or lyrics later if desired.
JT
G4 Powerbook, OSX 10.4.11, 1.67 GHz, 2 GB ram | | Back to Top | |
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Bertrand Person
Registered Member
Date Joined Jun 2009
Total Posts : 11
| Posted 6/29/2009 4:46 AM (GMT -5) | | @Yrjö Fager: Thanks for the clip, that couldn't be quicker nor more intuitive! - Chord pictures; do I need them? H'm.
I've downloaded the Finale demo and have a look at it. | | Back to Top | |
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DCrocker
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2000
Total Posts : 413
| Posted 7/4/2009 2:19 AM (GMT -5) | | "Chord-only" charts:
Sounds like chord symbols above the lyrics for a New Jersey bar band...
dean | | Back to Top | |
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Mike Rosen
himself
Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 6553
| Posted 7/4/2009 10:12 AM (GMT -5) | | Yrjö Fager said...Chord symbols over lyrics is a very common practice in "campfire music", pop/rock, and e.g. contemporary Christian "praise and worship" music. I think the most common way to do that is using a monospaced typewriter font and do the whole thing in pure text, because there's no software out there to directly support that kind of quick-and-dirty notation. Why can't the computer and music theory hygienists step down from their ivory towers... 
Finale does this (and has done this for quite some time) with the template for Lyrics and Chords, found in the Lead Sheet Templates folder. Very simple, very fast.
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
WebMaster for the Seattle SeaChordsmen
www.seachordsmen.org
NEW SITE www.specialmillwork.com/finale_tips.htm
Print Music 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
Favorite reference: Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, Gerou & Lusk, 1996
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker." | | Back to Top | |
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Yrjö Fager
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 36
| Posted 7/4/2009 5:30 PM (GMT -5) | | Oops, I had forgotten about that template. I checked it out, and I must say, it's a kludge at best, and Notepad is still much faster and more intuitive. ;) And I don't mean Finale Notepad. In the Lyrics and Chords template, Finale's musical elements only seem to be used as dummy objects, so it doesn't really give any advantage over a simple text editor with a monospaced font, at least as far as I can see. (Maybe I should read the manual)
For "directly supporting" lyrics and chords, I think there would need to be a typewriter font entry window like Notepad, and then, if the user wants, she could place all that inexact, imprecise, vague stuff to musical time positions. I think doing something like this would need a few new features like lyrics and chords that don't need to attach to a musical element or even to any absolute musical position. That would be quite far from what we're used to with notation programs... ;) In Finale 2010 there's the new, more free chord entry system, but what I'm suggesting would need to go much further. The lyrics and chords would need to exist somewhere even before Finale knows almost anything about where they are in the timeline. The only thing a lyrics-and-chords sheet specifies, strictly interpreted, is the order in which the chords are played and lyrics are sung, and if there's text below a chord, it means the text is attached to the chord. But that's all.
One approach that comes to mind is how karaoke videos are made in some programs. I have a program called Power Video Karaoke, which allows you to sync lyrics to an audio track by tapping the space bar. Each time you tap, the "cursor" advances to the next syllable or word, and the one that the cursor was an when you tapped, is attached to that time position. www.powerkaraoke.com/src/prod_powervkaraoke.php
By the way, I have NO idea if anyone in the whole world would be willing to pay for a tool like this. ;) A text editor seems to do the job. Many people even use MS Word or some other word processor, with non-monospaced fonts, so the horizontal sync between chord and lyric lines is harder to keep under control. So if even that sort of chaos is okay, I guess they aren't interested in advancing to a more exact musical notation. Those who are, have probably already got Finale or Sibelius. Or both.
Finale 2009 + Sibelius 4 + Cubase 5Post Edited (Yrjö Fager) : 7/4/2009 4:33:35 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | |
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Mike Rosen
himself
Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 6553
| Posted 7/4/2009 6:22 PM (GMT -5) | | Yrjö,
I guess I don't understand what you want. The lyrics and chords template lets you place each lyric under an indicator: the eighth rest. The chord tool lets you put the chords directly above the lyric where you want the change, or, if there are multiple changes, just skip the beats when you insert the lyric. Forget to skip? Just mouse in additional rest, as needed. Then, the staff style hides the staff line and rests.
I don't see how your typewriter is easier. But of course, you're free to do it however you like!
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
WebMaster for the Seattle SeaChordsmen
www.seachordsmen.org
NEW SITE www.specialmillwork.com/finale_tips.htm
Print Music 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
Favorite reference: Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, Gerou & Lusk, 1996
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker." | | Back to Top | |
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Yrjö Fager
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2007
Total Posts : 36
| Posted 7/5/2009 3:38 AM (GMT -5) | | After a bit of tweaking, I was able to produce a lyrics-and-chords chart that suits my tastes. I did these changes to the template: (1) left-align lyrics in Document Options / Lyrics, (2) Chords / Left-Align Chords, (3) hide fretboards (turn off Chord / Show Fretboards).
However, I don't really see much benefit in a chart produced like that, other than maybe being able to transpose the chords. But then again, you need to have all these eight note rests and other stuff, which feels klunky compared to Notepad.
But I wasn't very clear on my idea. I'm imagining two different types of users for this
A: Someone who's totally not comfortable with notation software (or proper musical notation to begin with), but can use Notepad and MS Word
B: Music nerd, i.e. user of notation software
The challenge is to get these two types to meet each other. I just can't imagine person A using Finale. No can do.
What I'd like to have is a Linked Parts type of thing, where the lyrics-and-chords chart would be one type of part. Sort of like what the Lyrics / Edit Lyrics window currently does, but with chord symbols. Actually the Edit Lyrics window already sort of does a lot, because you can type lyrics there without having them visible anywhere in the score.
The Lyrics and Chords template is just a fake kludge, misusing the notational elements etc. And nothing wrong with that as such, it gets the job done if you're proficient with Finale.
Finale 2009 + Sibelius 4 + Cubase 5 | | Back to Top | |
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derjazzmeister
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2008
Total Posts : 7
| Posted 9/22/2009 10:43 PM (GMT -5) | | So in scrolling through this page, I haven't been able to find the answer I'm looking for related to this new feature in Finale.
As one who makes chord charts, lead sheets, rhythm charts for a living(!), it's taken some getting used to--this new method of typing into the score.
Is there a way to turn the quarter-note-advance default?
In the old way, if I was making a rhythm chart and I was in 4-4 and I had a dotted half, quarter, I could type in "C" [space] "C/E" and be done with the measure.
The way it's set up now, I have to advance through imaginary rests in order to get to the last beat of the measure. Is there a shortcut I'm missing?
In the old way, putting in a chord for a whole measure could be done: "C" and then a [space] would advance to the next measure. Now a space advances through each beat. I have to learn to use the tab button to jump to the next measure, but only when I want to clear a measure, if there's another chord change within the measure, I've got to use the [space] even if it's two beats away!
Am I communicating my frustration? I know it's a little thing. And people develop habits of how they use software, and those habits can be hard to break when you have to change things around in order to accomplish the same thing they've been accomplishing for years but in a different way.
Anyway, my real question is this: is there an option some where to "turn off" [space]= advancement by beat (regardless of the presence of rest/note)?
Thanks! | | Back to Top | |
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edodetroit
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2004
Total Posts : 14
| Posted 10/26/2009 2:17 PM (GMT -5) | | I would like to return to Aaron Latino's original post here. I also upgraded to Finale 2010 for the new "BEAT-ATTACHED CHORD SYMBOLS." I am very disappointed that MM seems to have spent much more on advertising this enhancement than documenting it. I make many Lead Sheets, jazz piano parts, etc. where I've had to use combinations of staff styles - even within ONE measure. It's been such a slow go, that I finally came to the conclusion that Finale was basically centered around classical music and engraving.
I've spent a good part of 2 hours, trying to find anything about it. One would think entering "BEAT-ATTACHED CHORD SYMBOLS." in the search box (this is the exact phrase used in "What's new in Finale 2010"), would bring me directly to a page that would talk all about it. Wrong.
I have my own questions, besides Aaron Latino's.
How do you drag chords to different beats? Unlike the video, mine stay anchored to their original beat, no matter what I do.
Does the same functionality that this supposedly has, work on FM Pro 9 charts. I know I can remove some of the rests and notes in my hidden 4th layer (used for chords only), without the chords disappearing. I can't drag them either.
I haven't tried yet, because I was hoping to read ("Yes, you can load FM9-created chord libraries into FM10, without freaking it out") but I couldn't find any mention of that.
So... if anyone knows the answers to Aaron & my questions it would be great to hear from them, and/or if anyone can steer us towards some official documentation, that at least can explain what all the advertising claims.
Thank all. | | Back to Top | |
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Mike Rosen
himself
Date Joined Feb 2006
Total Posts : 6553
| Posted 10/26/2009 2:27 PM (GMT -5) | | edodetroit,
Welcome to the forum. I'm not sure why you can't drag the chords to another beat. It works fine for me in PM2010. The layer doesn't seem to matter. When you have the chord tool selected, are there selection boxes at each chord? Or, when you click once on the chord with the selection tool, does it turn purple, with a box around it?
What is FM Pro 9? If it isn't a Finale product, I'd bet that they won't work, but I won't swear to that...
Mike Rosen
www.specialmillwork.com
WebMaster for the Seattle SeaChordsmen www.seachordsmen.org
NEW SITE www.specialmillwork.com/finaletips.htm
Print Music 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010
Simple Entry, QWERTY keyboard. That's my system, and I'm stickin' to it.
Favorite reference: Essential Dictionary of Music Notation, Gerou & Lusk, 1996
"As a musician, he's a damn fine woodworker." | | Back to Top | |
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