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Daniele Ghisi
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 43

Posted 4/17/2009 12:38 PM (GMT -5)

Aligning should be a very easy task to fulfill, in any notation program.
Nevertheless, in Finale, that seems to be incredibly hard to do.
For example, I don't know any way to align two text expressions. (e.g., i wrote "pont." and "arco" one above the other, and I have no way and no shortcut to align them. That's a real pity.)

On the top of all, the "Align/Move dynamics" plugin, from the TgTools, doesn't work at all (or, at least, it seems to me).
Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
I just want to horizontally align the hairpins and the dynamics, let's say, on the average line.

Does it work for anybody?
Thanks

Daniele

Saffron
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 2694

Posted 4/17/2009 12:47 PM (GMT -5)

It's a bit of a PITA, but the way I achieve alignment of expressions is by right-clicking (yes, I'm on Windows!) to get the expression's pop-up menu, selecting "Edit Measure Expression Assignment", and typing numbers into the "Horizontal" and "Vertical" fields.

What makes things worse, is that I cannot select and edit multiple expressions in this way, so it's a very long-winded, error-prone, manual processing affair.

And yes, any modern graphical document creation program (which, after all, is what Finale is) should include numerous tools to make this sort of job quick and straightforwards. CorelDRAW without the alignment tools would be no use to a professional designer.

Brian

Daniele Ghisi
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 43

Posted 4/17/2009 1:24 PM (GMT -5)

I can't imagine how much time would I lose by following your procedure every time I need to align...

I'm not as clever as you! :)

Moreover, adding the alignment, as far as programming is concerned, should be really straightforward. I'm wondering why they didn't do that already - but actually there's a long list of things I'm wondering why they didn't do already...

It's incredible that you have fast way to align things in softwares such MaxMsp or openmusic (which are not meant to be strictly graphical) and you've no way to do that in Finale... Quite disappointing, I'd say...

Daniele

KennethKen
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 1998
Total Posts : 1543

Posted 4/17/2009 6:31 PM (GMT -5)

Daniele, would it work for you to build pont. and acro as one expression when you want them aligned as you describe? (Yes, Finale should have a shortcut for such alignment.)

Windows XP, Finale 2009a, Pentium 4, 3GHz, 2GB Ram

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Daniele Ghisi
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 43

Posted 4/17/2009 6:47 PM (GMT -5)

Sure it would work!
But the point is that I cannot build combinations for ALL the text expressions I have. When I was writing short pieces, that was not a big deal (I did as you said), but now I'm writing a very long piece, and I need a lot of combinations!
If I want tasto and arco, I must build another combination, and so on. The number of text expression is squared (or cubed, if I need three of them)!
It doesn't make any sense... It's so much easy to have alignment tools.

Moreover, the alignment should work for different types of object. It should be possible to align text boxes and text expressions...
That'd be a great help!

Daniele

David Young : chambermusic
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2000
Total Posts : 2244

Posted 4/17/2009 7:08 PM (GMT -5)

I find the TG tool alignment feature quite useful for aligning dynamics and hairpins below the staves. I place my arco and pizz. expressions above the staff. Can you zoom in on these expressions and use the cross hairs to align them?

David

David Young

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Daniele Ghisi
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 43

Posted 4/17/2009 7:29 PM (GMT -5)

Hi David!
You really can get it work? I can't (finale 2009)
I put my hairpins, my mf or whatever, and I can't align them...

I mean: SOMETIMES (rarely) it works. But most of the time it doesn't work... Would you know why?

Daniele

David Young : chambermusic
Registered Member

Date Joined Sep 2000
Total Posts : 2244

Posted 4/17/2009 10:40 PM (GMT -5)

The align function didn't work with Finale 2009 but it was repaired and included in the maintenance update. Did you download and install the latest update (Finale 2009b, I believe)?

David Young

Composer of classical-romantic style chamber and orchestral music.

Finale 2.4 through 2009

Laptop PC, windows XP home, 2.4 ghz, 516 Megs RAM

Desktop PC, windows XP home, ~~Gigastudio 3.03~~, 2 Gigs RAM, 3 hard drives

Apple Mac Pro, 8 quad, 3.2 ghz, 4 hard drives, Apogee duet, two wide screens

Join us at www.composeforums.com for discussion of music composition,

arranging and orchestration!

Saffron
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 2694

Posted 4/18/2009 6:14 AM (GMT -5)

This is yet another of the many aspects of Finale that I wish were more consistent. Expressions can be right-clicked (sorry, Windows again!) to bring up a menu, the first option in which gives you a dialog with the numerical fields I mentioned, among other things - but there is no option in this menu for "Align". Smart Shapes, such as hairpins, on the other hand, have no equivalent numerical field dialog - but do have various alignment options. Articulations also have a menu, which does offer an edit option - but this is to change the actual definition of the articulation, score-wide, not to change it for a single instance. Oh, and there is no alignment option.

So here we have three things, all of which are designed to change the way musical notes are interpreted, with three completely different editing idioms. I would be great if all contained the alignment options - or better still, could be created and aligned relative to one another within a single tool, that dispensed with the distinctions between these three forms of annotation.

Brian

Daniele Ghisi
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2009
Total Posts : 43

Posted 4/18/2009 8:50 AM (GMT -5)

Hmmm, thanks David. Probably that's the point with the tool!

Jetcopy
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2000
Total Posts : 2759

Posted 4/18/2009 12:00 PM (GMT -5)

Daniele,

There is a problem with horizontal alignment in TGTools Align/Move in Finale 2009 because of the change in expressions not being note attached.

JT

G4 Powerbook, OSX 10.4.11, 1.67 GHz, 2 GB ram

commerjare
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2010
Total Posts : 5

Posted 7/21/2010 8:33 PM (GMT -5)

Hi all,

Is there now an easy way to align dynamics/hairpins? I'm using Finale 2011...

I'm having the same problem as the original post in this thread ie TG Tools => align/move dynamics doesn't work.

Thanks,

Jared

sonneuse
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 339

Posted 7/21/2010 11:03 PM (GMT -5)

Hmmm. I use Finale 2009c and am able to align dynamics.

I'm doing mostly piano music, so I'm careful to attach the expressions and hairpins to the upper staff only.

Using the selection tool, I select a range of measures, then under the Plugins menu, go to TG Tools > Align/Move dynamics, click the radio button "To farthest element", select all three boxes on the right, and set "move vertically" to zero. I do the whole song, then tweak individual systems later if necessary.

Rebecca

MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR SDRM, OS 10.5.8;
Finale 2009c; GPO, JABB, C&MB;
i88x, Cubase Studio 4;
Korg 01w/fd, Roland RD300 (yeah, they're old), & a Baldwin Hamilton

Wiggy
Early music: modern methods

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 4739

Posted 7/22/2010 3:05 AM (GMT -5)

For dynamics:
Simply hold down 1-9 for fff to ppp, and drag a box over the notes down all the staves that require a dynamic. They will all be in the same place and the expressions will then move when you move the top one.

For other expressions:
Ensuring enforced positioning of the expression (to the left of the notehead, for instance) will keep every instance aligned.

For Hairpins:
The easiest way is to do one hairpin and then drag it to the other staves using the Selection Tool with the Filter on, to copy only hairpins. You can then adjust the hairpins on the other staves if they need to be longer/shorter.

Saffron said...
Expressions can be right-clicked (sorry, Windows again!) to bring up a menu

I know it's an old post, Brian, but Mac has had right-clicks since the early 90s!

Finale 2011, 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.4
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
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Post Edited (Wiggy) : 7/22/2010 2:11:36 AM (GMT-5)

sonneuse
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 339

Posted 7/22/2010 4:13 AM (GMT -5)

The original poster had asked about aligning dynamics horizontally, which is the method I described in my earlier post. Wiggy's method is how I align them vertically, too.

Rebecca

MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR SDRM, OS 10.5.8;
Finale 2009c; GPO, JABB, C&MB;
i88x, Cubase Studio 4;
Korg 01w/fd, Roland RD300 (yeah, they're old), & a Baldwin Hamilton

N. Grossingink
Registered Member

Date Joined Nov 2002
Total Posts : 1731

Posted 7/22/2010 5:27 AM (GMT -5)

commerjare said...
Hi all,

Is there now an easy way to align dynamics/hairpins? I'm using Finale 2011...

I'm having the same problem as the original post in this thread ie TG Tools => align/move dynamics doesn't work.

Thanks,

Jared

When you open the TGAlign, what version does the window say? If it's 3.30, then that is the Finale 2010 version and may not work with 2011. Earlier in this thread, there was a similar problem using the 2009 version in 2010.

As with the previous version, I guess you'll have to wait for an update. You could try downloading the demo of the full TGTools and see if that works. The full version is more convenient because it has hotkeys for aligning, aligning-moving up, and aligning-moving down.

N.

Finale 2006c, 2007c, 2008b, 2010a
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Mac Mini 1.25ghz PPC - OSX 10.4.11

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Post Edited (N. Grossingink) : 7/22/2010 4:41:19 AM (GMT-5)

Wiggy
Early music: modern methods

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 4739

Posted 7/22/2010 5:55 AM (GMT -5)

sonneuse said...
The original poster had asked about aligning dynamics horizontally, which is the method I described in my earlier post. Wiggy's method is how I align them vertically, too.

I'm never quite sure which is which.

My method is for ensuring that all the dynamics are aligned on the same point on the horizontal axis, i.e. directly under each other. If they were vertically aligned, then they would all be on the same staff, surely...? My method should also ensure that they appear at the same height on all staves, if that's what you mean by vertically aligned.

Finale 2011, 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.4
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk

OCTOECHOS
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 299

Posted 7/22/2010 5:59 AM (GMT -5)

Have you ever used GRIDS in a document? And SNAP to GRIDS??

Finale 2009c, OS X 10.5.8 / MacBookPro & iMac 20" /

Peter West
Registered Member

Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 2982

Posted 7/22/2010 5:59 AM (GMT -5)

In Smart shapes tool, select hairpins under a single staff and use the context menu to align on the same horizontal axis, or select a number of them underneath each other to align them on the same vertical axis and make them the same length.

If you select (say) 6 hairpins one each (for example woodwind ) staff, then decide which is the one that is correct. Control click (mac)/right click Mac or pc) on the one that is to be the model for te others and select align vertical. All will now be the same as the one you chose.

Similarly with control/right click align horizontal. They will all be on the same horizontal axis as the one you control/right clicked on.

This doesn't sort out dynamic expressions, but a consistent position in this manner makes manual dragging easier

As far as dealing with all dynamics on a staff, I use TG tools a lot, and I mean A LOT!! The Mac version has always worked fine for me. make sure you have all the parameters in all the tabs set up as you want them. But it does work fine on mac. Make sure also that you have the right version for your version of Finale.

Peter
Music Publishing Services

*********************
Mac 2.66GHz Intel Quad, 4GB RAM /OSX.5.6 /30 inch cinema display+20 inch Cinema Display
Finale 2008 2009 2010/Logic Pro Studio/Komplete/GPO/Kore 2/Max.msp/Pluggo

commerjare
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2010
Total Posts : 5

Posted 7/22/2010 7:35 PM (GMT -5)

Hi folks,

Thanks a lot for all the valuable tips! Much appreciated.

I'm still unable to get the TG Tools to work (version 3.32), may have to hold out for an update or download the full version as suggested.

In the meantime, the above info will definitely improve workflow!

Cheers,

Jared.

sonneuse
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 339

Posted 7/23/2010 1:40 AM (GMT -5)

Wiggy said...
I'm never quite sure which is which.

Haha! Potato, potahto!

Rebecca

MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR SDRM, OS 10.5.8;
Finale 2009c; GPO, JABB, C&MB;
i88x, Cubase Studio 4;
Korg 01w/fd, Roland RD300 (yeah, they're old), & a Baldwin Hamilton

Wiggy
Early music: modern methods

Date Joined Jun 2006
Total Posts : 4739

Posted 7/23/2010 4:01 AM (GMT -5)

OCTOECHOS said...
Have you ever used GRIDS in a document? And SNAP to GRIDS??

I've never done this before, but I experimented with it yesterday.

1. Create a guide by clicking in the Ruler. Position where you want it.
2. Make sure that Snap to Guide is on and a reasonable threshold selected. (You only need to set this once in Document Options.)
3. Draw your hairpins from the guideline.
4. Bingo.

You could use the grid, of course, which is perhaps more convenient as you don't have to create the guide, but gives you less flexibility about where you start your hairpins.

This also works for the OP's question about aligning different expressions. I'll certainly be using this when I next have to align something.

Finale 2011, 2009c, 2Ghz iMac; 2Ghz MacBook, 10.6.4
Edirol FA-66; M-Audio Oxygen 61; Yamaha PSR-410
Ancient Groove Music
www.ancientgroove.co.uk

Post Edited (Wiggy) : 7/23/2010 3:04:32 AM (GMT-5)

David Ward
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2009
Total Posts : 470

Posted 7/23/2010 4:16 AM (GMT -5)

Wiggy said...
I'm never quite sure which is which.

Same here! The vertical alignment in the contextual menu moves things horizontally and vice versa for horizontal alignment! The transposition dialogue in Staff Attributes also seems to be upside down. You have to specify a horn as transposing UP a perfect 5th: bizarre, but that's what produces the correct result in the score!

No doubt there's a reason somewhere for this way of thinking, but it's very confusing to this elderly composer.

David Ward
http://www.composers-uk.com/davidward

Finale 2010b
Mac 10.6.4
full TGTools

OCTOECHOS
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2008
Total Posts : 299

Posted 7/23/2010 4:49 AM (GMT -5)

Yes Wiggy, I meant also Guides too, I have forgotten.

Wiggy's example is very good....

Finale 2009c, OS X 10.5.8 / MacBookPro & iMac 20" /

Philip.
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2006
Total Posts : 885

Posted 7/23/2010 12:43 PM (GMT -5)

This is all well and good but very frustrating. Sibelius has "Align to Row" and "Align to Column" built-in (not plug-ins). Not to mention Magnetic Layout in v6 which aligns dynamics on the fly. Finale needs to play catch up.

Finale 2008b, 2009b, 2010b
Sibelius 5.2.5, 6.2
Logic Pro 9
Mac 10.5.8
2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
10 GB RAM
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