Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Composer's Lounge Finale question... grace note runs

I've looked through the manual for finale for inserting grace note runs, and I've done it. But, no matter how you do it, the grace notes play 'behind the beat' and in this case that means cutting into the measure before it on playback. Is there anyway to eliminate this, or am I just going to have to deal with the playback being inaccurate but the notation correct? The only other way that sounds good is a measure of 5/8 with 32nd notes, but thats very awkward. Anyone know what to do?

Can you just make it a fioratura and use the smaller notes option?

I thought you could change the playback, but the process is elusive (at least in the documentation). You could try to change the meter for the measure it's in and hide the time signature changes (before and after the measure), then add your run, but change the size of the notes so it's clear they are grace notes. I think that will work.

Alternatively, I think you might be able to turn off the default option that checks to see that no measures have more than the proper number of beats. Then add the notes as I described above. If you can do it that way, I think you could turn on the automatic extra beat checking after the fact and when it flags that measure you can tell the program to leave it alone.

Either option is worth a try. Let us know if it works.

For long runs of grace notes - I typically do the following (pretty much what Scott recommended) though I agree it is a bit awkward

Change the meter to allow for extra notes, but mark it to use a different meter for display. So for instance, I would display the meter in the normal meter (4/4 for example), but in actuality the meter would contain many more notes to accommodate the extra grace notes (like 15/4). Then add the grace note run in normal notes (whatever value you need 32nd, 64th, etc...). Finally resize the the notes to be 60% of their normal size to make them look like grace notes.

They will play in time, but it's something at least...

Thank you it's funny to read this because I just spent an hour trying to figure out the same thing!

Sorry for bumping up a year old topic, but I'm having the same problem and cannot find out how to change the attributes of a single measure. Could anyone be of assistance?

(952) 937-9703. Finale help desk.

They're very good.

Sorry also to dig this up again, but this might be helpful for future cases.

If you're not using human playback, assuming that you use the full Finale, and also if you're prepared to go any length to achieve both playback and visual "perfection", then try this...

As 8ude recommended, use real notes to denote grace notes, and change the actual meter accordingly while retaining the apparent meter. Before you do that though, make sure that the staff you're going to put this on has "Independent time signature" switched on (to do this, use staff tool, double click the staff handle, look at "Independent Items", check "Time Signature"). What this means is that even though you've changed the meter of the staff you're editing, you haven't changed the global meter.

So how is Finale going to play this bar with (say) 5/4 on one staff and 4/4 on the other? Well, I first thought it was going to do something clever and re-value the crotchets in the 5/4 bars into quintuplets so that both bars take the same amount of time to run. In fact, that's not the case. The final beat of the 5/4 is simply either ignored (if it's a rest) or played together with the first beat of the next bar.

Which means if your grace notes occupy the first beat of the 5/4, then everything is effectively shifted by 1 beat. You can use the MIDI tools to change the start and stop time of these notes. 1 crotchet correspond to 1024 EDUs. If your gracenotes take a total actual playing time of 1 quaver, then the shift is 512 EDUs (256 for 1 semi-quaver, etc, etc)

So, say you have the following entries:

[32nd] [32nd] [32nd] [32nd] (these are the grace notes. Total running time = 1 quaver)

followed by

[4th] [4th] [4th] [4th]

Then what you do is this:
1. Switch on independent time signature on the staff you want
2. Change the actual meter to 9/8 (which comes from 4/4 + 1/8, the 1/8 comes from 4 x 1/32) (keep the apparent meter at 4/4 so you won't get an ugly time signature!)
3. Write out the entries as above, i.e. literally four 32nds followed by four crotchets.
4. If you play it back now, the crotchets will be displaced by half a beat (i.e. 1 quaver). We will correct for this now.
5. Logically, the time taken to play the grace notes will be taken off the length of the first crotchet. Since you have 4 x 32nd which is the same length as 1 x 8th, it's a time difference of 512 EDUs.
6. Go to MIDI tools. On the MIDI tools menu, select for editing Start and Stop time. (Double?)click on the staff you're editing, then a graph of all the entries are displayed. The Y axis is the pitch and the X axis is the timeline, and the horizontal line denotes the time during which the note is sounded.
7. Double click on your first crotchet, change its "Stop time" to -512 EDUs.
8. Select the other three crotchets (or all the other "main" entries in the bar excluding that of the first beat which we just modified), edit BOTH their start AND stop time to -512 EDUs.
9. Resize the grace notes as desired.

After you've done all that right, play it without human playback. It should play correctly.

It might even play correctly if you switch on "Incorporate data" for Start/Stop time in the human playback settings instead of "Ignore data".

With the MIDI tool to control start/stop time of entries, you can even write out the grace notes as quavers and use the tool to fool it into thinking that they're demi-semi's. There used to be times when I really would have gone this length to make my score look and sound pleasing. These days, I just don't bother, especially for piano stuff for which I just print out and play

If you're looking to change the meter of the measure, then the Time Signature tool will do it. The dialogue box allows you to choose whether you'd like to apply the time change for a range of bars (or a single bar), or the whole piece.