When MakeMusic released Finale 25 nearly a year ago, the transition to a 64-bit application was an important development for the future of the software. It also meant that the valuable plug-ins that extend Finale’s capabilities — and that so many users find essential — needed to be re-written to support the modernized program.
Shipping plug-ins were updated straight out of the gate. The major third-party plug-ins — Robert Patterson’s Patterson Plug-in Collection, Tobias Giesen’s TGTools, Jari Williamson’s JW Freeware Plug-ins — followed in due course, with Jari’s March 2017 updates especially eagerly welcomed.
There was, however, one notable omission from the JW suite of updates: JW Yada Yada Tremolo, the plug-in that positions tremolo articulations automatically, and (if needed) extends stems to work with the tremolo markings. I was wondering why this crucial tool was missing, but yesterday the reason became apparent, as Jari writes on the plug-in documentation page:
The original version of JW Yada Yada Tremolo was a plug-in I wrote as a really quick fix for the positioning problems with tremolos in Finale. Now a few years later, Finale 25 added an important feature for plug-in developers, which provides much easier and more accurate layout for the purpose on tremolo editing.
Version 2 of JW Yada Yada Tremolo is only available for Finale 25 and later versions, and it’s a complete rewrite and redesign of the plug-in. The old version (for 32-bit Finale versions) of the plug-in is still available as a legacy version download.
(And yes, the “Yada Yada” is a Seinfeld reference.)
So if you’re reading this while enjoying some lobster bisque, listening to Yo-Yo Ma, or simply tending to your Pez dispenser collection, I think we can all agree this is an early Festivus miracle.
Why is this plug-in so important?
Here is the default placement of tremolo articulations in a default Finale document:
And here is the same passage after running Yada Yada Tremolo:
If this was all that the plug-in did, dayenu, and in version 1, it was; everything was hard-coded to a number of fonts. “The plug-in handled everything automatically, without any options to control the tremolo positioning,” Jari said. But with version 2, “any music font that contains a tremolo can be supported (including Unicode/SMuFL fonts, such as November 2). The user now also has a number of ways to control the positioning.”
To wit, once you’ve installed the plug-in go to Plug-ins and select JW Yada Yada Tremolo Settings… to change the plug-in’s options.
Click Edit… to change the settings for an existing font or Add… to create a new one.
- Supports percussion notation
- Speed improvements (typically around 30% shorter processing times compared to 2.00)
- Added safety question when the main settings window closes if settings have been modified
- If a document region is selected when Apply or OK has been pressed, there’s now a user question if the settings should be applied directly to the region
- Scale Custom Spacing Relative to 24 Points now scales with a bit more precision. It now uses the glyph height ratio instead of the point size ratio
- Error message box for strange/non-existent FAN data has been redesigned
- When verifying fonts, the current document is now also checked for potential problems with tremolo
- Font list (in the tremolo font dialog box) is now sorted alphabetically on both platforms
- Windows version can now rearrange items in the tremolo font list as well
- Numerous UI fixes on Windows
Download the plug-in for Mac or Windows.
Chef recommends!