Articulation metatools in Finale

If you’re working from home more these days, you might be tempted to snack more. And that’s a good thing, when it comes to our new series of videos: Scoring Notes Snacks, where we take music notation software topics and make them into bite-size portions for you to enjoy.

You already know and love our tutorials, which can often dive deep and run long into advanced areas. With Snacks, though, we’re keeping it brief and getting back to basics.

Our first snack is about articulation metatools in Finale. Metatools are shortcuts that are programmed to a letter or number so you can quickly modify your score.

A transcript follows.

There will be more to come. In the meantime, happy snacking!

(Transcript)

Welcome to Scoring Notes Snacks, a series of videos where we take music notation software topics and make them into bite-size portions.

Our topic is metatools in Finale. Metatools are shortcuts that are programmed to a letter or number so you can quickly modify your score.

Here’s how articulation metatools work. First switch to the Articulation Tool. Then, simply hold down the letter or number corresponding to the articulation, and click in the score to place the articulation. Common ones are S for staccato, A for accent, and V for the V-shaped marcato symbol.

You can also click and drag across your score while holding down the metatool, kind of like painting a canvas, to apply many articulations at once. Finale is smart enough to avoid tied notes.

You can delete your articulations by holding down the Delete key and click and dragging across your score in the same way. Or, make a selection of articulations and delete them.

If you want to quickly change an articulation from one to another, make a selection of articulations and double-tap the metatool.

To see the assignment of metatools for articulations, simply click on any note to bring up the Articulation Selection dialog.

You can program your own metatool. For instance, I’d rather use T for tenuto instead of the pre-programmed E. To do this, type Shift plus the keystroke you’d like to use. The Articulation Selection dialog appears. Double-click your desired articulation to select it and close the dialog.

Finale remembers the most recent articulation you’ve just applied to the score. If you want to add the same articulation again, use the hyphen key. This is the “Add Again” metatool and it works whether or not an articulation already has a metatool assigned to it.