At 5:55 PM 06/09/03, David W. Fenton wrote: >Because staff expressions are not precisely aligned with the rhythm. >It's one of the reasons I don't like them -- I never know what I'm >going to get.
I can't remember what "staff expression" means, but if you're talking about measure expressions, the H position for a measure expression can be defined as either rhythmic distance or absolute distance. In the Measure Expression Assignment dialog, the choices are beats, EDUs or whatever your current default measurement unit is. On my program it defaults to EDUs, but I'm not sure where that gets set. Maybe yours is set to default to the absolute unit. I usually prefer to define a measure expression's H position in rhythmic terms, but I occasionally use absolute distance instead, depending on the expression. >There is currently no such structure in Finale for specifying exact >placement. What would happen would be some kind of translation of the >visual placement into a precise realization in playback. Expressions >now work by applying, I believe, to the next item following them >(i.e., a fff just after the beginning of a half note does not change >the velocity until the next note is initiated). Maybe that would be >satisfactory for chords? I think of what kinds of things I've done >with figured bass and don't really think it would be good enough, as >you could easily want multiple chord changes over a single bass note. > >So, Coda would need to add some new data storage structure (file >format change!) in order to record the information that is being >captured with the rhythmic grid. I'm not very familiar with playback, so maybe I'm missing something. Sounds to me like there's two issues. First of all, on my rudimentary computer-speakers playback, dynamic changes never occur until a new note starts. This isn't a matter of exact placement of the dynamic, it's just that the playback routine only checks for key velocity when a key is actually hit. For the second, I agree that it can be awkward that the visual horizontal position is tied to the playback rhythmic position. Sometimes you want an expression to appear in the score a certain way which causes Finale's idea of the rhythmic position in the score to be inaccurate. I've occasionally had this problem with pedal-up symbols in a measure of 16th notes. I usually kludge my way around it by attaching the expression in question to a note instead of to the measure as I'd prefer. What is really missing is something like the Handle Position on an articulation. That way if I have a playback definition assigned to "fff", I can say whether the number Finale is counting for its exact rhythmic position is the left side of the first f, the right side of the last f, or somewhere in the middle. That would take care of everything that I can see, but perhaps there's more than I'm not getting. I rarely use chord symbols, but from my point of view it seems like they would work fine if they attached to the measure exactly like measure expressions do IF there were something like the handle-position as described above. Lacking that, I can see why they have to attach to the note, for the same reason I have to attach my pedal-up symbols to a note. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
