On Wednesday, Dec 31, 2003, at 12:15 US/Pacific, Christopher BJ Smith wrote:
I often write for big band, and homophonic sections are easily entered by holding down big fat 4 or 5 part chords on the MIDI keyboard with one hand while entering the note value with the other, on the first trumpet part for example, then Exploding it to the other trumpet staves.
As a matter of clarification, and not to disagree with your other remarks on Finale's Explode, I would characterize anything with such lock-step rhythm and (presumably) continuously parallel motions as being conceptually one "part". Like in a 4 part piece, it would be one part ("homophonic sections" and "first trumpet part" notwithstanding) and the various trumpets being the "voices" of the part. Agree or disagree?
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the score being what is front of the conductor, and the parts are what are in front of the players. Exchange in my previous comments the word "voice" for "part" wherever it appears, and we'll start again.
As to what you just said, I don't (in my music, anyway) differentiate between homophonic voicings in parallel or similar motion, and voicings in non-parallel motion, for the purposes of notation. If two or more instruments sharing a staff have the same rhythm, I want them to share stems. In those places where they don't have the same rhythm, or one is not playing for the measure, I need to use Finale's layers, or a "Solo" or "I." or something similar (I don't use Finale's voices at all.) TG Tools sorts it all out for me at the part extraction stage, and that's what I like about it. I also am able to use it for entry, when I have several "voices" playing varyingly different notes in a "part", where Finale's Explode makes a hash of it, as I explained before.
But my original point was simply to agree that Finale's Explode function would be ten times more useful if only it had an option similar to TG Tools' option about how to handle chords with fewer notes than expected - rests, double upper notes, or double lower notes - instead of automatically entering rests. Then I could save TG Tools for the heavy lifting, and invoke Finale's explode with its one keystroke more often, more easily, and to better effect, and thus achieve everlasting happiness. ;-)
Christopher
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