This is the one area in which I much prefer Finale’s approach. Create a marking, organize it in the list of markings as one wishes, and assign it a keystroke, so it can be input in a second. Simple and efficient.
1 Like
Playing Techniques are roughly equivalent to Finale’s Expressions and Articulations in that respect.
Yes PT are great. I prefer these for this use.
Too “roughly”. You should see my list of Playing Techniques. It looks like a jungle.
Totally agree there. I just invoke them with shortcuts though, so I don’t need the side panel.
I do look forward to custom panels: the ability to sort and filter and group them however is needed. I say “look forward”… I don’t know if this is a thing that’s happening, but it would be nice.
1 Like
So do I. Are you using Keyboard Maestro or something for the shortcuts? I need to try that since I relied heavily on KM with Finale.
1 Like
I don’t, no. I’m on Windows, so I do use AHK for some typography stuff like small caps and oldstyle numerals, but not for commands. I used to use a Stream Deck, but I’ve abandoned that as well, since I’m often nomadic. I just rely on auto-complete, which seems to work well enough for me!
You can assign popover shortcuts to your PTs, and they will show up in the auto-complete list, as Dan says.
But that relies on the popovers. I would prefer one step.
1 Like
Exactly! Some common ones for me are:
“Play 1st time only” - p1
“Play 2nd time only” - p2
Play 1st and 2nd time only" - p12, etc…
So Shift-P, p12, Enter does the trick faster than anything else I could think of.
@John_Ruggero sounds like a Stream Deck XL would be the ticket for you! Or I guess KM would work too, but you have to type something for starters anyways… Shift-P does it natively.
Thanks for the tips, @benwiggy @dan_kreider. Maybe I’ll give myself a late Christmas present of a StreamDeck XL!
Thanks Mark. I am still learning the software—which is pretty easy since it is so well thought out—and I am very impressed with its functionality and aesthetics.
Hi everyone! Great to see this resurrected since I just talked to a Finale convert about this.
The Dorico 4 update actually completely solved this problem for me. I just add a dynamic along with my “expressive text,” hide the intensity marking in the properties panel, and then left-align it. Works like a charm.
One thing I do miss about Finale’s expression tool (there’s not much I miss about anything else) is the ability to individually set how the expression attaches to the note or measure, i. e., centered, left, higher, lower, above, below, etc.
2 Likes
IIRC that exists in the Properties panel.
Being able to keybind arbitrary user created playing techniques (or even the built in ones) has been real high on my feature request list for several major versions now.
I really miss (from Sib) being able to do string bowings very quickly with the keyboard.
1 Like