Human Playback interprets and performs
articulations during playback automatically. See Human
Playback. To hear manual changes to the MIDI playback definition of
any articulation you must first set Human Playback to None in the Playback
Settings dialog box.
- Click the Articulation tool
. If you haven’t yet
placed the Articulation in the score, click any note. When the
Articulation Selection dialog box appears, click the desired symbol and
click Edit; then skip to step 3.
- Double-click the handle. The Articulation
Designer dialog box appears.
- To specify how the marking will affect playback,
make a selection from the Playback Effect drop-down menu.
- Choose Change Attack to shift the attack
point forward or backward in time—a useful option for producing rolled
chord effects.
- Choose Change Duration to affect the note’s
length by changing its release point—to create a staccato mark, for example.
- Choose Change Key Velocity for accents,
stress markings, and marcato markings—symbols that affect a note by striking
it with more or less force (generally making it louder or softer).
- In the Top Note Value and Bottom Note Value
text boxes, enter the amount of playback effect you want this Articulation
to have. Of course, it may be easier to click the
Values Are Percentages check box, so that the numbers you enter represent
percentages of the note’s original value. If you enter 200 into the Top
Note Value text box, the note would be twice as loud as an unaffected
note.
- When Change Attack is selected, the numbers
you enter in these text boxes are 1024ths of a quarter note. To create
an Articulation that strikes a note earlier or later than notated, therefore,
enter numeric values large enough to create a noticeable rhythmic difference
on playback: 256 (a sixteenth note) and higher, for example. A Change Attack marking makes especially
good use of the Top Note Value and Bottom Note Value text boxes. These
text boxes come into play when you’re attaching an Articulation to a chord,
because the top and bottom notes can have different values; Finale scales
any middle notes proportionately. With this setup, it’s easy to create
effects such as rolled chords. For example, you might enter -256 as the
Bottom Note Value, and 0 as the Top Note Value. Finale would roll the
chord from bottom to top, and the top note would land on the beat.
- If you’re
creating a Change Duration marking, the numbers in these text boxes are,
once again, 1024ths of a quarter note. Generally, however, you wouldn’t
use the Change Duration setting to lengthen or shorten a note’s notated
value by a fixed amount. Instead, you’d want an articulation to change
a note’s duration by a percentage—a staccato mark should shorten a note’s
playback duration by 50%, for example, regardless of whether it’s a quarter
note or an eighth note. Therefore, click the Values Are Percentages check box,
so that the numbers represent percentages of the note’s written value.
You’ll usually want to leave the Bottom Note Value blank, so that the
Top Note Value affects the entire chord to which it’s attached.
- If you’ve selected Change Key Velocity, the numbers you enter are MIDI
velocity values. These range from –127 to 127, where a negative number
will make the affected note softer than unaffected notes, and a positive
number will make the affected note louder (0 = no change). If you’re creating
an accent mark, for example, you could enter, say, 40 into the Top Note
Value text box; if an affected note has an original MIDI velocity value
of 60, it will now play back with a velocity of 100.
- Click OK (or press ENTER). The changes you’ve just
made affect all occurrences of this Articulation, even those you’ve already
placed into the score.
