This entry provides a quick way to change the font and size of the chord symbols and suffixes in your entire piece.
- Choose Document > Document Options > Fonts. The Font Options appear.
- Click Symbol. The Font dialog box appears. You’re about to choose a typeface for the root portion of all chord symbols in the piece—that is, the “C” portion of “Cmaj7.”
- Make your type style selection; then click OK twice.
- To change the font for chord-symbol suffixes, click the Chord tool
. You’re now going to be changing the font for the suffix—for example, the “maj7” portion of your chord symbols.
- Choose Chord > Change Chord Suffix Fonts. The Change Chord Suffix Fonts dialog box appears.
- To change the entire library of chord suffixes at once, click the Set Font button in the lower half of the screen. The Set Font dialog box appears, letting you specify new font, size, and style characteristics for the suffixes.
- To change one aspect of the suffixes—such as the size—select the appropriate check box in the upper half of the Font dialog box. Click Set Font to specify which point size you want to replace (such as all 12-point elements). Then repeat the process in the lower half of the Font dialog box, this time clicking the lower Set Font button to specify a new point size.
- Similarly, you can, in effect, search-and-replace for one specific type style and replace it with another; Finale will leave suffixes in other type styles untouched. For example, in the upper half of the Font dialog box, you could click Selected Fonts, then click all three check boxes, click Set Font and specify Times New Roman Geneva 12-point Plain. Repeat the process in the lower half of the Font dialog box, but this time choose, for example, Helvetica 10-point Italic; Finale would replace every occurrence of the former type style with the latter.
- Finally, for best results, be sure that the Fix Chord Suffix Spacing check box is selected, so that Finale automatically adjusts the individual characters in each chord suffix to compensate for the new font and size.
- Select a type style, and then click OK. You return to the document, where Finale has changed the font for your chord suffixes. Finale is smart enough, however, not to change any musical symbols within the suffix, such as the
in F79.
