When you edit a chord suffix, the changes
you make affect every occurrence of this chord suffix in the score.
- Click the Chord tool
.
- Choose Chord > Manual
Input.
-
Right-click the chord symbol you want to edit and choose Edit Chord Definition.
The Chord Definition dialog box appears.
- Click Edit Chord Suffix ID. The Chord Suffix
Editor appears. In this window, you edit each character in the chord
suffix individually, moving from one to the next with the Prev and Next
buttons.
- Change a character by editing the Symbol box.
You can only type one letter at a time into this text box, unless you
select Number, which lets you type a multi-digit number into the box. Instead
of typing a character into the Symbol box, you can simply click Symbol,
and you’ll see the complete palette of characters for the selected font.
Note that you can prefix any chunk in the
suffix box with a +, -, 
or 
character: click Prefix With and select the appropriate
button.
- Change the type style of the current character
by clicking Set Font. Remember, you must set the font for each
character individually. Be careful to match this chord suffix font with
a complementary chord root font (which you choose by going to Document > Document Options > Fonts). You
can also change the font for all chord symbols in a piece; see To change chord symbol
fonts.
- Adjust the position of a character by dragging
its handle. To produce its handle, you must be editing this character
(move from one to the next with the Prev and Next buttons). Alternatively,
you can type coordinates into the H: (how far to the right?) and V: (how
high up?) boxes. The units are whatever you’ve selected using the Measurement
Units command (Edit menu). (The numbers you type, however, won’t affect
the display until you click the Update box.)
If you’re having trouble positioning a character
because the square handle obscures it, deselect the Show Handles check box.
The handles become invisible but are still draggable—just click where
a handle used to be.
- Define the voicing this suffix is to use for
playback by clicking Set Play. The Suffix Keynumber Offsets box
appears, presenting a series of text boxes into which you can type the
numbers that represent the notes of the suffix, as measured in half steps
from the root. A quick way to enter this data is to click Listen; Finale
displays a message asking you to play the root of the chord, so it will
have a point of reference from which to compute the keynumber offsets.
Immediately after you do so, Finale tells you that it’s still listening;
now play the suffix itself. Finale enters the appropriate numbers in the
text boxes. See Suffix Keynumber Offsets dialog box.
Remember that even though you just played
a specific root and voicing, this suffix will remember the voicing no
matter what its root—you define the playback voicing for your Fmaj7, Emaj7,
and Cmaj7 chords all at once, for example.
