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Choose Window > Advanced Tools Palette. Click the MIDI tool
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- Choose MIDI tool > Edit Continuous Data. The View Continuous Data dialog box appears, from which you can choose the MIDI data you want to edit.
- Click Pitch Wheel, and click OK.
- Select the measures you want to affect. Click to select one measure, SHIFT-click to select additional measures, drag-enclose to select several on-screen measures, click to the left of the staff to select the entire staff, or choose Select All from the Edit menu to select the entire document.
- Double-click the highlighted region to enter the MIDI tool split-window.
- Drag through the display area above the notes whose pitch wheel data you want to edit.
- Edit the selected region by choosing the appropriate command from the MIDI tool menu. In the following discussion, it’s useful to remember that when the pitch wheel is at rest, its value is 0; when it’s as far down as it can go, its value is -8192; and when it’s at the top of its range of movement, its value is 8191.
Choose Set To to specify a uniform value for the pitch wheel level. Choose Scale to create a gradual change in pitch wheel values over the selected region. Choose Add to add a positive or negative amount to the pitch wheel level throughout the selected region. Choose Percent Alter to change the pitch wheel values in the selected region by a percentage of their original amounts. Choose Limit to specify a maximum or minimum pitch wheel value for the notes in the selected region. (See also Set to dialog box; Scale dialog box; Add dialog box; Percent Alteration dialog box; or Limit dialog box.)
For the most part, you’ll use the Scale, Limit, or Set To commands. For example, to create a smooth pitch bend that rises for two beats and then falls for two beats, you’d proceed as follows: Drag through the graph display region of the MIDI tool split-window, so that two beats are highlighted. Choose Scale from the MIDI tool menu; in the text boxes, enter 0 (the pitch wheel’s “at rest” value) and 8191 (the pitch wheel’s highest position). In the third text box (Increments), enter 640 (for example); the smaller this number, the smoother the pitch bend will be, but the more data Finale will need to generate and store, and hence the larger your document will be. Click OK. Next, drag through the second two beats and choose Scale again from the MIDI tool menu. This time enter 8191 in the first text box and 0 in the second (to bring the pitch wheel back to its normal-pitch position); enter a value in the Increments box and click OK. You’ll see the effects of the pitch bend you just programmed in the graph area of the MIDI tool split-window—and you’ll hear it when you choose Play from the MIDI tool menu.
If you create a pitch bend that isn’t quite calculated correctly, you may discover that, during playback, the pitch of your MIDI keyboard never fully returns to normal. That’s because the pitch wheel, via MIDI, gets “stuck” partway out of its at-rest position. If this happens, drag through part of the graph area of the MIDI tool split-window (at the place where you want the pitch wheel to be returned to its at-rest position), choose Set To from the MIDI tool menu, enter 0, and click OK.
You can also remove pitch bend data from regions of your score by following the instructions above but, instead of following the last instruction, pressing BACKSPACE or use the Selection tool to clear Continuous Data.
