Harp markings for Finale program

[Anonymous]

I use the Finale program for typesetting music and am entirely delighted with it, but am constantly annoyed by the lack of symbols that are needed to do harp music–such as the signs for muffling, brackets for finger placing and so on.

[diane-michaels]

Hi, Sam!

Sylvia Woods sells the Salzedo Font software, which is compatible with Finale.

[barbara-brundage]

You don’t really need the Salzedo font unless you need the raising loopy hairpin things and the unique muffle symbols found only in his work.

Otherwise, what you need is in finale. You’ll find the plus sign for thumb muffles in the articulations palette. The standard muffle is a capital P in the Tamburo font. Glisses are in the smart shapes, and you can adjust the spacing of the wavy line from the gliss list (duplicate first or your glisses will change, too) to make the pdlt line. Chord rolls, diamonds for lever changes, and harmonics circles are in the articulations palette.

Pedal diagram pieces and some other harp stuff are in the Engraver FontH (h is for harp).

What else are you looking for?

[barbara-brundage]

There are horizontal brackets in the smart shapes and vertical ones in the Engravier FontH (make an articulation metatool for these to save time).

[barbara-brundage]

Fingering numbers are in articulations, also.

[barbara-brundage]

Incidentally, Sam, if you’ve got an old version of Finale that doesn’t have the Engraver fonts, there’s a font pack download on the makemusic website.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to both of you for your quick response.

[barbara-brundage]

You can draw horizontal brackets using the smart shapes palette. Vertical smart brackets are not in Finale (at least not through F2004, which what I’m currently using), but there is a straight vertical bracket (like you’d use for flat chords) in the Engraver TextH font.

If you want an angled placing bracket, your best bet would be to open the shape designer and draw a horizontal bracket there. When you save it as a shape it becomes a vector object so you can warp and change the angle.

Or, you can just draw them by hand, which is what I usually do when I can’t make a horizontal bracket work. If you zoom the view to 200 or 400% it’s pretty easy to make things line up.

But no font per se can give you angle brackets that you can adjust, unfortunately.

[barbara-brundage]

Or, you could use the slur tool to make rounded ones, which is the easiest way, if confusing to the reader.

[barbara-brundage]

I should also mention that if you plan to draw them by hand with the line tool, you should wait till everything else is set, or the bits will come apart a little and have to be adjusted every time you change the page layout.

[Anonymous]

Thanks a million for all the valuable information.

[barbara-brundage]

Why, you’re welcome, Sam. Any chance of Medieval to Modern Vol. 3?

[Deborah Henson-Conant]

Barbara Brundage, you just made me very happy with this post! I will go try it all out right now!! – DHC

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

It sounds like Finale is much more usable. The professionals I know recommend Score, particularly for publication, but you have to know how to run a dos software, which I don’t, and I don’t know what support is around.

As for Salzedo notation, I use it, and believe in it, because it is the one consistent and pretty comprehensive system of notation that we have. There are many composers who have used Salzedo notation for standard works, so it is still necessary to learn what it means to play those pieces properly, pieces like the Ginastera Concerto, the Persichetti Serenade and Parable.

There are musical effects in general that have more than one notation, tremolos, for instance, so it is not really a big deal if we have two, as long as they are marked which is which. In any case, I know some harpists whose rule of thumb is to play the harmonics where-ever they will sound the best.

[barbara-brundage]

Thanks, Deborah! Glad it was useful to you.

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