A quick thing for you frustrated Finale users*: Here’s how you write stickings. You probably tried adding them as text, and met with bitter failure, then you tried them as lyrics, met with bitter failure, and you felt deeply sad and ridiculous.
* – Insert obvious joke.
The answer is to enter them as articulations. Articulations.
Yes, articulations, the same tool you use to do accents, rolls, dots, staccato marks, etc. To do that:
1. Select the articulation tool.
Well, first open your template file— a blank file with all your usual settings in it, so you don’t have to do this every freakin’ time you write something. Then:
1. Select the articulation tool.
2. Click on a note.
3. When the articulation selection window opens, select CREATE.
4. That will open the ARTICULATION DESIGNER window. Copy these settings:
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| Don’t think, just do it. |
5. You’ll have to select a normal text font— so hit SET FONT. Assign whatever you’re using for all the text in your template.
Click OK to seal in your decision, and close that dialog.
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| If you don’t know what to use, use Arial. Don’t screw around. |
6. Back in the ARTICULATION DESIGNER dialog, click MAIN to select the character you want to use for your sticking. I suggest starting with good old R. Click OK to close that, and OK to close the ARTICULATION DESIGNER dialog.
7. Back in the ARTICULATION SELECTION dialog, click on the sticking you just created, and then click DUPLICATE. Scroll down to the duplicate sticking you just duplicated, and select EDIT. EDIT. Then hit MAIN to assign the sticking you want. Logic and convention dictates that we make this one L.
Repeat for whatever other stickings you want— duplicate, then edit.
8. Save and close.
PROBLEM! When you use your new sticking articulations with more than a single line of drums, you get something like this:
I haven’t figured out how to get them to render in a normal straight line when the notes are on different lines/spaces. So when you’re all done writing your page of stuff, you need to highlight all the notes on the same line (hold down shift and select with the mouse), and use the up/down arrow keys to move them where you want them. It helps if you hit VIEW>GRID/GUIDE>SHOW GRID.
It’s a pain in the butt, but that’s Finale for you. Like everything else that’s a PITB, you learn to get pretty fast with it.
BONUS! You can also use this same procedure to put counts in your music. Do all the same stuff, but use these settings:
I have symbols for the numerals 1-7, e, &, a. Unfortunately we have the same problem when doing this on more than one line of music, but you shouldn’t be marking in the counts very often anyway.