Were you thinking of that happening automatically or more along the lines of a chord font or lyric font that would suffice? Or is the issue one of spacing the fingerings at a set distance from the notes?

How they do it I have no idea.  But I want it to look like elementary music method books.  They have the positions or fingerings either above or below the note.  It could be done as a plug-in if Jari got some free time.  The same way as alpha notes are handled.

That is a shame because I talked with all six of our teachers at our school district and all six thought it was a great idea.  Is Finale truly an educational tool or not?

Thank you for the reply.

If you want your printouts to look like method books, then you need to devote the time those publishers do to produce that output. I expect Finale can do what you want; but sad to say, you have to take the time, which  I know from more than thirty years' experience, teachers have in very short supply. Your best bet would be to create a special expressions category that positions fingerings at the proper distance from staff & notes and then create your fingerings within that (or those, if separate above and below settings are needed) category/categories.

FYI - there might be a better way ...

Do a search on "clarinet fingering font" or whatever instrument you might need - there are several FREE fingering fonts that will do this very thing for every woodwind instrument. (There are even more "paid" fingering fonts also...)

Simply download the font, install it into your computer (same as any other font), then from Finale, select that font to be used via the lyric tool or the expression tool.

Then, by typing the right key or series of keys, you will create either a blank fingering or a filled in fingering for the desired note.

If you used the expression tool, you could create a library of frequently used fingerings for your needed instruments. Then, using the expression tool, click on a note, navigate to the desired fingering and insert it into your score. For trombone - use a position number inside a box. Same for valved brass also.

Good luck!

Possibly a plug-in ?

I've written and published a JWLua script for automatic brass fingerings and slide positions a year ago: http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=11&m=474054

Harald

Harald that is way cool.  If you ever do enhance it please let me know.  Thanx.

The question now becomes why can't MM do this?  Finale brags about being an educational tool.

BTW, is it difficult to edit the lib file?  Do I need any special editor?

Hi All:

Thanks for posting Harald. Ernest, MakeMusic is heavily investing in Music Education software via SmartMusic and Alfred Music Publishing. Finale is a music notation application and while it is used by educators, it isn't limited to that use case. I would humbly suggest that we work on making Finale fast, future-proof to Apple's next OS, and correct notational flaws before investing in finger charts.

Cheers,

Michael Johnson

VP, Professional Notation

MakeMusic

Thanks, Ernest! You can edit the library as you wish within Finale without any specific editor, but be sure to retain the "description" parameter on each expression, as the script identifies the expression by this parameter. You can contact me by email (my adress is in the plug in's source code) or via finaleforum.com (HaraldS) which are better ways for support than this feature request forum.

I think it's quite appropriate to have a function like adding fingerings as a plug-in/script, because it's not a core feature of a notation program. It's closely related, of course, but kind of a typical feature which should be optional. So I'm happy if MM focusses on Finale's core feature enhancements.