How can I get the folks at MakeMusic to answer a simple question?

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Catherine Wilson Posted November 28, 2016 22:43

I was going to buy Finale today at the Cyber Monday price, but I can't seem to contact any sales people with a question. I have been trying since the 25th to get my question answered, and I received an email that they received my question but no answer yet. I actually called them up today and oh, too bad, they're all in a meeting and can't be bothered.

If anyone can answer my question here I would be grateful, but based on the dreadful customer support (I am a past paying customer) I don't think I'll bother with Finale.

Here is the question:

I have tried Finale and other music scoring software before, and they all seem to enforce proper timing, i.e. if I put a half note where there is only room for a quarter note in a particular measure, the software won't do it. Is there any way to turn this off? In other words, if I want to put 82 quarter notes into one measure of a 4/4 score, is there a way for me to do that?

What I'm trying to do is sketch out some ideas without having to worry about everything being strictly kosher. Then I can fix the mess later. It is so frustrating to be stymied by the software REFUSING to put a quarter note where I want it, even if it's (technically) wrong.

5 comments

Date Votes

MIKE HALLORAN Edited November 28, 2016 23:56

The answer is, yes. It's easy.

MIKE HALLORAN Posted November 28, 2016 23:55

I forget what has to be checked/unchecked but you can do exactly what you want in Finale. I remember being able to do so back to Finale 1998.

MIKE HALLORAN Edited November 29, 2016 00:05

Here it is from the 2012 manual

https://usermanuals.finalemusic.com/Finale2012Mac/Content/Finale/Cadenzas1.htm

Google can be your friend in these matters. It took me a few seconds to look it up on my iPad rather than going to my iMac and searching the old manuals.

PAUL BORISOFF Posted November 29, 2016 16:42

Cyber Monday and Black Friday kept them very busy. I got them today in about 10 minutes.

I just asked that question to the rep. Using speedy entry allows you to uncheck a box that stops the flow to the next bar... so you can keep the activity isolated to the measure in question. She also suggested copying the measure to somewhere further up to hold it as backup. Some good ideas.

I learned with print music that when you are just trying to put notes in initially; kind of just streaming them in with no regard to timing, that you can change the time signature to say 50/4, lay in the notes in a crude way, fix them up and then change the time signature back to normal. Hope this helps.

HARVEY DAWSON Posted November 29, 2016 18:55

This ones easy.... Answer: YES. you can put as many notes in a 4/4 bar as you want. As soon as you go over in speedy entry, Finale will pop up an alert to warn you that your bar has too many notes and will give you options: 1)Leave the bar overfull, or 2) add the extra notes to the next bar; etc etc... just pick the first option, and you can keep adding as many as you like, resulting in arithmetically incorrect bars...

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