Very valuable to many, I'm sure. But to me, a big meh.

Will we see any of the promised fixes to lyrics?

Ok... didn’t know I was missing much in that regards but sure, why not?

What Mike R says about lyrics. 

Oh dear. A couple of additions to the expressions and articulations libraries plus improvements to their placement which should have been right from the start? These are things we’ve generally had to take care of ourselves anyway. If they’re touting them as ‘new features’, then I’m afraid they’re running out of the real improvements to the program which will keep it competing with the other contenders out there (and which already have the new features coming in v. 26). Let’s hope MM has a lot of bug fixes up its sleeve...

Good to see some long overdue improvements. The tremolo especially! I still look forward to doing repeated notes like so many publishers do it:

and not the uglier

Those repeat note marks should be parallel to the beams!!!!

>Those repeat note marks should be parallel to the beams!!!!<

Yes!

Who wouldn't want that but it ain't gonna happen.

Actually it IS possible - via a workaround - to create the layout with “tremolo slashes” parallel to the beams (= “beam fractions”).

The workaround is time consuming (however, if a plug-in developer wrote a plug-in for it …):

1. Enter the repeated notes as they would sound i.e. repeated 16th's in layer one. then hide the second of each repeated note.

2. Do exactly the same thing in layer two

3. Flip the stem directions in the layers so that the aligned note's stem directions are the same (or change the layer settings in document options)

4. Use the broken beam tool to reverse direction of every visible broken beam in layer two.

5. Respace the music to suit.

A big kudos to Finale power user Richard Nield for explaining this workaround 15 years ago.

If a plug-in developer can do it, why can't Finale?

And how often can that be asked?

That's the most creative workaround I've seen in quite a while... Terrific!

So... I have to ask... I tried duplicating the example above - works great for eighth note tremolos... is there an additional trick for the sixteenth note tremolos? (the first measure in Martin's example)

 I can't seem to get the sixteenth note beams to connect without manually stretching them over... or - maybe that's the only option?

Also - the default length of the tremolo is a little long for my taste, but changing the broken beam length setting shortens them right up.  The only issue there is that changes it globally - so depending on the rhythms in your piece - you would need to decide what take less time - lowering the global amount for the tremolos and then manually fixing broken sixteenth note beams or leaving it and manually shortening the tremolo beams.

P.S.  -  Mike has a great point about these things... I suppose this is where prioritization and selling points, most requests, etc... come into play?

The workaround is too time consuming and just doesn't look right. My easier workaround is to use my trusty old fountain pen with a music nib, a bottle of india ink, a ruler for alignment and just do it manually. I've been using Finale since ver. 1  and have looked forward to each update watching it get better each time. This notation is one that is extremely common in orchestral music for the last 200 years and it still amazes me that it isn't a standard, built-in feature. 

Is this good enough?



I had to manually stretch the sixteenth note beams across the group - pretty quick if it's only a couple of measures...

Here's another sort of way to do this. It looks pretty close, but won't match the angle of the stems (it will be flat). I grabbed the whole rest character from Engraver Font, and tweaked the vertical position from the original measured tremolo articulation.