Gerard Taylor,

1) Are you talking about Percussion Layout - or are you talking about Percussion MIDI Map?

2) I am confused by your words “I think percussion maps are saved in the library file”.

When you use the word “library file”, what are you thinking of?

You can save a Finale Library via

File menu > Save Library…

But perhaps you are thinking of something else?

Whenever I try to write for an instrument, like Castanets, Didgeridoo or Cajon, Finale brings up the following notice.

"The selected document Style does not
include the Percussion Layout required
by the instrument(s). To ensure proper
notation, you can either:

- Select a different Document Style
- Select a different Percussion inst. or
- Manually set up or load the necessary
Percussion Layout"

Since there is no such thing as a Documents Style I can choose to score notation properly for any of the instruments I mentioned, I'm guessing that I need to create a "Percussion Layout" each time I create a new document. The manual is great at communicating the WHAT but abysmal at conveying the HOW. But I finally managed to create a "Percussion Layout" for these instruments, which I see is just a matter of selecting instrument sounds and assigning their place in a staff. Please correct me if I am mistaken and there is more involved.

Are percussion layouts saved as part of a document's library file? If so, then to spare myself from having to create the layouts in each new work, I need to save the library file to load into a new document, firstly deleting all the standard Articulations, Expressions and lines in Custom Tool to avoid bloating the library, otherwise Finale duplicates these items.

If I am not mistaken, writing for percussive instruments in Finale is quite a labor.

Oops! Forgot to answer your question. I understand a library file to be one that saves all your settings, viz. articulations, expressions and lines. I would save a library only if I added a number of custom articulations, etc., like circled guitar string numbers, fingering, additional expressions and such.

OK, I understand.

This is not about Percussion MIDI Maps, but only about Percussion Layouts.

Some settings are program specific while other settings are document specific.

Program specific settings are saved in the program’s Preferences file.

Document specific settings are saved inside the Finale document.

Take a look at

Document menu > Document Options…

You can save selected document specific items (e. g. Document Options) in a Library file that you can load into Finale documents.

1)

Try this:

Open a Finale document, and go to

File menu > Save Library…

As you can see in the dialog box Save Library, you can choose, what items to include in a Library.

You could choose to save a Library of only the document’s Articulations (and nothing else).

Or you could choose to save a Library of only the Document Options.

In Other Words:

You do not have to delete “all the standard Articulations, Expressions and lines in Custom Tool to avoid bloating the library”.

Just do not select them in the dialog Save Library.

2)

… Are percussion layouts saved as part of a document's library file? …

As you can see in the dialog box Save Library, you can save a Library of only the document’s Percussion Layouts.

Just do not select in the dialog Save Library anything else than Percussion Layouts.

To save a Library of only one specific Percussion Layout, make a duplicate copy of the Finale document.

You can delete this duplicate copy when you are done.

Open the duplicate copy, delete all the other Percussion Layouts, and save a Library of only the Percussion Layout you did not delete.