How are your fermatas set up in Human Playback?

It is possible, of course, that the legacy HP is responding to the MIDI/ASCII character code of the old location of the fermata and that you may have to manually add or change the HP to respond to the new location until MM corrects the oversight (if that is what is happening).

You should probably also use the "Submit a request" link to submit this problem directly to MM, since they may actually be able to refer you to an existing library file you can add to remedy the situation, or at least they will be on notice that they might want to correct this situation in the first update to version 27.0.

Thanks for the help Adrian.

I have submitted a request and am awaiting a response.

I have figured out that if I load the fermata articulation from the maestro font rather than the default finale maestro font, then the fermatas work correctly.

For the time being, I will alter the default style document to use a different font for the fermata articulation.

Hopefully any similar issues will be resolved in the next update.

Just heard back from Finale Support on this:

"We are working to update Human Playback to work with SMuFL, so hopefully we can provide a permanent fix for this soon. This is an issue that we knew would be a point of friction for many users, so this is certainly priority for us too. "

I'm assuming this is why grupettos are broken as well.

I received this from customer support:

We are aware of a problem with playback of some articulations and expressions in Finale v27, and I can provide some information and a workaround. You're right that there is a difference in behavior depending on the font you are using, such as Finale Maestro vs. Maestro. One of the new features in Finale v27 is support for SMuFL fonts. The default documents in Finale v27 were updated to use SMuFL fonts, although documents based on the legacy fonts are still available as well. Finale's Human Playback engine relies on the the characters used in articulations and expressions to play them correctly. Unfortunately, Human Playback does not recognize some SMuFL characters yet, and that includes the fermata articulation from Finale Maestro. We were aware of this issue when Finale v27 was being developed, and our developers are working to improve Human Playback in a maintenance update to version 27. While I don't have a specific timeline for these Human Playback improvements, I can tell you that they are in progress. You can read more details in Certain Expressions and Articulations Not Playing Back in Finale v27.0.

In the meantime, the workaround I'd suggest is to create documents with a legacy font rather than SMuFL, in which case Human Playback will work as expected. You can refer to Creating Legacy Font Based Documents in Finale v27. If you've already written a piece and it wouldn't be feasible to start over, you can copy/paste into the new legacy font-based document. Before copy/pasting, make sure to choose Edit > Edit Filter and deselect Articulations. This way you can copy everything except the articulations into the new document, so you'll only need to enter the articulations again.

Hey, All

I'm glad MM is aware of the fermata issue and is working to fix it. It's bad enough that my Dorico 3.5 ignores them, too. I just completed a new collection of Christmas songs for medium-advanced brass quintet (I did my WW Quintet in v26-the fermatas played back beautifully, giving need nuance and reality to the playback), and the inability to add subtleties like fermatas is frustrating, as I need to submit the work to the publisher soon. Hopefully, MM comes up with a bug fix soon. On a related issue to expressions, I was working with v27 and went to add some expression markings when, horror!, there was no expression box. All I saw when I selected "mf" from the tool bar and clicked on the measure I wanted to apply the expression to was a white bar titled "Expression Selection". That's it. No box, no categories, no expressions-just the bar. After trying reloading the library to no effect, I uninstalled then reinstalled the program. That fixed it-for now. I'm just curious; did any of you have this issue? Every other tool bar function worked fine. I wonder if it might be an issue with the new Maestro font also.

In Dorico the work-around is to slow the time track for the held note. Until the Finale development team comes up with a real solution, I expect a similar work-around would be possible in Finale, setting a very slow hidden tempo and then restoring it to move ahead after the fermata.

Thanks. Shame we have to do that, though. You'd think adding fermata recognition for playback would be a no-brainer.

Of course, in Finale, the tempo affects the entire measure, not just the note. I'd rather have the fermata ignored. The tempo alteration work around sounds forced and awkward.

I'm thinking, at this point, until v27 gets the fermata/expressions and other bugs fixed (Dorico, too), I may just keep doing my writing in v26. The issues I've had with v27 have been-if not frustrating- disappointing. Maybe they released it too soon?

If/When Presonus makes Notion's score and page formatting more robust and real-world publication friendly, it'll probably become my main work horse. I've been using it since it was Realize Music's baby. Was runner-up in their International Orchestral Composition Contest in 2006 with it. It's a good program with good sounds (better than what comes with Dorico 3.5), And-I can easily program my fermatas :)

>> Of course, in Finale, the tempo affects the entire measure, not just the note.

This is because of the settings in the Tempo Expression category. One can change the definition of the category or create a duplicate category and change that to position tempo changes at the click position.

Thank, You J Adrian. I will do that.

With any articulation that is not playing back correctly in 27, my workaround is to edit the articulation to use the old Maestro font. This works perfectly.

Well, when I change the v27 fermata articulation font to Maestro, the fermata symbol disappears from the score. The handle is visible, but not the symbol. Is this something you do for playback, then undo for printing the score? It's a bit annoying that WE have to try and come up with workarounds for basic functionality issues that should have been addressed by MM before the release of v27. I'm grateful, Linda for the option you gave me, but it'll be much easier to work with v26 until these bugs in v27 are resolved.

Thanks!

When you edit the articulation and change the font to Maestro, you then need to click on each main and flipped button to search for and select the articulation shape. ie. fermata upright or upside down.

Oh. Thank You very much. I will try that :)

That's a neat fix, by the way.

Linda, GREAT fix. It worked fine. So nice to have my nuances back. I'll save this Brass Quintet as a Template so I won't have to reinvent the wheel every time.

Thanks again!

Hey, All.

Is there a way to have my GPO5 become the default instead of Garritan Instruments for Finale? I know they said v27 was supposed to assign better instruments to new documents, but the ones that load still suck. Since I paid for all of the Garritan libraries, it'd be nice not to have to manually load them into the Aria player each time I create a new work.

Thanks!

Why a question about GPO5 here? Peter already answered your question in another thread.

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4404740338199-change-replay-instruments 

To make Finale use GPO instruments as the default whenever you open a new document, you have to make changes to the default document 'Finale Maestro Font Default.ftmx'.

There are a few youtubes that show you what to change and how to change this document.

But basically, you open Finale with a default document, make the changes you would like to see as default, and save this file back as a template into the following directory. On a PC:

C:\Users\"your name"\AppData\Roaming\MakeMusic\Finale 27\Music Files\Default Files

I have my default document set for things like paper size, margins, more exact placement of articulations. There are lots more.

To make GPO instruments as the default in the template, I would change:

Sound Map Priority to have GPO at the top (midi/audio drop down);
Play Finale through VST ticked (midi/audio drop down);
Select GPO under Device, in Instrument List in Score Manager (window drop down).

I hope this helps. Otherwise as has already been stated, it might be easier, just to select GPO for each instrument when already making your music.
I scan a lot of music to create piano backings for students, and want all these settings set when I import the xml. Saves time.

Thanks Linda. GPO doesn't show up in Sound Map Priority list or in the Score Window. It's not a big deal to select the instruments as I start a new project. I almost never use a default document anyway, as every project is different, and I typically need to customize the templates anyway. I've done that with some of my templates after your help in fixing the fermata issue. My custom-made templates now all feature your handy work-around, and I selected the GPO5 instruments to load for each.

Thanks again!

Wouldn't it be nice, though, in a 'perfect' Finale world (which will never exist) if all of your Garritan libraries automatically showed up in your Sound Map Priortiy and Score Manager lists? Since Garritan and Finale have been together so long, you'd think they would. Noteperformer 3 does. Just wondering out loud ;)

And, J Adrian, I didn't see the other thread. Plus, I ended up answering my own question after all by creating my own templates. Sorry.