Tempo not working again

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Lynne German Posted January 09, 2022 00:38

I have a MacOS Monterey version 12.0 and am using Finale 27. I have had persistent problems changing tempos in this version, similar to the problems I had a long time ago when I purchased my first version of Finale. It really is maddening - I've read all the online info and nothing will change it. Somewhere in the memory of the piece is an old tempo that won't change, or a tempo change that won't go away. The option to change tempo in the playback box is grayed out. There really should be a simpler solution to this annoying problem. My current piece is stuck on such a slow playback that I can't work very efficiently if I need to listen back to my work.

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PETER THOMSEN Edited January 09, 2022 03:31

Welcome to the forum!

Three things control the tempo in Finale:

MIDI Tool (= the recorded tempo changes)
Expression Tool (= the expression tempo changes)
Playback Controls

And they work in a hierarchical fashion.

The tempo in the Playback Controls is overridden by an Expression that sets a tempo.
This is overridden by the MIDI Tool, which is at the top of the “Tempo Hierarchy”.

In this particular case the first thing to try is clearing Tempo Changes in the MIDI Data:

Edit menu > Clear Selected Items…

In the Clear Selected Items, de-select everything except Tempo Changes.

Then, click OK.

Did the problem go away?

If not, it is time to clear expressions (again, done via Clear Selected Items).

… The option to change tempo in the playback box is grayed out …

This is probably because you paused playback with the Pause button.

Stop the playback with the Stop button (icon: black square).

David Toub Posted January 13, 2022 05:41

What used to work for me was to choose Reset or Use Current Settings in the Playback tool but there is a bug (confirmed by. MM support when I reported it) in which at least on the Mac, that no longer works. Not sure if that is relevant to what is going on here, but I did want to mention it. What does work for me is to change tempo with an expression. Does that make a difference if you, say, add an expression for quarter = 60 or any other value?

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