I do it all the time ;-)

Plugins:Scoring and Arranging:Global Staff Attributes: Staff Name Font then hit Apply when done.

Thank you, David !!

I never thought to look in Plug-ins.

:-)
Nessa

There is a Text Search and Replace tool already in Finale. With it you can change the fonts of almost anything you want. It is in the Edit tool next to Smart Find and Paste.

I guess (I assumed that was more like the find and replace in any word processor, not a means to change attributes), but wouldn’t you have to then change each item individually? The nice thing about GSA is you can do it (change fonts) for any subset or all instruments in one fell swoop. I’ll have to check out Search and Replace though. Shame the fonts portion of Document Options can’t change the fonts of existing text (although it can for time signatures, tuplets etc). 

David and Nessa,

Text search and replace does exactly what it's name implies. It will find certain fonts like Times New Roman and replace it with Arial for example. It will change text blocks, too, if you so desire. It is pretty versitle as to what will or won't be replaced. It has a nice filter in it.

Thanks. Sounds more like a font utility than a text search/replace function. There is also Data Check in which you can do much the same with fonts.

"...how to change the font on all of the staff names after a new document is created."

I assumed that is what Nessa wanted to do. Replace the font on staff names already in a document. No?

Yes, but (and I don't want to keep going back and forth, hijacking this thread) that is easily and intuitively done with global staff attributes. Text Search and Replace implies you provide a text item/string, and replace it in all instances with a different text/string. As in every word processor I know of. This is not called "Font Search and Replace," so that's why this was a surprise to me.

OK I just tried it in an older score I had recently run Perfect Layout on but hadn't changed text fonts to my new preferred one (which is the same as what's used on the London Underground; oddly, it works nicely). While it would never have been obvious to me to use this tool, it has the advantage of making the change for everything, not just instrument names. That was a real time-saver. Wish I had known about this earlier so that I wouldn't have had to change text fonts and also measure number fonts and instrument names all individually. Thanks!

I am glad it has worked for what you need. I have always said there probably isn't anything or at least much of anything Finale can't do, if you only knew how or could figure out how to do it. I think a lot of the complaints to MM are from folks, for one reason or another, that don't know how to use Finale or don't know all its features.

I have been using Finale ever since there was a Finale and I still learn stuff.

Agreed. I’m still learning stuff too. I think Finale needs to make some of these things more transparent and also call them out on their blog. 

I thought for a second you had posted one of Terry Riley’s Keyboard Studies :-)  

Well, David, here is the problem any software that is as complex and does as much as Finale can do by its very definition will be complex to learn. Another example is Adobe's Photoshop. It is as easy or as difficult to learn as you make it. If you want to delve deeply into layers and channels its going to take a lot of study. If all you want is to crop a photo a few minutes and you are good to go.

Finale is not much different. A guy that wants to make that circular score for instance will have a longer learning curve for sure! This is where Finale trashs all the other notation software. Learning how is the trick. I'm just glad it worked for you.

Thanks. Now let’s hope MM adds some useful features and updates some tools otherwise they’re just going to be stuck with us old-timers. That other notation app is overrated in my opinion but I give them a lot of credit for having some very useful features. Harder to do that with an old code base (that’s why system 9 became OS X all from scratch, or really from the acquisition of NeXT). But they need to. The new Insert function of dorico’s goes further than inserting with speedy entry and would’ve saved me tons of time and effort over the years. A piano roll would be nice to tweak playback since the MIDI tool is pretty useless. Etc. They need to get on it. Even a more robust set of cautionary accidéntale preferences would be useful. 

Thank you all for the expansion in this post--lots of tips and interesting insights.

My first foray into Finale was in the days of the little monk scribe. The boxes with the tutorials and instructions were works of art. I still have mine. That was in the early 1990s, so about 30 years ago... :-)

It was an extremely hard and lot learning curve. I went through all of the books, and felt defeated. So, I started again, and the second time around the terminology Finale techs used began to make sense, and I was able to "translate" their lingo into practical musical terms.

Although I continued to use Finale since then, my life and employment directed my time elsewhere, and only in the past couple of years have I again been actively composing.

One of the things I have been doing was putting my hand-written scores into digital (Finale) format.

Currently, I have been struggling through one of my symphonic wind ensemble works that I did in Finale in 1993. For the most part, Ver. 26 did a remarkable job of converting the ancient file into the current format. Transpositions did not carry through in many cases, but did in some staves.

Percussion has been a nightmare. I typically do not use much percussion, but in the above piece I did. It worked visually, but the proper playback did not.

Recent posts have garnered great insight to how Finale handles this need--thank you all!

:-)
Nessa

Thanks-good luck! I also have my old manuals from version 3.2 in the early 90's. Good stuff.

I have recently been updating and enhancing a lot of my old files and yes, it's been a nightmare. It all worked in the end, but definitely challenging. 

Thank you, David,

Glad to know it all worked out for you

:-)
Nessa

" Now let’s hope MM adds some useful features and updates some tools ..."

Of course there is always room for improvements and features. Keep in mind all the plug-ins we all love and use are simply shortcuts for things Finale can do all by itself. My concern is,what happens when the plug-in creators don't create? That should  be on the very top of concerns for MM. It seems JW is done at least AWOL. Perfect Layout is shunned. Why TG Tools got the seal of approval is curious, to me.

I’m not sure plugins always merely facilitate things Finale can do on its own. But that’s been debated here many times and I’m not interested in going down that rabbit hole.

MM should be concerned about JW for sure and while I’ve heard different rumors I put no stock in anything that indirectly suggests an update is forthcoming. JW Accidentals crashes if I make any changes to the default profile, limiting its utility. That’s just one example. Some things in JW Change no longer work with F27 and/or SMuFL fonts. I have TGT and it’s rare that it’s had any use for me since I purchased it. It’s very much stuck in the 90’s when many of us optimized scores. 

anyway, lots of stuff can and should be improved and added. I’m trying to be optimistic. 

"Percussion has been a nightmare. I typically do not use much percussion, but in the above piece I did. It worked visually, but the proper playback did not."

There are several instruments or even full sections that require a good working knowledge of how they operate. I don't know by your comment if you are concerned with writing for it or it playing back correctly. If playback is your main most thing, you can forget using Finale. There is a better solution. Get NotePerfomer3. It still isn't fantastic but way better than Final percussion sound wise. In fact all its sounds are better, IMHO. It uses Final scripts to enhance some sounds.

Here is a sample of one of my concert pieces that is using NotePerfomer3 without any tweaks. Just as it processed a standard Finale file. Not a great lot of percussion but significant for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMgUlsCkQko 

Percussion is one place MM could make huge strides in if they were so inclined.

"I’m not sure plugins always merely facilitate things Finale can do on its own."

I don't know much about rabbit holes but it is foolhardy to think anybody or anything can make a program do things that was not already possible or designed to do. If you look at the structure of a plug-in, it is simply commands that tell Finale to do operations already built in. The plug-in just puts them all together so you don't have to key in each keystroke manually.

Lot's of software has third party plug-ins. 

Yes many programs, even Word, support plugins. But they can extend functionality building upon existing functions in a program. I’m not aware Finale can merge layers or apply some functions to partial measures. Some plugins can. Whether that counts as using built-in functions or not is a matter of semantics. 

Ernest,

Thank you for your feedback and the youtube link -- pretty impressive!

Did you use NotePerformer 3 for all of the instruments, or did you combine different libraries (Score Manager/Device)?

I tried NotePerformer 3 and really liked the saxophones--not anemic as offered by Garritan--but some of the string sounds did not sound as well to me as GPO5.

I heard that combining NP3 and GPOs in the same score can cause conflicts. Did you have any problems?

Also, if you don't mind me asking, how effective have you found SmartScore Pro 64 to be?
I had tried the earlier versions and was very disappointed. After all of the corrections I had to make after scanning I could have more quickly entered the scores by hand

As with many of you, nearly all of my earlier works were hand-written, including the parts. I really would like to expedite transferring my old scores into Finale.

Thanks!
:-)
Nessa

I tried NotePerformer 3 and really liked the saxophones--not anemic as offered by Garritan--but some of the string sounds did not sound as well to me as GPO5.

I heard that combining NP3 and GPOs in the same score can cause conflicts. Did you have any problems?

I can speak to this part: yes, there are issues (at least for me) with some of the string patches in NP3. Some things have worked very well for me (check this out), but for one string quartet I did combine NP and GPO5 (the paid version, which overall is waayyy better than the stuff included with Finale). When I tried to use just NP3 for that string quartet, it was terrible. Any string glissandi were messed up (which is a known limitation of NP with Finale specifically). I used NP for sections that were either rich in string harmonics (which NP is great at; GPO not at all) or else benefitted from a more muscular tone (there is a way to change the attack in NP by tweaking one of the continuous controllers, but then that works globally so not as useful. GPO5 tends to be better overall for strings in my experience. 

I have found that in some cases, especially with solo cello, NP messes up the pitches by including some odd resonances. Same in some cases with pizzicato; I went back and forth with Wallender to see what was up with a pizzicato in a violin in another string quartet-it sounded a fifth higher. GPO got it right; NP got it right if marked as arco but messed it up as a pizzicato. They admitted it's an issue they will look at. I don't know if that will happen with NP4, whenever that comes out.

But yes, you can absolutely mix sounds. I had to create (as a separate file, which is what I strongly recommend when developing playback for NotePerformer) duplicate staves into which I'd copy some of the string parts, changing their patches to NP, and erasing the notes from the source staves. A bit more work, but it enabled a much better audio file than I had with just GPO5 alone, or with NP alone. 

Good luck!

Thank you, David

Looks like a lot of good advice. I might give NotePerformer 3 another try.

:-)
Nessa

"Thank you for your feedback and the youtube link -- pretty impressive!"

Thank you very much.

"Did you use NotePerformer 3 for all of the instruments, or did you combine different libraries (Score Manager/Device)"

That was NP3 straight out of the box. No editing on my part.

"I tried NotePerformer 3 and really liked the saxophones--not anemic as offered by Garritan--but some of the string sounds did not sound as well to me as GPO5."

Nessa I am not a strings composer. It is good to know your limits and mine ends with strings. Although I play 2^nd trombone in a symphony orchestra my string knowledge is quite limited. I have heard from some of my friends that do compose strings you must apply certain patches to NP3 to get good strings sound. NP3 using Finale scripts so that is where the patches are.

"I heard that combining NP3 and GPOs in the same score can cause conflicts. Did you have any problems?"

I don’t know. I have combined NP5 and COMB and had zero issues.

"Also, if you don't mind me asking, how effective have you found SmartScore Pro 64 to be?
I had tried the earlier versions and was very disappointed. After all of the corrections I had to make after scanning I could have more quickly entered the scores by hand

As with many of you, nearly all of my earlier works were hand-written, including the parts. I really would like to expedite transferring my old scores into Finale."

Scanning is a very hit and miss procedure. You must have good copy. If you have poor originals the scan is virtually useless.

SS64 Pro is probably the best choice but it is not cheap at $400 or $200 if you own Finale. If you intend, from you comments, to scan handwritten copy, I doubt SS64 will help at all There is  demo that you can try first for free. 

Thanks!
:-)
Nessa

You are certainly welcome, and I hope I have been some small help in this situation.

Ernie