A video tutorial series teaching a comprehensive understanding of Finale Music Notation Software
16. Tricks for Lyrics
16-1 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 1 (Basic)
Finale’s “Type in Score” sub tool in the Lyrics Tool will be the main way to add lyrics to your scores. This video will demonstrate all you need to know about that and much, much more! Including adding “hard” hyphens and spaces (6:04) and adding lyric elisions (6:44) to basic editing for existing lyrics, the difference between clearing and deleting lyrics (12:57), and the difference between copying and cloning lyrics (15:22). It’s an extensive, yet critical tutorial to watch if you really want to get a firm grip on dealing with lyrics in Finale.
Finale V26.2
16-2 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 2 (Basic)
Verse, Chorus, Section
Using different verses, choruses and sections of lyrics in Finale is what allows you to write new lines of lyrics underneath existing lyrics. This video will explore the techniques of using those alternate sections and will discuss some of the oddities related to copying and cloning lyrics in sections. In addition there’s a discussion about a Patterson Plug-In which will allow you to move lyrics from one verse, chorus or section to another. The link for the Patterson Plug-ins can be found here: http://robertgpatterson.com/-fininfo/finmain.html
Finale V26.2
16-3 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 3 (Intermediate)
Baselines
Baselines for lyrics are important enough that they deserved their own dedicated tutorial video. There’s a bit more to them than meets the eye and a good understanding of how they work will be critical to mastering the Lyrics Tool in Finale. Because each verse, section and chorus has its own set of baselines it’s useful to understand how they interact with each other.
Finale V26.2
16-4 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 4 (Intermediate)
Click Assignment
There is a way to copy and paste lyrics directly into the Lyrics Window and use the Click Assignment tool to attach those lyrics to notes in the score. The process is fraught with booby-traps though so in this video I will show you how to properly prepare the lyrics beforehand so that you’ll have more success. Even with proper preparation, click assigning lyrics is not perfect so you will need to learn how to handle the Shift Lyrics tool which I will show you how to use in this video as well.
Click here for the Jucio Brennan Automatic Hyphenator utility mentioned in the video.
Finale V26.2
16-5 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 5 (Intermediate)
Fonts
Changing fonts for lyrics seems like it should be a simple thing to do, but in Finale it can be easy to do something you didn’t intend. This video will show you how to understand default versus local font changes and there’s a few good tips later in the video about good lyric fonts practices and some examples of when you may want to use alternate fonts or font styles.
Finale V26.2
16-6 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 6 (Advanced)
Word Extensions and Hyphens
Individual Word Extensions are fairly easy to manipulate in Finale but there are quite a few default options to explore which can help you achieve better general results for your word extensions. Also covered in this video is all you need to know about hyphens (15:28)… which isn’t much. There are only a few settings related to hyphens that will allow you to customize the look of them.
Finale V26.2
16-7 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 7 (Advanced)
Syllable Positioning
Syllable positioning gets a little complex in Finale because the rules that you set in the Document Options determine when a syllable gets justified or aligned in a certain way. And then there are spacing rules that Finale follows that you just need to be aware of. If you need to get down and dirty with customizing the positions of syllables for lyrics in Finale this exhaustive tutorial is for you. In addition to the default settings I’ll also show you all you need to know about the Adjust Syllable sub Tool in the Lyrics Tool (10:31). This will allow you to locally adjust syllables any which way you need.
Finale V26.2
16-8 Tricks for Lyrics Lesson 8 (Advanced)
Other Uses for the Lyrics Tool
The Lyrics Tool can be used for other things aside from lyrics. This video explores just a few of those options so you can see what may be available to you with the Lyrics Tool. The sky is the limit though and there are probably other uses that I didn’t mention in the video. I encourage you to add a comment in to the video if you have another unique way of using the Lyrics Tool.
One common thing that the Lyrics Tool is used for is Figured Bass. There’s a quick introduction to how to use the “Finale Numerics” font to write figured bass (4:02).
Finale V26.2
Here are the links to the keystroke tables for the Finale Numerics font for both Mac and Windows.
Mac Finale Numerics Documentation
Windows Finale Numerics Documentation
And here’s a link to a Scoring Notes Article about another Figured Bass font that you can use with Finale called Figurato.
Subscriber Request #10
Clean Up Your Lyrics Window
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten files with Lyrics Windows that are stuffed with old lyrics from songs that were decades old. This occurs because people don’t realize that clearing music from a file to use as a template for a new song doesn’t remove the lyrics from the Lyrics Window. Believe it or not, it wasn’t until a client approached me recently with a severe case of this problem that I actually discovered an old hack that had been kicking around the Finale community for quite some time which completely solves this problem without resorting to clearing out the entire Lyrics Window and typing lyrics from scratch. So, my new (old) knowledge will now be yours, as I walk you through this hack to completely clean up your Lyrics Window!
Finale 27.2
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