Glory to Jesus Christ!

I have recently acquired a copy of Finale 2004 to use for setting chant to musical notation -- hymns, troparia, etc. Finale is very powerful software indeed, but not especially suited to chant.

Both the lack of a time signature (Finale wants one) and the difficulty of adding lyrics in a manner quite different from regular songs have proven to be great challenges.

However, I know that many musicians use Finale with great success for chant. So I wanted to ask if any here have done so, and if they might be able to offer some tips.

Glad to, though it has been a while, and there are apt to be other posters who know a better way.

First, set a wide time signature, such as 20/4. That way you can probably get around the time signature barline constraint by making the measure so broad that the barline is less relevant. There may also be a way to mask the barlines on your last draft, but I don't know what it is. In fact, maybe some other poster knows a way to circumvent the time signature altogether, but not me.

Second, AFTER you have written the music, go back to the beginning to add the lyrics, that is, as long as you are certain the notes themselves are going to match the text already. I have found that it is difficult to correct both notes and text by editing, so I do more pre-planning to make changing note values unnecessary.

I hope others can chime in on this. For me, Finale is much better suited to writing for instruments. I have used it to transcribe quartets for flute, violin, viola, and cello much more easily than for unison chant.

All the music for the Metropolitan Cantor Institute is engraved using Finale. Some suggestions:

1. Set each phrase of chant as a single measure with a composite time signature that matches the music. If there is too much for one line, split it into two measure and use the measure tool on the first one to make it end with an invisible bar line.

2. Using the Measure tool, select all measures then choose Edit Measure Attributes. Click on Time Signature - Always Hide, and in the Options section, select Position Notes Evenly Across Measure.

There are other issues such as telling Finale not to insert rests automatically into a measure; I will try to write these up later.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

God bless you, Jeff!

1) Depending on the length of a phrase, you can put in double whole notes and stick a whole bunch of text on one of these notes. In the lyrics box, simply write out each word without hyphens for syllables and replace all spaces with the character represented by ALT 160 (it looks like a blank space but doesn't act like one). It took me a while to get used to this, but I have found it to be very helpful.

2) There is a way to hide notes so that you can have text by syllables connected to each note but not see a whole bunch of the same chord over and over. Unfortunately, I forgot how to do this since I prefer the double whole note method.

3) Hiding the time signature can be done through the staff tool. Simply click anywhere on the staff and unclick "Show Time Signature". You can also hide the Staff Name this way too. Simply repeat for any other staves.

N.B.: I have Finale 2002, so there might be some changes to the newer versions.