In 1999, Coda Music Technology Inc. set the stage for a new era of music notation software by releasing their plug-in developer’s kit (PDK). Today, Finale is still the only notation software that can serve as a platform for powerful third-party extensions with full access to its notation data, and it is therefore the only program that is being perfected by many programmers wordwide.
I started
developing TGTools in May 1999, and it has become the most comprehensive set of
plug-ins available. It adds a new, hierarchical menu with over sixty commands
including many big time-savers as well as things you wouldn’t have thought
possible. I have attempted to provide solutions for many engraving tasks
that are difficult to accomplish with Finale alone. Quite a few of these
features are unique and neither exist in any other notational software, nor
could they be added to competing products - because those lack a suitable
plug-in developer’s kit.
TGTools have been a success right from the beginning – they are now the #1 recommendation made by experienced Finale users and professional engravers. They are equally useful to the beginner because they fill in some gaps that Coda has left in the main software.
Here’s an example of a frequently
needed tool: the Tremolo plug-in. Finale itself cannot easily notate
piano tremolos (tremolos between two notes or chords). This notation requires
that both notes or chords be shown with the full duration of the tremolo, and
tremolo beams in between. Using
TGTools, you simply enter the two parts of the tremolo with half the duration
so that all the notes still fit in the measure. Next, you select TGTools >
Tremolos from the menu, click Ok, and the tremolo is automatically set up for
you, with doubled note values.
Another useful plug-in is the Beam
Breaker. It is mostly used for breaking secondary beams – such as to
visually divide a sixteenth note sixtuplet into two or three parts. Beam
Breaker does this automatically for you, intelligently analyzing the underlying
rhythms and breaking the correct beams. Rather than doing each measure
manually, you can have Beam Breaker process the whole score at once.
There are more commands in TGTools
that relate to visual musical elements; they are all in the Music menu.
For example, easily notate artificial string harmonics with correct playback using
the Harmonics tool. Or, you can now mass-create slurs: if you
want slurs put over a specific number of notes per slur, then TGTools can create
them for you. That’s a lot more convenient than drawing each slur individually
using the mouse. Just select some measures, choose Music > Create Slurs,
specifying how many notes go under each slur.
Another related command is
Mass-Create Hairpins. These are placed between dynamic markings, which you need to put
in first (using Finale’s Expression Tool). Create Hairpins will put
hairpins between all - or specific - dynamic markings in the selected measure
range, automatically recognizing crescendos and decrescendos. In big scores,
this can save you hundreds of tedious mouse-clicks and drags.
Speaking of dynamics, with TGTools
it is now finally possible to align dynamics: both hairpins and dynamic
markings are aligned vertically, and you can also move them up or down. Align/Move
Dynamics knows which of your text expressions are dynamics and will
operate only on those markings. This is a major revolution: you don’t need to pay much
attention to positioning dynamic markings and hairpins manually any more since
TGTools will align them for you, and also straighten the hairpins.
There’s more … the Layout
Utilities, for example: Staff List Manager enables you to specify
which instruments should appear on which pages or staff systems simply by
placing a checkmark next to them, and it also displays the vertical distances.
These can be scaled in order to make systems with different instruments have a
uniform height on all pages.
The Lyrics Utilities solve
some common spacing problems with lyrics. New Spacing, for example,
improves Finale’s spacing of melisma syllables, and the revamped Word Extensions
plug-in adds a few options and calculates the required length more precisely than Coda’s original –
a must for anyone using word extensions.
If you work with scores where two or
more instruments share the same staff, TGTools’ Smart Explosion will
help you create the parts. It intelligently recognizes keywords such as 1.,
2., a 2, solo etc. and does a completely automatic explosion,
correctly distributing smart shapes and nicely positioning expressions.
This article
coveres TGTools only in
part, but I suppose you get the idea – third party programmers can provide some
advanced features that Coda doesn’t have the time to make. A fairly complete
plug-in directory can be found on http://www.finaletips.nu.