In anticipation of Halloween, we’re reposting this fun piece that Mark Adler created with Finale last year.

This traditional Halloween song can be sung as a round. Feel free to download the file and play it back in Finale. Mark suggests: “For added fun in the classroom, delete the eyes and mouth before printing and let your students create their own pumpkin faces.”

Are you curious about how this piece was made? Mark explains:

“People often ask how I create files like this, assuming that I have imported graphics into the Finale file. This file contains no imported graphics or customized fonts; it was created entirely in Finale. To start, I create a playback staff and entered the round that the file would play back. I chose G minor because it places most of the notes within the staff. While having notes with ledger lines is really not a problem, it does add to the time it takes to tweak the finished file. Next, I hid all of the notes and staff lines in the playback staff.

“I then created the pumpkin shaped staff lines using the shape designer. The eyes were entered as expressions made with triangle noteheads from the Broadway Copyist font. I considered using a mordant for the mouth, but was not too happy with the expression it produced, so I created a more friendly mouth using the shape designer. The pumpkin stem is actually an eighth note flag from the Jazz font. Most everything else on the page, all of the notes and lyrics, was entered as a custom Smart Shape. By using a Smart Shape, I was easily able to rotate each element to match the contour of the pumpkin.”

We hope this pumpkin puts a smile – spooky or otherwise – on your faces, too.

Happy Halloween!