A few weeks ago I shared the steps I used to create some Kodály solfège notation with Finale for a music educator I met in Boston. Since then several people have commented, offering excellent suggestions and feedback. I love how this has sparked a dialog: This, in my opinion, is the result of a good blog. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to share their expertise with us.

Of course in my example I neglected to address this issue of preserving the open noteheads used in half notes and larger durations. You were clear you wanted my example to look like more like this:

Two slightly different ways to address open noteheads were suggested in your comments, and both work. I like Derrek’s suggestion best. He suggests that when we eliminate the noteheads, we specify that we want to only affect closed noteheads. To do so, when you go to Utilities>Change>Noteheads you’ll want to indicate that you wish to find a “Selected Notehead,” then hit the Select button, and choose the closed notehead from the list of available characters (it is in slot #207). From there the steps are the same as last time:

Under “Change to” indicate “Selected notehead,” and hit “Select.” Because we want to replace the default noteheads with nothing, choose any empty box other than “0,” hit Select, and OK.

That does the trick!

Thanks, too, to SF who offers some publishing-level tips on fine-tuning the placement of the solfège and lyrics under the stems.

In all the great comments I received, no one mentioned a clef. Would you like me to write about using the appropriate clef? Or would you prefer another topic? Use the “Comments” button below to let me know!