Last week I had a great time in Bellevue, Washington, at the MENC Northwest Conference. As is often the case when I meet with music educators, the subject of how to create worksheets came up. Because worksheets are typically not made with a performance in mind, they often look very different from most other Finale projects.
Here’s a really fast and easy way to create worksheets: Simply edit one of the more than 800 worksheets provided with Finale. To find them go to File > Open Finale Worksheet…
The worksheets are provided in several folders, including “Scales,” “Chords,” Elements of Music,” and more. Once you’ve opened a worksheet that resembles what you’d like to create, just edit any details you’d like to change and you’ve quickly created customized curriculum.
Let’s say, however, that you’d like to make something like this completely from scratch:
Today I’ll share four techniques that are useful in creating this type of worksheet, which you’re likely to use elsewhere too. To begin choose File > New > Default Document.
1. Placing Measures on the Page
Want your musical examples to appear only on the left side of the page? Select the Page Layout Tool and drag the top left handle to determine where the music begins and the bottom right handle to determine there the music ends. Using this technique you can make the example on the left look like the example on the right:
Need more space between lines of music to add some text? Simply click on a measure, and while holding the mouse button down, drag the measures of that system down the page.
2. Moving Measures to Adjacent Staff Systems
To move a measure or measures to an adjacent staff system, click on the measure you wish to move and use your computer keyboard’s Up and Down Arrow keys to indicate whether you’d like it to move up or down.
In the example at left below I clicked on measure 5 and hit the Up Arrow until measures 1-5 were all on system 1, as it appears on the right. Whenever you use this technique, a non-printing “Lock” icon appears onscreen to remind you that it was your idea to lock all these measures in one system.
3. Key Signatures and Time Signatures
If you have examples with different key and time signatures on each line of your worksheet, you probably don’t want to display courtesy time and key signatures at the end of each preceding line. To change this, go to:
- Document > Document Options > Time Signatures and deselect “Display courtesy time signature at end…”
- Documents > Document Options > Key Signatures and deselect “Display courtesy key signature at end…”
4. Barline Styles
If you’d like to change from a normal barline to something else, use the Measure Tool. Click on the desired measure, select Double bar, Final bar (or whatever) and click OK.
All that is left at this point is to add text which is easily done with the Text Tool. Not sure how to select any of the tools mentioned above? Click here for help!
Let us know how you’re putting these tips to use by clicking on “Comments” below!