What is this? How do I get to it? And how do I make this play 16ths with slasshes as diddles in finale 2004?

JJ

If 2004 is anything like 2003, click on Plugins >TGTools > Smart Playback. Make sure in the Trill/unmeasured tremol (per quarter note) that you put 8 so it doesn't make the rolls sound really screwy. Click on Apply, click on yes, then close the box and voila!

Your slashes will sound like diddles. The only bummer is you can't make buzzes sound like buzzes just by adding a Z or whatever you use to notate buzzes. You can however, make them sound like buzzes on your midi keyboard using VD.

Hope this helps.

If you go to this website (http://www.tgtools.de/) you can download a more complete try-out version of this plug-in set, which allows you to do quite a bit with regard to playback, and I beileve it's more extensive than the tgtools that comes with Finale.

Not trying to be overly "pluggy" here, but this is one feature of Sibelius that really saves me a lot of time since that program automatically plays back diddles.

Using Finale with TG Tools "smart playback" plugin, it places the extra diddle notes as invisible (hidden) notes in layer 4. So if you decide to change something in that measure later, the invisible notes in layer 4 will still be there messing with your playback.

All that it takes to clear out the 'smart playback' entries in layer 4 is selecting layer 4, the using mass mover to clear entries. Or, select w/mass mover and use 'smart playback' to remove its own effects.

Not hard at all.

Yes - you are right. It's not hard at all. It's just an annoyance in my opinion.

I'll agree with you on that Jim.

My wish (don't I have enough of them already) is that the smart playback was not an extension of the program, but rather a core componant that interpreted the slash on the fly.

I've gotten to the point writing with Finale that every extra movement that I have to make with a mouse begins to tick me off.

I really owe it to myself to sit down with a macro program and set up some keystrokes to make it all faster.

I hear you David. That's a big reason why I prefer Sibelius, because it does interpret slashes on the fly. Avoiding the mouse is always a goal of mine when trying to be efficient in these programs.

So this morning I decided to try out iKey.

It works great. I programmed my F9 to add smart playback and option-F 9 to remove it. $20 shareware.

[url]http://scriptsoftware.com/ikey/[/url]