hi everyone!  im pretty new to this still and looked around before posting this to see if someone has already covered it but didnt find anything...  im wondering how to change from say, marimba syn hard to marimba syn soft during a song without making a separate staff.  same with timp mallets too...  thanks for any insight!

I'm a Sibelius user, but I would suspect that the concept is the same: create an instrument change. Then you are actually ";changing instruments"; from Marimba Hard to Marimba Soft, or whatever you are looking for.

Pardon my lack of experience if this concept doesn't cross-over.

What you're looking for will likely turn up if you search the forum for ";program change."; There are a few ways you can do this in Finale either using banks in KP2 or putting different instruments on different layers, or possibly by switching channels via the MIDI Tool or playback functions on text attributes. Do some searching for program changes, and if you're still stuck, feel free to elaborate here.

Good luck!