QuickScribe problems in DP 8.07 and Yosemite

[stubbsonic]

Just updated to Yosemite and the first thing I tried was throwing together a quick scales sheet in QS for a student. Immediately I've got little glitches like barlines at the ends of line being too far from the end of the staff, key-signatures in a transposing part not working correctly, staff lines not appearing.

Some of it was fixed by closing and re-opening the window. Some of it persisted. I tried closing and re-opening DP, which also fixed some things, but it was pretty random.

Yesterday, MakeMusic sent an offer to update to Finale 2014 on a leap day sale-- so I took them up on that. Though I don't use Finale much, I didn't want to have to boot in another OS just to get into Finale. Now that DP's quickscribe seems all a mess, I'm kind of glad I did that.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Make sure you are running version 2014.5 of Finale. Lots of bug fixes. Isn't it 2016? Where is Finale 2016? For that matter, where is Finale 2015?

[mikehalloran]

DP doesn't always install the QS font properly. Find the QS font in the DP application (right-click and drill down) and install it. Resolve any duplicates in Font Book.app. It may not change anything but worth a try.

DP 9 can export QuickScribe as MusicXML in addition to MIDI. When it's time for you to update, this may save you time.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

DP doesn't always install the QS font properly. Find the QS font in the DP application (right-click and drill down) and install it. Resolve any duplicates in Font Book.app. It may not change anything but worth a try.

DP 9 can export QuickScribe as MusicXML in addition to MIDI. When it's time for you to update, this may save you time.

Good suggestion!

[stubbsonic]

I repaired permissions, which might have been a factor. There were some cryptic things that might have been involved.

I found the QuickScribe font in the application package, and clicked to install. It did install it-- which was successful and there was no warning about it already being installed.

There is one lingering issue in this particular project. There's a key signature at the beginning of the track. But the key signature doesn't appear in QS until the second line. But the accidentals in the first line are behaving as if the key signature is there.

I've mostly just exported MIDI to Finale in the past. Is there a significant benefit to exporting the MusicXML? I expect it might be more time saving to do all the touch ups in Finale anyway.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

You might also check the event list and make sure the key sig is the first entry in the MIDI track.

[stubbsonic]

Thanks, MLC & MH.

The key change was on 1|1|000 in the conductor. I had recently deleted it. I went back and created another key signature and couldn't replicate the glitch.

I guess if it happens again, I can try removing and re-adding the key signature as a workaround.

[mikehalloran]

...I've mostly just exported MIDI to Finale in the past. Is there a significant benefit to exporting the MusicXML? I expect it might be more time saving to do all the touch ups in Finale anyway.

The short answer is yes. The long answer begins with 'It depends how much info is being exported...' MusicXML 3.x handles lyrics and advanced expressions for starters.

Try this: Take a file that you have cleaned up in Finale. Export it as MIDI; export again as MusicXML. Import both back into Finale. You will see a difference. Is it big enough to be useful to you?

[stubbsonic]

Thanks. For me, I've rarely done lyrics in DP and could just as easily start them in Finale.

Sounds like if I know that's part of my workflow, I'd just do the music sequencing part in DP (as always) and only use Finale for print stuff. I'm just so much more familiar with DP, I can usually wrestle what I need out of it-- or I struggle with Finale until I can get that to look right.

Just need more time in the trenches with Finale.