Beat Chart dialog box

How to get there

Click the Measure Tool  , and click the bottom handle of any barline that has two handles. (Such measures have been specified as having beat charts.) There are two ways to provide a measure with a beat chart. First, you can set its positioning by using the Music Spacing command in the Edit menu. Second, choose Using Beat-Chart Spacing in the Measure Attributes dialog box for the desired measure. The beat chart appears. Double-click the top handle of any pair in the beat chart.

What it does

A beat chart lets you change the horizontal position of a beat in all staves at once; for example, you might want to drag the fourth beat of a measure slightly to the left to allow room for a septuplet run in the strings. Finale normally provides a handle on every beat or every note in the measure.

Using this dialog box, however, you can specify a precise beat or subdivision of a beat that you want a particular beat chart handle to control—even if there’s no note that falls on that beat.

You can change the position of any beat handle (note or rest) within the measure numerically; Finale also displays the range of available values for your reference.

• Beat Chart Element (#). This number shows which beat chart handle, in order from left to right, you’re editing.
• Measure (#). This number indicates which measure is represented by the beat chart.
• Elapsed Duration. The number in this text box (in EDUs, 1024 per quarter note) tells which beat (or which subdivision of a beat) has its horizontal positioning controlled by this handle. In other words, if the text box displays a value of 1024 EDUs, then you can drag the lower handle of the pair to the left or right to reposition the occurrence of the second quarter note in all staves (that is, 1024 EDUs, or one quarter note, has already elapsed).

This text box can be useful if you want to move, for example, the second note of a triplet slightly to one side (in all staves). By calculating the appropriate EDU value to enter into the Elapsed Duration text box, you can specify precisely which element of the triplet you want the handle to control. (In this example, if the quarter-note triplet begins on the first beat, you’d type 682 into the text box, because that’s one-third of 2048 [the total EDU value of the quarter-note triplet].)

To make this handle control another beat in the measure, type its EDU equivalent in this text box. The number must be within the displayed range.

• Position. The number in this text box, in measurement units, tells you the current position of the handle and any notes or rests that line up with it.
• End Position. The number in this text box, in measurement units, tells you how close to the beginning of the next beat (or the end of the measure) you can adjust the note or rest.
• Minimum Position. The number in this text box, in measurement units, tells you how close to the end of the previous beat (or the beginning of the measure) you can adjust the note or rest.
• Duration Range. This display shows you the smallest and the largest note duration you can edit within the range of notes. The range shows the values for the notes on either side of the note you selected by double-clicking its Beat Chart handle.
• Position Range. This display shows you the allowable values for this beat element's lower handle, from the end of the previous beat (or the beginning of the measure) to the beginning of the next beat (or the end of the measure).
• Total Duration. The number in this text box, in EDUs (1024 per quarter note), tells you the total duration of the measure.
• Total Width. The number in this text box, in measurement units, tells you the total width of the measure.
• OK • Cancel. Click OK to confirm, or Cancel to discard, any changes you’ve made in this dialog box and return to the beat chart.

See Also:

Measure Attributes dialog box

Measure Tool

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