Coda

See also D.S/D.S. al Coda.  

A coda is a musical tag, or extension, which usually follows the main body of the piece. The musician’s cue to jump to the coda is often marked by a marking like “To coda ,” and the coda itself often displays a notation like “ Coda.”

You can place such markings into your score very easily if you’re preparing your score for printout only (without playback). With some additional steps, you can setup your coda markings to control the way Finale plays back your score. When Finale encounters the “To Coda” marking, it will direct the playback of your score to the measure displaying the sign.

Note. To automatically create a separate coda system, use the Create Coda System plug-in.

To place the sign, and a “to coda” sign in the score

1. Click the Repeat tool . Double-click the measure in which you want the coda sign to appear. The Repeat Selection dialog box appears. If you’ve loaded a Text Repeat Library—or if the Finale Maestro Font Default file is in place—you should see the sign.
2. If you don’t see the marking, click Create; the Repeat Designer dialog box appears. While pressing alt, type 0222. Click Set Font, and set the font to Maestro 24 regular. Press ENTER twice.
3. Double-click the sign. You arrive at the Text Repeat Assignment dialog box. If you are not placing a “working” coda sign in you piece, click OK, and your task is complete, otherwise, continue following the instructions. Note the Text Repeat ID number of the . This indicator appears at the top left of the dialog box, in the form “Text Repeat ID: 7” (or whatever number Finale has assigned to your coda sign). You’ll need to remember this number for a moment.
4. Click Never Jump (Mark). You’ve just defined this text repeat to be a mark—in other words, a marker to which Jumper text repeats (“To Coda,” in this example) will direct playback.
5. Click OK (or press ENTER). The coda sign appears in all staves. See Repeats –To move, hide, or delete a text repeat. Once you’ve created a coda symbol and designed it for playback, you must now place the “To Coda” sign somewhere in the main body of music. Follow these steps, to create a functional text repeat that directs the playback of your score to the measure containing the coda sign.
6. Click the Repeat tool . Double-click the last measure to be played before jumping to the coda. The Repeat Selection dialog box appears. If the “To coda” mark doesn’t appear in the window: Click Create and type “To Coda #.” (You create the number sign [#] by pressing shift and typing a 3.) Set the font and style by clicking the Set Font button. Now select Replace ‘#’ With: Text Repeat ID in Target. In other words, when your “To Coda #” indication appears in the score, you want the # sign to be replaced by the repeat mark itself—in this case, the sign (“To Coda ”). Click OK (or press ENTER). The “To Coda ” mark now appears in the list of Text Expressions See Repeat Designer dialog box for more information regarding text repeats.
7. Double-click the “To Coda #” text repeat. The Text Repeat Assignment dialog box appears.
8. Click Jump on Pass(es) and enter a number in the text box to designate on which repetition of this music the playback should jump to the coda sign. If this is a standard D.S. al Coda, in which the music up to the “To Coda” mark is played a total of two times, type 2 into the Jump on Passes text box.
9. In the Target section, click the drop-down menu and choose Text Repeat ID. Enter the Text Repeat ID number of the coda sign you created. This is the number you remembered when you placed the coda sign into the score. (If you are using a score set up with the Setup Wizard, or one of Finale’s templates, or the default file, enter 7). Because you’ve specified that the playback should jump to the coda sign itself (instead of to a measure number), you can change your mind about the location of the coda sign in the score. You can delete it and put it in another measure—even a measure that precedes the “To Coda ” marking—and Finale will still direct the playback to it correctly.
10. Click OK (or press ENTER). You return to the document, where the “To Coda ” mark appears in every staff.

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