This technique is especially useful for Shape Note Music, where the shape of a note indicates its pitch, and for drum parts, where you might want all notes on the spaces of the staff to have X noteheads (cymbals and hi-hat), but all notes on lines of the staff to have normal noteheads (tom-toms and bass drum).

You can assign a different notehead shape to each step of the scale.

To change all notehead shapes of a specified duration and pitch

1. Click the Staff tool  ; then double-click the staff in question. The Staff Attributes dialog box appears for the staff you clicked. You grant permission for changeable note shapes one staff at a time.
2. Choose Independent Elements > Notehead font; then click Select. The FontFont dialog box appears.
3. Select the font, and size of the Notehead you want to use, then click OK. For Shape Note music or percussion noteheads, use Maestro Percussion or JazzPerc.
4. Click OK to dismiss the Staff Attributes.
5. Click on the Settings button next to Use Note Shapes. The Note Shapes options appear.
6. From the drop-down menu, choose the first notehead shape you want to change. The four basic note shapes in Finale are the quarter notehead (also used by eighth, sixteenth, and smaller note values), the half notehead , the whole notehead , and the double whole note. For each note of the scale, you can specify an alternate notehead shape (X, diamond, and so on) for each of these four basic shapes. For example, you could specify that every half note occurring on the third scale degree will appear as an X notehead. See Shape Note music for a chart of note shapes and scale degrees.
7. Specify the scale degree for which you want to modify the selected notehead. Enter the scale degree into the “scale degree” text box, or click the up and DOWN ARROWs until the scale degree number is the one you want.
8. Click Select. The Symbol Selection dialog box appears, displaying every character in the music font.
9. Double-click the symbol you want to serve as the alternate notehead shape. You can continue this way, using the arrow buttons to move through the scale degrees, and clicking Select to choose a new notehead shape.
10. Click OK twice to return to the score. You return to the document, where the noteheads of the type and scale degree you specified have automatically changed to the alternate note shapes you selected. If you anticipate creating other scores with the same configuration, save this piece on your disk as a template (a blank document without any notes in it), so that you won’t have to repeat the process the next time you need to create alternate note shapes.

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