It's easy to set up measure numbers, edit their appearance, hide or show. Finale will copy the settings of the currently selected measure number region into the. If you like the way Finale gives you the measure numbers, you can ignore the next. On Every Number; Show Measure Numbers at Start of System; Hide First.
Playing percussion for the first time many years ago in my elementary school’s band, I experienced a hazing of sorts early on. Encountering a part that had “TACET” written on it, one of the older kids in the section turned to me and said, “Philip, what did you do with the tacet? It’s not here!” It was my job to put away the various percussion toys and, not knowing the names of many of them, I was terrified I’d lost something.
Fortunately, nothing was misplaced — just a bit of old-fashioned fun was being had at my expense. And I never forgot what “tacet” meant after that. Of course, it’s not some rattle or drum — quite the opposite. From the Latin for “it is silent,” when you encounter “TACET” in a part, it means that you’re not playing for that piece or movement.
Why bother having tacet parts at all? There are, in fact, good reasons. When putting together parts for a show or session where there are many pieces, it’s helpful to have all parts accounted for in every song or cue. Likewise, from the player’s perspective, if you’re not playing in a cue, it’s a lot less anxiety-inducing to have a tacet part in your book so you don’t worry if you somehow misplaced a nonexistent part.
Here’s how to create tacet parts in both Finale and Sibelius.
Finale
Entire tacet parts
Finale automatically generates linked parts for you in a new document created by File > New > Document With Setup Wizard… You can also generate parts by going to Document > Manage Parts and clicking Generate Parts.
The parts will be generated based on the instruments present in the score. But Finale also gives you the ability to create a part without any instrument assigned to it. To do this, simply click New Part in the Manage Parts dialog.
The part will be named something like “Part 33” depending on how many parts are already in the score. To name the part, click Edit Part Definition > Edit Part Name…
In the Edit Text dialog, type the instrument’s name (“Flute 3” in the example). Then, add a few lines and type “TACET”. You can make the word bigger by selecting it and adjusting its size in Text > Size.
Click OK to return to the Manage Parts dialog box. The middle column should be empty, indicating no staves are selected, because you haven’t added — and won’t be adding — an instrument to it. You will, however, be able to easily see your tacet parts in the Linked Parts column.
As you browse through your parts, you’ll see the tacet parts indicated as such:
Your part will look something like this:
It’s worth noting that Finale’s help guide suggests using the Text tool to create tacet parts when working with linked parts, instead of adding “TACET” to the part’s name. The method in the help guide involves placing a text block in the part, which then must be hidden or shown in each part. The drawbacks with that method is that you have to go to every part and be certain to hide or show the text block, and that the word “TACET” won’t be part of the part name like it is in the method I described. It does, however, give you more flexibility with the positioning of the text on the page, especially if you need the text to be centered.
Tacet movements within a part
Creating tacet parts in Finale is a multi-step process, but it can be done.
1. Go to the Staff Tool > Define Staff Styles… and click New to create a new style. Name it “TACET” and uncheck all Items to Display:
2. Go to Document > Category Designer and click Edit Categories… to create a new expression category. Click Technique Text and click Duplicate… and then name the category something like “TACET staff”. The position settings will depend on your document, but you’ll want to try to get the tacet to appear more or less where the staff would appear, and centered on the page.
Then, create a text expression in this new category with the text “TACET”.
3. In your part, force all the bars in the movement into one system by using the Mass Edit Tool. This isn’t totally necessary if you are not trying to save vertical space.
4. Apply your new staff style to the part by selecting all the bars in the movement and going to the Staff Tool > Apply Staff Style To > Current Part/Score… and select your “TACET” style from the list.
5. Place your “TACET” expression in the part. You will need to hide it in the score.
6. In the Expression Tool, select any text expressions still showing (like tempo marks) and hide them by right-clicking (or Control-click on Mac) and unchecking “Show” from the contextual menu. Do the same for any unwanted measure numbers by going to the Measure Tool, selecting the measure numbers and selecting Measure > Hide Measure Numbers.
If all goes well, you’ll have a part that looks something like this:
Of course, all of the staff style indications and hidden text won’t print, leaving you with a very nice looking part.
Measure numbers are defined as measure number regions in the Measure Number dialog box. Each measure number region can be defined to display measure numbers in one (or more) of three ways:
- At the beginning of each staff system (Show Measure Numbers at Start of Staff System)
- At a specific measure interval (Show Every _ Measures Beginning with Measure _)
- As a measure range for multimeasure rests (Show on Multimeasure Rests)
Each of these options are available for each region in the Measure Number dialog box. Each can be set to its own font and positioning settings, and are designed to automatically resolve any conflicts that can occur. For example, if a measure number is defined to appear on every fifth measure (Show Every _ Measures Beginning with Measure _), and the fifth measure happens to start a new staff system (and Show Measure Numbers at Start of Staff System is also checked), Finale will defer to the 'Start of Staff System' option and use its font and positioning settings (which allow it to be positioned differently—to the left of the staff). Furthermore, if this is a linked part, a multimeasure rest happens to begin on the fifth measure, and Show on Multimeasure Rests is checked, Finale will display the font, positioning, and bracket settings for measure numbers on multimeasure rests. In this way, all three of the above cases can be selected and defined in the Measure Numbers dialog box, and Finale will apply them properly to the score.
Measure number settings can only conflict with each other if an enclosure is defined for either 'Show Measure Numbers at Start of Staff System' or 'Show Every _ Measures Beginning with Measure _,' 'Show On Multimeasure Rests' is checked, and the number is defined to appear on a measure beginning a mutimeasure rest. In this case, Finale displays both the enclosed measure number and the multimeasure rest number/number range. To hide one or the other, right -click the measure number's handle and choose Always Hide Number.
Note that in addition to the options for a single region, you can also create different regions of measure numbers in your piece, each with its own font, positioning, and numbering scheme.
If you want measure numbers to occur only at specific places in the score to serve as rehearsal letters or numbers, seeRehearsal letters.
For information regarding measure numbers in scores with linked parts, see Measure Numbers in linked parts.
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