Not many people are aware of this, but there is a Human Playback Dictionary located in the User Manual under the Help Menu.  To find it open your user manual and then click on search in the lower left-hand corner.  Type in Human Playback in the upper left-hand corner of the search window and then click on the Human Playback Dictionary link.  This library contains a list of all of the words that Human Playback will recognize, besides the standard performance markings, and apply the appropriate effect during playback of your score.  It also contains a list of extraneous characters such as grupetti, tremolos, mordents, trills, and punctual accents such as sFFz and rFz.  It contains characters from the Maestro, Engraver, Petrucci, November and Jazz fonts.

When entering one of the non-standard words or phrases recognized by Human Playback make sure that you are entering them as either text expressions or as part of a shape expression.   If you are using a current document with current libraries, then any of those words should create the desired effect within your Finale score.

I had a client just call in an absolute panic - her music would not display clefs or time signatures and her note heads were gone. She was also receiving an error message that sounded terrible to her:

Handle Invalid!!

Luckily this issue has a very easy solution…

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Q: My notes look like OE. What’s the deal? Continued