I am usually a pretty big fan of Human Playback.  It really does add some great nuance for very little work, percussion playback not withstanding.  One area that needs some clarification on the part of the programmer is how HP handles fermatas.  The real issue arises in a document that has fermatas that are not placed on the cadence.   There are a series of settings that affect Human Playback, but are not contained in the Human Playback Settins Window.  And there is one setting in particular that affects how Human Playback performs, or doesn’t perform, fermatas.

That setting is called Interpret Harmonic Cadences and it is only found in the Human Playback Custom Style Window.

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This error isn’t really an error, I guess that’s why they called it a “message”, and is caused by instruments within the Instrument List sharing the same channel.  Finale prefers all of the instruments, even left hand/right hand piano parts, to be on separate channels for optimal playback.  In the most recent versions of Finale the instrument channels are set-up for you by Finale, pre-2005 versions did not set unique numbers to duplicated instruments , so the error was quite prevalent.   To fix the issue just go up to your Window Menu and Select your Instrument List.  Within the Instrument List Window you will have to change the channel using the Instrument Column.

Here is how:

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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.

Here are the steps that you can take if you have a document that is not allowing you to change tempo or the tempo is not playing back correctly.

• First, using your Expression Tool, remove any tempo expressions that you have in the document. This includes any tempo words, such as Allegro, that you have entered into the document. Human Playback recognizes a long list of tempo words and they will affect playback.

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There is a default setting within the Human Playback Preferences that will automatically diminuendo long notes.

Of all of the Human Playback Settings this is my least favorite because it just isn’t smart enough from a contextual standpoint.

Here is how you can turn it off:

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