Welcome to another helpful hint in my ‘Tips and Tricks’ sessions.

Using Finale for creating instrumental tutorials with the Exercise Wizard. Finale Exercise Wizard. In this tutorial, I will show you how to generate an instant instrumental worksheet for your brass (trumpet) tutorial. I was recently asked to take a group of 4 lower secondary trumpet students for a warm up session and then to have them rehearse their concert band pieces. So I used Finale’s very versatile ‘Exercise Wizard’ and did the following to create an interesting and productive warm up. I am using Finale 2012 for this example but this is also available on earlier versions of Finale. Tip! The tutorial that you create in Finale 2012 can be opened in the FREE version of Finale Notepad. This is great news when you would like to email the students copies of your exercises for home practice!! Open Finale 2012 and wait for the “Launch Window’ to appear.

Click once on the ‘Exercise Wizard’ button. This window will appear.

This is where you will enter the 'Lesson Title (I will call it ‘Tutorial for trumpet section’). And I will change the page size to A4 as that is the Australian standard page size. Click next.

In this window, you will see the choices of exercise available to you. I will choose a simple major scale, an intervals exercise, an arpeggio and a twister (for sight reading practice). You will note that as I select a scale or other exercise, a small version of the exercise will appear as a guide. I will click ‘Add’. Now I will choose an Interval exercise and an Arpeggio. Finally for the sight reading rhythm training, I will go to the rhythms section and choose a rhythm exercise appropriate for my students. So, in review, I have chosen a scale, an arpeggio, an selection of intervals and a rhythmic exercise.

Click Next. I can choose to name each of the 4 exercises. I will do this.

1. C major scale 2. Intervals 3. Arpeggio practice 4. Rhythm fun!

As I am working with the trumpet section, I would like all the exercise to be in Concert Bb so that the students will be reading in the Key of C.

I will also take this opportunity of placing the appropriate articulations for the exercises. I am happy with this so I will click Next.

Now I can choose which instruments I will be working with, and in this case, it will be Trumpets under the ‘Brass’ family of instruments.

To do this, click on the Name of the ensemble and choose ‘New Ensemble’. Then click on Brass, Trumpet in Bb and click on the ‘Add’ button. I will need 4 copies for my class so I will select the number 4. I would like to fit the lesson onto one page so I choose that option. My students are reasonable players so I will select the ‘intermediate instrument’ range. And finally, I am going to save this lesson for future classes. So I will choose the ‘Both’ option as I know that my students have Finale Note[pad on their home computers and I can email them the lesson for home practice.

I will now click on the ‘Finish’ button. Finale may ask whether or not you wish to save the new ensemble you have created for your trumpet section. In this instance, I will say ‘No’.

Now, when I navigate back to my desktop, I will see the following icons……

This one will reopen the ‘Exercise wizard’ page where I created the trumpet tutorial and this icon will open the completed tutorial. I will double click on the tutorial icon and it will open the tutorial I have just created. All done in a matter of minutes.

Any questions, just contact Ray Partridge at Music Technology Matters. Phone: +61 418 159 916 Email: ray@musictechnologymatters.com Web: www.musictechnologymatters.com