[Finale] Differences between the English and Japanese versions: 1. Music Fonts

Finale was originally developed by American software maker MakeMusic, and has been localized and sold by distributors around the world.

The Japanese version has been localized by Japanese distributors. Not only localized, but It’s customized for the domestic market. The important customizations are following three points.

(1) Music font

(2) Libraries (chord suffixes, etc.)

(3) Template

First of all I would like to introduce (1) "Music font".

Music fonts are fonts that specialize in musical symbols, such as treble clefs and coda marks. The Japanese version has its own music fonts, Kousaku and Rentaro, as standard music fonts, which are applied to the Default Document.

In the setup wizard, you can create a file with Kousaku music font by selecting "1_Kousaku" at the top of the first screen.

In fact, this is already selected, so if you click the "Next" button without doing anything, "1_Kousaku" will be automatically selected.

However, since Kousaku and Rentaro are not installed in the international version of Finale, note that score elements created with these Japanese-only music fonts will be garbled in the international version of Finale.

If the characters become garbled due to this, you can convert to that font by going to "Document menu > Set Default Music Font" and reselecting Finale Maestro, which is the standard music font for the international version of Finale.

Most of the time this works, but you should notice that some fonts may not be translated correctly.

Therefore, in order to prevent problems with garbled characters, for files that may be exchanged with overseas Finale users you should choose more widely-used music fonts such as Maestro, which have long been installed as standard in Finale in all countries, including the Japanese version.

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In addition, if the Finale version to be exchanged can be limited to v27 or later, it is recommended to select "2_Finale_Maestro" in the first window of the setup wizard.

This is a SMuFL (Standard Music Font Layout) font which dramatically increased the number of types of symbols and also ensured compatibility of musical symbols between different platforms.

I would like to talk about SMuFL again later on, for now you can refer to the following website for an overview of this new type of music font.

▼What is SMuFL? : Commentary by the Finale development team at MakeMusic

https://www.finalemusic.jp/clubfinale/deepen/smufl_01_makemusic.php

▼Finale version 27: How to use SMuFL symbols on Kousaku files?

https://support.musicecosystems.jp/hc/ja/articles/4408634191385