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Yikes that sounds like an awful experience, but congrats on the A! I also managed an A in a class that, while not quite so academically demanding, took a huge emotional toll on me this year due in part to a prof whose teaching methods really don't work for me (though I still have another year with him before I'm totally free...). So high five for surviving our awful classes!

No

Well, the easiest way to do it is to go to quick entry mode (pressing enter when you have a note selected), then moving the note to the correct note (pressing up or down on the arrow keys), then changing the note to the correct rhythm (in your case, you put an eighth note), pressing enter, switching to the next correct note/rest and repeat. Hopefully that helps despite being literally text lol.

I assumed I was just missing some super simple way but I guess it's not as simple as I thought! I ended up editing the original document in Musescore (in which the same task is as simple as clicking the note you want to change and pressing a single key) and exporting a new XML, which I used to copy/paste the new rhythms to the Finale file in order to keep the rest of the formatting that had already been fixed. Thanks anyways for the help, I'm going to have to figure Finale out someday!

Submission #3! The rhythms at the beginning are a little confusing to read, but I wanted to show that all the melody notes are supposed to be very short. If there's a way to clean it up I'm open to hearing it!

Edit: I also forgot to mention that the original composer wasn't credited in the game's credits, but this song comes from an earlier game in the series so I credited that composer and put the composer/sound designer from this game as arranger as I assume he was the one to re-arrange it for GBA.

v26 has it's own special articulation placement scheme that corrupts when opened in previous versions of finale.  It's a massive pain to fix manually, but luckily people who have v25 (like myself) can fix it very quickly using the 'remove manual adjustments' which brings all the articulations back to their original positions.  It's not exactly perfect, but I'm more than happy to do it for anyone who submits using v26.  Though since it'll get corrupted every time you make an edit to the file, there's no point me doing it until the very final step of the process.

Ah that explains it then! Thanks!

[Dotted 8th note + 16th note]

Title says all...

Here's the rhythm I have:
Dotted 8th note + 16th note

Here's the rhythm I want:
8th note + 16th rest + 16th note

So essentially, I want to replace the dot with a 16th rest. Is there an easy way to do it without re-inputting it? This rhythm is all over my arrangement; I don't mind changing each instance individually but I don't want to have to input all the notes again. I've tried changing the note duration a few different ways but it keeps putting the 16th rest after the 16th note when I want it before. (And I also don't know how to move the 16th note over by a 1/4 of a beat...)

Any help is appreciated!

I just had a look at your Stardew Valley sheet and it looks pretty good, just a few comments from me about things that I noticed.

-The E in the LH of bar 9 is actually an A I think.
-I was going to make a bunch of comments about the spacing of articulations but then I remembered that you're using v26 so that's why they're out of whack.  We can always fix that later if you submit this.
-Personally I'd have the slurs on the graces always above the notes (that way they are oriented correctly for the main note rather than for the small note.)
-You could hide the pedal markings after the first two bars, say, and write 'simile' in the interest of saving space, but up to you.
-The margins a bit wonky: you want to have 0.5 for the top, bottom and right margins and then something a bit larger for the left margin (in the interest of hole-punching etc.).  I usually go with
0.75ish but the exact value isn't exactly important.
-I think it might look a bit nicer if you made more use of the page by going to four systems rather than two.  I tried 2-3-3-2 (with the pickup not counted) and that looked pretty good to me.

Thanks for sharing, it's a nice little piece!

Hey thanks for checking it out! I'll definitely fix those formatting things when I get the chance!

I think I've heard about the v26 articulation spacing before but I'm not familiar enough with Finale to recognize it, is there any way to work around that on my end? I do usually import from an XML and clean it up myself if that makes a difference, maybe something is going wonky in the transition?

Thanks for the feedback, it's helpful as always!!

For what it's worth, you can see the official lyrics written out in verse form with each phrase capitalized, with no punctuation. Transcribing that as such would also help demarcate the phrases as mentioned above (in addition to my beaming suggestion above). (And thanks for the insight on lyrics, that was very helpful!)

Hm that's interesting! I've seen lyrics written like that in verse form before but less so in actual sheet music, although that may just be the sort of sheet music I'm used to reading.

I learned these guidelines from a vocal prof at my university who gave us an entire masterclass on how to make lyrics easier to read in our charts (which was really helpful!), so she had a lot of insight from the point of view of a performer. I'm glad I could pass it on!

- thanks for the help, CNG! I didn't have a full understanding of it before, but that was very beneficial! If there are any other adjustments you'd make to my syllable division, I'll hear them

No problem, I'm glad I could help! The rest of it looks good to me - the only word that may need an adjustment is "places" but I'm honestly not sure what the best way to split that would be. It's probably fine the way you have it but I thought I'd mention it anyways.

I can talk about punctuation and capitalization in lyrics!

Lyrics are punctuated the same way you would any other piece of text - group them into complete sentences and include periods, commas, and other markings as needed. Some lyrics aren't easily divisible into sentences in which case it's up to you to use your better judgement and decide where to split them up, similar to poetry. Capitalization is also much like poetry as it is common practice to punctuate the first letter of every line, though it's not unheard of to see punctuation based on sentences instead. Having accurate punctuation and capitalization in lyrics is really important in informing singers how to phrase the melody, especially when they're first learning the song. It's as important as accurate articulation marks in other instruments!

Something else to note is that the division of syllables doesn't follow normal grammatical rules and instead should be as clear as possible for the singer to read. This is a little difficult to get the hang of but in general any consonants that affect the pronunciation of a syllable should stay with that syllable. (Ex: "Mu-sic" is the normal hyphenation, but it's better to use "Mus-ic" because there is more than one way to pronounce "Mu" but "Mus" is almost always pronounced the same way). I'm still trying to get the hang of this myself and yours look pretty good, but a few changes I might suggest are "shad-ow" instead of "sha-dow" and "prom-ise" instead of "pro-mise".

I hope that was helpful, let me know if you have any questions!

[Code_Name_Geek]

Great update! And congratulations to Code_Name_Geek for getting your first arrangements on site! Looking forward to more!

Yay, thanks Latios!!!! Congrats to all the other arrangers as well!

Thanks for the suggestions! Most of the changes you've mentioned have been done. I didn't really hear any wrong notes in those measures. I listened over and it came out the same to me, but I may need a second opinion on that.

The changes look good! I could be wrong about the notes as well so no worries

Edit: Oops looks like you missed one of the A#s in the last measure actually, but everything else looks great!

I have a few comments to add if that's alright!

-About the eighth notes at the beginning, I would keep staccato marks on all the eighth notes for consistency. Obviously eighth notes followed by rests are short by default but having staccatos on them makes it extra clear they are meant to be the same length as the staccato eighth notes in measures 2 and 6.

- In the second to last measure, write the first E flat as D#. This may seem odd because it is directly followed by more E flats but it's important to highlight the same movement in the two equivalent but transposed phrases - you have a B chord with the fourth (E) resolving to the third (D#) and then a B flat chord with the fourth (E flat) resolving to the third (D).

-If I'm understanding correctly what Latios meant here, the first note should be a D# (the one under the B natural) like you've changed it to, but the two following ones should stay as Ebs (under the two Bbs). Similarly, the bass line there should be Bbs instead of A#s, to match the A#s in the right hand. The reason here is purely theoretical, I can go into more detail on this if you'd like.

-Most of the time you do a great job of showing beat 3 (which is standard practice in 4/4), but there in the bassline of the very last bar you seem to have missed one rhythm. What you want to do is split up the dotted quarter into a quarter tied to an eighth. Also, the two tied eighth notes in that measure can be made into a quarter note which is easier to read.

-There are some notes in the right hand that sound a little off after the key change but I wasn't able to tell exactly where it was, I would maybe double-check the line in voice 2 in bars 14 and 16. (Sorry I couldn't pinpoint the exact notes but I thought it was worth mentioning anyways.)

I hope that was helpful, let me know if you want me to clarify anything! Overall it looks like a good arrangement and nice choice of song

[Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! - Acorn Shrine]

And another new series!


Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! - Acorn Shrine
[MUSX] [MUS] [PDF] [MIDI]

This one was pretty straightforward, just something simple I did to work on my ear. I didn't have any issues with it but as always, if something is a bit off feel free to point it out!

[approval]

It looks good! It's fine if you want to keep the layers as-is; I just wanted you to give it some thought and weigh the options.

Very small things - the 1./2. at the repeated section would probably be a bit better off to the left, and the repeat at the end would be clearer as a D.C.

But other than that, this has my approval!

Done!

Also the second to last note in the bass in bars 9 and 13 is an A rather than an E (it is an E in bar 11 though).

Must have been a copying mistake, my bad. It's fixed now.

Thanks again to the both of you!

[Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town - Summer]

Two new arrangements from two new games, including my first non-Harvest Moon arrangement! (Though it's not far off...)


Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town - Summer
[MUSX] [MUS] [PDF] [MIDI]

Like most of this soundtrack, this is actually a song from an earlier game in the series (Harvest Moon: Back to Nature) but it's been re-arranged for the GBA's sound capabilities. For that reason, I credited both the original composer and the composer/sound designer from Friends of Mineral Town since I'm guessing they were the one to do this arrangement. (Let me know if that was the right thing to do!) This one might be a little tricky to play because of the repeated accompaniment in the B section... I'm open to suggestions on that!

Stardew Valley - Piano Solo (Elliott's Theme)
[MUSX] [MUS] [PDF] [MIDI]

I was pretty surprised there weren't any Stardew Valley sheets on-site so this is my first contribution to that! I tried to keep it as faithful to the original as possible so let me know if there are any added or missing notes. Also, I would love some feedback from a piano player on some of the stylistic things in there (grace notes, pedal markings, etc.) and whether I notated those correctly. Are there any places I should add slurs?

Feedback is welcome!

Sorry for the delay but here is the revision!

I've put some thought into those off-beats and I've decided to keep them in the right hand (though I've re-arranged the formatting to get them into the proper staff). After play-testing it a bit I found it to be slightly easier in the right hand even with the bass up the octave, which I didn't terribly like the sound of anyways. I think it was because the articulations match up better with the right hand part; for some reason, I find it really difficult to execute two different articulations in the same hand. Thoughts?

I made the corrections and added those repeats as well!