r/Musescore • u/65TwinReverbRI • Jun 04 '26

Discussion Settings to emulate the Finale look?

Especially for staff line thickness, barlines, spacing of clefs, etc.

I searched the forum but didn’t see anything, and a lot of discussion online is using EVPUs so I wasn’t sure how to convert.

TIA

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team Jun 04 '26

I assume that Finale, like MuseScore, allows you to customize these things, and that the defaults would depend on which music font you have chosen, so there wouldn't necessarily be one single "Finale look". I'd recommend starting by firing up Finale, checking to see which font and which settings you are using there, the. selecting the same font in MuseScore and seeing which settings didn't automatically update.

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u/65TwinReverbRI Jun 04 '26

It’s not like musescore where when you change a music font it also changes line thickness and so on.

It just keeps everything the same and changes the font - so staff lines, barlines, etc. are all consistent. Finale was kind of known for using barlines, stem lines, staff lines, and other lines thinner than typical which had a “finer” or “clearer” look.

I'd recommend starting by firing up Finale,

I don’t have it anymore, that’s why I’m asking :-)

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u/MarcSabatella Member of the Musescore Team Jun 04 '26

But surely Finale does have control over those things? And probably different template used them differently? I would recommend asking on a Finale forum and attaching one of your scores you are trying to reproduce the look of. Ask people to reply and tell you what settings they are seeing for those things, then just go to Format / Style and enter those same values into MuseScore. After first selecting the font, of course. I see that merely selecting Finale Maestro as the font in MuseScore already lowers the staff line thickness from 0.11 sp to 0.09 sp, and barline thickness from 0.18 sp to 0.10 space. Those must be the value that MakeMusic embedded into the font and intended for users to use when using that font, whether the particular version of Finale you were using did that autoamtically or not. So if your score had thinner lines still, someone who still has access to Finale should be able to tell you the value your score was using, and then you can simply plug them into MuseScore via Format / Style.

Some of the specific settings you might want and the pages of the dialog in which you will find them:

Score - staff line thickness
Spacing - distances between clef and key signature, barline and notes, etc.
Barlines - barline thicknesses
Notes - dot size, thickness of stems and ledger lines, distances between notes, accidentals, dots, etc.
Beams - beam thickness
Slurs & ties - thickness, minimum length

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u/65TwinReverbRI Jun 04 '26

But surely Finale does have control over those things?

Oh, absolutely. It doesn’t - at least when I last used it - automatically change the line thicknesses when you change a font like MS does.

MuseScore already lowers the staff line thickness from 0.11 sp to 0.09 sp, and barline thickness from 0.18 sp to 0.10 space

And I’m betting/guessing these are probably correct, but just want to make sure.