You are here: Tutorials > Tutorial 5: Working With Scores
Tutorial 5: Working with Scores and Parts
It’s time to learn about PrintMusic’s more powerful score-oriented
features. If you plan to work mainly on lead sheets, you
may just want to skim this section. But if you intend to create
multi-staff scores—particularly orchestral scores—you will want
to go through this whole tutorial. By the end of this tutorial, you
should be able to create from scratch a conductor’s score and
parts.
If you have a document currently open,
close it.
- Open
the document called “Tutorial 5.” This document currently consists
of a single staff, filled with music.
- From
the View menu, select Scroll View. You may find that it is easier
to do all of your editing work in Scroll View (where the music is laid
out in a continuous horizontal band), especially when working with scores
that contain several staves.
- Click
the Staff tool .
- From the Staff menu, choose New Staves. The Staff Setup
Wizard appears asking you what staves you would like to
add.
- Click on Strings in the left column, then double-click Violin,
then Viola, then Cello. The three instruments appear in the
right-hand column.
- Click Finish. PrintMusic has added
three evenly spaced staves, giving
you a total of four; let’s imagine
that you’re going to create a string
quartet.
You can reposition a staff by grabbing
its handle and dragging it up or down. To remove a staff,
click it and then press Delete.
To see more staves, select a smaller view
percentage from the View menu, Zoom submenu.
Setting Clefs and Staff
Names
If you use the Setup Wizard, you’ll have
all of the clefs and staff names set up for you. If you decide you don’t
like what the Wizard chose, you can always edit them using the techniques
below. We’ll edit the new staves to match the appropriate clefs and names
for a string quartet.
- Click the top staff. When you click anywhere on the staff to the
right of the time signature, you select the staff. You can also use
the Staff tool to select measures, such as for applying Alternate
Notation.
- From the Staff
menu, select Edit
Staff Attributes.
The Staff
Attributes dialog
box appears. (You
can also double-click
the staff.)
The full name of
the instrument will
appear next to the
staff in the first
system (line) of the
piece. The abbreviated
name will appear next to subsequent systems.
- Click in the text box called Full Name and type “Violin I”.
- Click in the text box called Abbr. Name and type “Vln. I”.
Incidentally, you establish the default font for staff names
using the Select Default Fonts command in the Options menu
(this will affect all staff names for newly created staves; it will
not change existing staff names).
You could click OK at this point; you’d return to the score,
where the first staff’s name would now appear. However, as
long as you’re at it, you may as well set up the other staves:
- From
the staff drop-down list at the top of the Staff Attributes dialog box,
choose [Staff 2]. The contents of the dialog box change to reflect
the staff attributes of the second staff in the score.
- Rename this staff Violin II, and enter Vln. II as its abbreviated
name, then click OK.
- Double-click the bracket handle. A small box at either end of
the bracket. The bracket attributes dialog box appears.
- Click where it says “Violin II” in the Staff drop-down list.Select Violin I to include the Violin I staff in the bracket.
- Click OK. Your bracket should now surround the staves of
your entire string quartet.
Selecting Partial
Measures; Transposing a Region
Up to this point, you’ve done all your
manipulation of music in one-measure increments. Using the Selection tool,
you’ve clicked a measure to select it, drag-enclosed several whole measures,
clicked the first measure and -clicked the last measure,
or clicked in the left margin to select an entire staff.
But selecting a measure at a time is like
selecting a word at a time in a word processor—it’s a nice shortcut, but
sometimes you need to select in smaller units.
What if you want to select half a measure—or
only one note?
- Click
the Selection tool .
You don’t need to change any settings to select partial measures, just
learn a couple techniques.
In the musical example you have on the screen,
for example, suppose you decide that a certain passage in the Violin I
part would sound better if it were up a third.
- Scroll
to measure 6. Click and hold in measure 6, just above and before
the third beat. Drag down and to the right, until you’ve selected the
first two eighth notes in measure 7. When you release the mouse button,
the region is highlighted.
- Hold down
and press
once. Notice the selection expands
one note to the right.
- Hold down
and press
once. The selection contracts
to its original size. When you first select a region, hold down and press if you want to adjust the beginning
of the region instead of the end. Hold down and to expand and contract
by full measures.
- From
the Utilities menu, choose Transpose. The Transposition dialog
box appears.
- Choose
the radio buttons for Up and Diatonically. From the Interval drop-down
list, choose Third. Click OK. You return to the score, and the selected
region is now up a third.
If a region including partial measures is too
big to drag-select (e.g. on different pages), drag-select a smaller region
that begins where desired, navigate so the desired end-point is in view,
then hold down d and click to specify the end of the selection. If you
do want to select a whole measure, double-click the measure. (If you double-click
a second time, and your score has more than one staff, you extend the
selection vertically, to include the selected measures in every staff
- also called the “measure stack.”)
The technique you just learned—selecting a region, then
applying a command from the Utilities menu—is extremely
powerful. Select some music, and then take a glance at the
commands in this menu to the other available options.
Inserting Staves
Let’s say we add a flute to our string
quartet. We could use the same technique for adding staves as before,
but this time we’ll save some work and let the Wizard create them.
- Click
the Staff tool . The Staff menu appears. We want to
insert our flute staff above the Violin I staff.
- Click
on the handle of the Violin I staff. The staff handle is a small
box on the top staff line near the clef.
- From
the Staff menu, choose New Staves. The Parts
page of the Setup Wizard appears.
- Double-click
on the Flute in the middle column. The Flute instrument appears
in the selection window.
- Click
on the Finish button. The Wizard adds a Flute staff above our selected
staff, in this case the Violin I staff.
Transposing Instruments
But what if we made a mistake? What if
we really wanted to add a clarinet? You could delete the flute staff and
add a clarinet from the Wizard, but let’s say you’ve already added music
and you don’t want to lose it. We’ve already seen how to change the staff
name earlier in this Tutorial, so we’ll just cover how to change the staff
from a C instrument to a transposing instrument.
- Click
the Staff tool .
- Double-click
on the Flute staff to the right of the clef and signatures. The
Staff Attributes dialog box for the Flute staff appears. Using the techniques
you learned earlier, change the Staff Names to Clarinet and Cl., but don’t
exit the Staff Attributes dialog box.
- Click
the Transposition box and click Select. The Staff Transpositions
dialog box appears. You could design your own transposition, but you don’t
need to for common instruments, such as a clarinet, French horn or saxophone.
- Next
to Key Signature, click on None to open a menu of choices. Select
(B) Up M2, Add 2 sharps.
- Click
OK twice. Your staff should now look like a clarinet staff, complete
with transposition. All of the other non-transposing staves have two flats
in the key signature, while the top staff has no flats in a Bf transposition.
When You’re Ready to Continue
Close your string quartet document, saving
it if you want.
In the next tutorial, we’ll cover some
techniques for Guitar notation
and tablature. If you won’t be notating for guitar,
feel free to skip Tutorial 6 ahead.