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There’s a lot more to music than just notes. In this tutorial, we’ll cover how to add details—key and time signatures, lyrics, repeats, chords, and more. Open the Document called “Tutorial 2” in the Tutorials folder: We’ll use this version of “Oh, Susannah” to explore PrintMusic’s prowess in creating a lead sheet. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to create a simple lead sheet.
If you use the Setup Wizard, you should start off with the correct key signature for your piece every time. But let’s say you change your mind after entering in the music. We’ll change the key for our folk song “Oh Susannah.”
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Now specify what region of measures you want to be affected by the new key.
If you use the Setup Wizard, you should start off with the correct time signature, too. But let’s say you decide your folk song would work better in cut time.
, and double-click the first measure. Make sure
you click the middle of the measure (within the staff lines). There are
two scroll bars in the Time Signature dialog box: the upper bar controls
the top number of the time signature, and the bottom bar controls the
bottom number.
for 2/2 . If
you’d prefer 2/2, see the User Manual under Cut
Time.Entering Lyrics: Type into Score
One of PrintMusic’s greatest powers is its ability to handle lyrics intelligently. If you provide the lyrics, complete with hyphens between syllables, PrintMusic can automatically distribute them to the melody line, neatly avoiding tied-over notes and rests, and centering every syllable under its note. Each syllable is attached to its note; if the note moves horizontally, the syllable moves with it. PrintMusic also adds word extension underlines for melismatic passages automatically.
You can type the lyrics directly into the score, so that you know at all times where you are in the music—a feature called Type Into Score.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to type lyrics into the score.
. A new menu, called Lyrics, appears and a row
of four positioning triangles appears to the left of the staff.As you type, there are a few things you should
know. If you make a mistake, just backspace over it by pressing
As you type the rest of these lyrics, you’ll encounter some syllables that are supposed to be held through two melody notes:
In such cases, just skip past the sustained note by pressing the space bar. PrintMusic will create word extensions for you when appropriate. Use the space bar to skip past rests.
I’m [space] goin’ to Lou’-si-a-na, my [space] true love for to see. [space]
Oh, Su-san-nah, now don’t you cry for me,
Oh, I come from Al-a-ba-ma with a ban-jo on my knee.
The two small triangles at the left edge of the screen control the baseline of the lyrics (the imaginary line upon which the bottom edges of the words sit). If you drag the triangle, you’ll find that you can move the baseline (and all the attached lyrics) up and down.
As it happens, “Oh, Susannah” has two verses. If you don’t work with lyrics much, feel free to skip this section. If you plan to be working with vocal music, though, this section will show you how to add multiple verses.
To add verse numbers, from the Lyrics menu, choose Auto-Number Lyrics. PrintMusic adds lyric numbers to the left of the first syllable and aligns them properly.
To be truly complete, your lead sheet needs a first and second ending, requiring the use of the Repeat tool.
In PrintMusic, a repeat barline is simply a signpost that directs the flow of music playback back to another earlier measure.
A repeat barline doesn’t necessarily direct music backward; it could make the music jump to a later measure, as it does if you’re using a coda sign. You can build nested repeats, multiple endings—even purely graphic repeat barlines that have no playback functions at all.
In your “Oh, Susannah” lead sheet, you’ll actually need several repeat barlines—one at the beginning of the score, plus a first and second ending. To make these endings work properly, you need to amend the beginnings and endings of the music itself, adjusting the lyrics and inserting the first ending measure, so that the lead sheet looks like this:
We have provided a document called “Tutorial 2a,” in which these changes have already been made. Open this document now.In either case, scroll back to the beginning of the piece; now you’re ready to proceed.
The repeat tool is designed to allow you to add standard repeat
barlines and endings easily using context menus. By context-clicking
(right
. Measure 1 is a pickup measure, so you want the
first repeat barline to appear at the beginning of measure 2.
Now, let’s create the first and second ending. You want the first ending to appear at measure 17. Scroll down so measure 17 is visible.
To remove a repeat barline or bracket, Choose the Repeat tool, then click the measure. Click the square handle at the bottom of the barline and press Delete.
Don’t be concerned if your lead sheet ends with a single measure stretched over an entire staff system. Such layout issues will be discussed in Tutorial 4.
Finally, please note that PrintMusic also offers a number of text repeats, such as D.S. al Coda. These text repeats are purely graphic, so they do not affect the playback of your score.
No true lead sheet would be complete without chord symbols. With a little help from your MIDI keyboard, the process of adding chords can be extremely quick. You can also apply similar techniques with the Type into Score feature, which doesn’t require a keyboard. (If most of your work won’t require chord symbols, you can skip this section.)
This section assumes that you’ve completed the “Oh, Susannah” lead sheet up through the last section. If not, choose Open from the File menu; open the document called “Tutorial 2b,” which is complete to this point.
. The Chord menu appears.
PrintMusic puts the chord symbol, C, above the staff. (If the chord symbols appear too low or too high in your score, remember that, just like lyrics, you can drag the leftmost positioning triangle up or down to move the baseline of the chords.)
So far, so good—now you need to advance the cursor to the right, in preparation to enter the next chord symbol. To signal PrintMusic that you want to move on to the next chord, you play any MIDI keyboard key above middle C.
This time, PrintMusic writes C/E—a C triad with an E in the bass.
You’ll find that PrintMusic has no problem transcribing the G7 in measure 5. You can play seventh chords, ninths, augmented, diminished, and even more complex chords, and PrintMusic will have no problem understanding you.
If you make a mistake, choose Undo from the Edit menu, click the note, and play the chord again. Here’s how you tell PrintMusic that you’re finished entering chords:
To move a chord symbol, be sure the Chord tool is selected. You’ll see square handles appear, which you can then drag to move chord symbols. If you click a handle and press delete, you’ll delete the chord.
Now suppose you’re just about ready to print, when you find out that this “Oh, Susannah” is going to be a piece of popular sheet music, with guitar fretboard diagrams above the staff. No problem:
To adjust the distance between the fretboard diagrams and the staff, choose Position Fretboards from the Chord menu, and drag the leftmost triangle up or down. See Fretboard Diagrams for full instructions.
In this example, let’s suppose that you’ve decided to add a few harmony notes.
PrintMusic lets you have up to eight voices—independent lines of music, each with its own stem—per staff. (Within each of the eight voices, a chord can have up to twelve notes—a total of 96 notes per staff on any given beat.) Most of the time, you’ll probably need only two voices, stems up and stems down. You’ll find such music especially easy to notate in PrintMusic, because every staff can have four completely independent layers of music. You can think of them as clear plastic overlays, because each layer is utterly independent—each can even have its own MIDI channel for playback. You can flip easily from one layer to the other, and even hide the ones you’re not working on.
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in the Simple Entry palette (or press 6 on the numeric keypad) to select a half note duration.There is a special case you should be aware of when working
with layers. There are times, often found in keyboard music,
when the second voice doesn’t begin until the middle of a measure
(below right). The solution is to
When You’re Ready to Continue
This tutorial has covered a lot of ground;
if you’ve made it to the end, congratulations. PrintMusic offers a lot of
power, and you can harness it! Choose Save from the File menu, if you
haven’t already done so. If you think you’ve done enough for one session,
choose
If you want to go on, close this document and turn to the next tutorial.
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