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Tutorial 4: Layout and Printing
Although PrintMusic automatically updates the score layout as you
enter music, any measure, staff, system, or page can be resized,
dragged or nudged as you see fit. Once you learn a few basic Selection
tool and Page Layout procedures, you’ll see how easy it is to
ensure a beautiful and precise layout for any score.
To prepare for this lesson, open the document called “Tutorial 4,”
which consists of a barbershop arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Measure Layout
For this example, we’ll distribute measures to 4 per line.
- From
the Utilities menu, choose Fit Measures. The Fit Measures dialog
box appears.
- Make
sure “Lock Layout with _ Measure(s) per System” is selected as well as
“whole document.”
- 4
should be selected already. If not, enter 4 after “Lock Layout with...”
- Click
OK. PrintMusic re-assigns your music so 4 measures appear on each system.
A fourth system is added at the bottom of the page to accommodate this
arrangement.
You can also select a region of measures and
group them in a system using the “Lock Selected Measures Into One System”
command in the Fit Measures dialog box.
When we set four measures per system, PrintMusic
added an additional system on the next page to accommodate the final measure.
Next, let’s move this orphan measure back to the first page.
- Click
the next page arrow at the bottom of the screen to advance to page 2.
Notice the single-measure system at the top of the page.
- Click
anywhere in the system to select the measure. The system is highlighted.
- Press
the up arrow. PrintMusic moves this measure to the previous system
on the first page. Similarly, you can click the last measure of a system
and press the down arrow to move it to the next system. Try it now. Press
Esc to remove selection and then click measure 7. Press the down arrow
to move it to the next system and then press the up arrow to move it back.
With any of the Fit Measures commands, the
layout depends on your good judgment. Remember, PrintMusic automatically lays
out your music with as many measures as it can fit on a line; you’re free
to override its placement decisions, but the result may be measures that
are too wide or too crowded.
By locking a specific number of measures on a system you’ve
created measure groups, PrintMusic’s system of locking measures
within a system (hence the non-printing lock icon ).
Be aware that once a measure has been manipulated in this
way, the measures are locked into this arrangement, and they
won’t be affected by future measure-rearranging commands
like Update Layout or Begin a New Staff System. You can remove locked measure groups from the piece by choosing
Update Layout from the Edit menu while pressing Shift.
Pickup Measures
Let’s turn the first measure of “Auld Lang Syne” into a proper
pickup measure. There are several ways to do this, but we’ll show
you the easiest. This method changes the first measure in the document
into a pickup measure.
- From
the Document menu, choose Pickup Measure. The Pickup Measure dialog
box opens, where you can tell PrintMusic how long your pickup lasts. Click
the note that corresponds to the sum of the pickup notes. In our example,
we have a quarter note.
- Click
the quarter note, then click OK. PrintMusic hides the half note rest
and the quarter note rest and only displays our pickup notes. PrintMusic even
fixes the measure numbers to automatically skip the pickup measure. You
may have noticed that the notes are still spaced as though the half note
rest were still there. Never fear, we’ll fix the spacing in the next section.
Spacing the Music
As noted earlier in Tutorial 1, Print-
Music is automatically applying
professional publisher-standard
note spacing to your music as you
go along. (This feature can be
turned off by deselecting Automatic
Music Spacing from the Edit menu.)
Automatic Music Spacing not only spaces the notes, it is designed
to avoid the collision of chords, lyrics, and other score elements. In
most cases, you will never need to worry about this feature. However,
you may encounter instances when the music does not
appear to be spaced correctly; usually, the automatic spacing hasn’t been triggered yet. Here, then, are the steps to follow to perform
music spacing (it has not yet been performed in this score so
you can see the effects):
- Click
the Selection tool .
- Click
just to the left of the top staff, in any staff system. This is
a quick way to select an entire staff with one click. You’ll notice that
the whole line is highlighted. Because we don’t want to overlook the bass
staff while making spacing decisions, we’ll need to select the bass staff,
too.
- Hold
down the key and click just to the left of the bass staff,
in any staff system. Now both staves should be highlighted through
the entire piece.
- From
the Utilities menu, choose Apply Music Spacing.
When PrintMusic’s finished, you might notice that the spacing of music and
barlines is much more professional looking. Every measure is exactly as
wide as it needs to be, and every note is allotted exactly the right amount
of horizontal space. Music spaced in this way is said to have nonlinear
spacing, as in published music: A whole note doesn’t get as much horizontal
space as four quarter notes—it actually gets much less. For more information
about PrintMusic’s three music spacing types, see the User Manual under Music Spacing.
There is one more critical behind-the-scenes function in
action here: Update Layout. Again, PrintMusic is configured
to perform this function automatically (it can be disabled by
deselecting Automatic Update Layout from the Edit menu).
When you use the Music Spacing command, you correct the
spacing of the notes, lyrics, and accidentals of your piece;
PrintMusic still must calculate the effects of your respacing
on the layout of the measures. If you ever notice that measures seem too wide or too narrow, select Update Layout from
the Edit menu, or press +U.
To respace staves in individual systems or throughout the score, see To move staves.
The Page Layout tool
The units of measurement PrintMusic normally
uses are inches. You can work in whatever units you feel most comfortable
with.
- From
the Edit menu, choose Measurement Units; from the submenu, choose Inches
(if it’s not already selected).
- Click the
Page Layout tool . Your page of sheet music is instantly covered
with a series of horizontal and vertical lines with handles attached.
Although this may appear confusing at first, the function of the handles
will become clear as we examine the page in depth.
To view your entire page, click on
the View menu, select Zoom, then Fit in Window.
The handles (and their associated lines) control two distinct
sets of margins: Page margins, which allow you to determine
how much of the page (from side to side and from top to bottom)
you will use for the music; and staff system margins,
which allow you to indent staff systems, increase the space
allotted to systems, and so on. A staff system, or system for
short, is one line of music, no matter how many instruments
(staves) are in it.
As you've no doubt already guessed, the lines that run to the
edges of the page are the currently defined page margins. The
rectangles that enclose the three systems of music are the staff
system margins. Each system has two handles, one at the upper left corner and one at the lower right corner. To manipulate
any margin, simply drag its handle. You can even dragenclose
margin handles or select all margin handles with
+A). To move the entire system, creating
more space between systems for a choreographer’s note or a
title, simply click on the system and drag it into place.
The page currently appears based on PrintMusic’s default layout
settings. You might decide there is some extra space above the
top system, we’ll move the music higher on the page.
- Click the top left
handle of the first
system and drag
down about an inch,
as shown:
Notice you can also
drag this handle
left or right to adjust the horizontal position of the left system
margin. Once you’ve selected the handle you can also use the
down arrow to nudge the system margin with more precision.
For precise positioning, from the Page
Layout menu, choose Systems and then Edit Margins. Here, you can specify
spacing numerically. You will notice the values here change as you drag
system margin handles.
The spacing on the page remains the same, but now there is
room to move the system up (before colliding with the top
page margin). When you do, subsequent systems will reposition
uniformly.
- Click anywhere in the top system and
drag up and to the right. Keep dragging
as far up and to the right as possible.
You are only able to move the
system until it lies against the right
and top page margins. Notice all the
systems on the page moved up accordingly.
PrintMusic can also automatically space the systems evenly
down the page with the Space Systems Evenly command. To
space the systems, PrintMusic adjusts the Distance Between
Systems, without changing the system margins. Because we
want to make sure our title doesn’t get covered up when we
space the systems later, we’ll make the top system margin bigger
to include the title.
- From the Page Layout menu, choose Space Systems Evenly. In
the Space Systems Evenly dialog box, you can tell PrintMusic
which pages to space and when to skip pages (such as pages only
two systems full). The default settings are fine, so just click OK.
Voila! All of your systems are spaced evenly between the top
and bottom margins of the page.
The Resize tool
You’ve already experimented with the Zoom
command in the View menu. This command—and the options on its submenu—allow
you to “zoom in” to and “zoom out” from your document, magnifying or reducing
your view of it. During the entire process, however, the actual size of
the music—the printed image—remains precisely the same.
The Resize tool, however, can resize the
music itself.
For this example, use the document called
“Tutorial 4” that you’ve been working on to this point and scroll to page
1.
- Click
the Resize tool . The amount of music to be resized depends on
where you click on the screen.
- Click the upper-left corner of the
page. The Resize Page dialog box
appears.
- Type 75. Click OK.
NOTE: If you use the Resize tool on a system
or a page, as you’ve just done, you change the measure widths. Whenever
you perform any operation in PrintMusic that changes the measure widths, you
must tell PrintMusic to compensate by rearranging the layout of measures.
As noted previously, PrintMusic performs an Automatic Update Layout for you;
if you have decided to turn this feature off, you'll need to do it manually
now.
The Text tool
The Text tool is used to enter text onto
a single page or multiple pages. Titles, subtitles, composer credits,
page numbers, copyright notices, and dates are good examples.
For best results, don’t use the Text tool
for musical text like Adagio and rehearsal letters. Use the Expression
tool for these purposes (see Tutorial 3).
If you create a document using the Document
Setup Wizard, you will be prompted for a title. For this tutorial document,
we have provided you with a dummy title, “Title.” The word “Title” has
brackets around it, to tell you it’s special, a text insert. We’ll talk
more about text inserts later in this tutorial.
Now, you’ll add a subtitle to “Auld Lang
Syne.”
- Press
the Home key on your computer keyboard. In Page View, Home Position
shifts the view to the upper-left corner of the page you’re working on.
(In Scroll View, it returns you to measure 1.)
- Click
the Text tool . The Text menu appears, and the title, “Auld Lang
Syne,” sprouts a small square handle.
- Double-click
the title’s handle. An editing frame appears around the text, and
a blinking cursor appears within the frame. “Auld Lang Syne” is enclosed
in a gray box which indicates this is a “Text Insert.” In other words,
this text is defined elsewhere so it can be replicated easily. This would
be the case if this score were created with the Setup Wizard.
- From
the File menu, choose File Info. If you wanted to change the Title Text
(or the Composer or Copyright), you would do it here.
- Enter
“Times Gone By” in the Subtitle text box.
- Click
OK. The File Info dialog box disappears and the blinking cursor
is still to the left of our title.
- Press
the right arrow key. The cursor moves to the right of the title
text insert.
- Press
Return. The cursor moves to the next line. Now set the font size.
- From
the Text menu, choose Size, and then choose the desired font size.
For a subtitle, a 10- or 12-point size should work well. You can also
set the typeface by selecting the text and choosing a typeface from the
Font dialog box or submenu of the Text menu.
- From
the Text menu, choose Inserts, then Subtitle. “Times Gone By” appears
beneath the title. If you want to change the typeface, highlight the new
text and choose a new typeface from the Font submenu of the Text menu.
(The title is in Arial 18-point bold). If you want to change the size
or style (e.g., bold) of the text, you can make your selection from the
appropriate submenu of the Text menu. Now, change the justification so
the subtitle is centered beneath the title.
- From
the Text menu, choose Justification and then Center. The commands
in this submenu allow you to specify how you want your text aligned in
the text box.
- Select
Center Horizontally. PrintMusic has centered your subtitle on the page.
You can also manually adjust the position of any text block by dragging
its handle.
(If the text block shows an editing frame,
click anywhere on the page to see its handle.) You might want to adjust
the vertical position of your subtitle. To delete a text block, click
its handle and press Delete.
In addition to entering titles and special
instructions to players, the Text tool can also be used to place page
numbers into your score, as well as the document name, current date, and
current time (important features if you plan to update and reprint your
score at some future time). PrintMusic provides several useful keyboard shortcuts
for many of these features; let’s explore some of them here.
Note that page numbers are already assigned
(starting on page 2) when you start a new score using the Setup Wizard
or a template.
- Double-click
in the bottom right corner of the page. An editing frame appears.
- Type
“Page”, type a space, then press ++P. This keyboard shortcut
instructs PrintMusic to place a page number insert at the current cursor position.
(You could also select Page Number from the Inserts submenu of the Text
menu.) The number 1 appears, surrounded by a box. The box indicates that
this number is not ordinary text, but a dynamic insert, meaning that if
you created this insert on the second page of your score, it would display
the number 2 instead of the number 1. See Text tool in the User Manual
for a further discussion of inserts.
- Press
++] (right bracket).
This keyboard shortcut instructs PrintMusic to align the text block with the
right margin of the page. (You could also select Right from the Placement
submenu of the Text menu.) You have now successfully entered a page number
for your score. We can quickly instruct PrintMusic to display your page number
on every subsequent page, without having to manually enter a different
page number every time.
The Graphics tool
In addition to adding text to your document,
you may also wish to include a graphic element (a company logo for example)
which has been created in a graphics program. Or, in a totally different
vein, you may wish to export a PrintMusic-generated musical example into a
word processing application. Both the importing and exporting of graphics
is performed with the Graphics tool.
Let’s start by exporting an example of
our piece.
- Press
the Home key or use the horizontal and vertical scroll bars to navigate
the upper left of the page.
- From
the View menu, choose Zoom and specify 100%.
- Select
the Graphics tool .
- Double-click
and drag-enclose the pickup measure of Auld Lang Syne: Place the mouse
pointer up and to the left of the first measure. Double-click the
mouse, keeping the button pressed down after the second click, then drag
the mouse down and to the right until a diagonal rectangle has enclosed
the pickup measure on the screen: now release the mouse button (the dotted
outline should remain on the screen).
When you selected the Graphics tool, a Graphics
menu appeared towards the right side of the menu bar at the top of your
screen.
- From
the Graphics menu, select Export Selection. (Note: if Export Selection
is grayed out, you haven't successfully drag-enclosed)
- Click
OK. The Save JPEG dialog box will appear, allowing you to name
your file and determine where it will be located.
You’ll want to remember where you’ve saved
this file for future reference.
- Make
sure your PrintMusic 2011 folder is specified. For the purpose of this
tutorial, we will use the default PrintMusic directory; if you have changed
this folder name (or are using a different version of PrintMusic) please replace
references to PrintMusic 2011 throughout this tutorial with the name of your
PrintMusic folder.
- Enter
“tut4picture” in the File Name field, and click Save. This file
can now be imported into any desktop publishing or word processing application.
You will want to look in your specific desktop publishing or word processing
manual for the exact steps for importing a graphic: typically this is
referred to by the terms Place or Insert.
- Now
that you’ve created a JPEG file, we’ll import the same file back into
PrintMusic. While importing PrintMusic examples into PrintMusic is not necessarily
something you’d commonly do, the procedure would be the same if you were
importing any other type of graphic like a company logo or letterhead.
- Click
anywhere on the screen to remove your previous selection.
- From
the Graphics menu, choose Place Graphic. (you could also double-click
on the document window—in Page View—where you'd like the graphic to appear).
The Place Graphic dialog box is where you specify
the graphic item you wish to import: in this tutorial we'll use the file
you saved moments ago.
If your PrintMusic 2011 folder is not already chosen,
select it now.
- Click
on tut4picture once to select it, then click the Open button.
Since you chose Place Graphic rather than double-clicking
where you wanted the graphic to appear, PrintMusic is awaiting instruction
for placement of the graphic.
- Place
the cursor where you want the upper left-hand corner of the graphic to
appear and click the mouse. Your graphic will appear. You can click
on the graphic to drag it elsewhere or drag one of the handles to scale
it horizontally or vertically.
For more information, see the Graphics
tool in the User Manual.
Printing Basics
There are essentially two kinds of printers
that work with PrintMusic: PostScript-equipped printers, suitable for professional
publishing; and non-PostScript printers, including inkjet and bubblejet
printers.
PrintMusic’s output truly shines when you print
on a PostScript printer. PostScript is a page-description language spoken
by computers and printers, just as MIDI is a language spoken by computers
and MIDI keyboards. (If you want truly typeset-quality printing, you can
take your PrintMusic files on a disk to an output shop—something like a copy
shop/graphics service bureau—and have it printed on a Linotronic imagesetter,
a very expensive PostScript machine that creates published-quality printouts.)
Just as A, B, and C are characters in a
standard text font, notes and musical symbols are characters in PrintMusic’s
music font, called Maestro. Maestro, and the other fonts that come with
PrintMusic, is provided as a Postscript and TrueType font.
All text and musical symbols should look
outstanding at any size. However, when you print at reduced sizes, a non-PostScript
printer produces unevenly spaced staff lines, slightly “stairstepped”
eighth-note beams, or somewhat jagged slurs (because these lines and shapes
are actually graphics and not font items).
- From
the File menu, choose Print and click OK in the dialog box that appears.
In a moment, your printer should begin to print your score.
When You’re Ready to Continue
You’ve learned some very important concepts
in this tutorial. In fact, these techniques and principles constitute
much of the editing work you’ll need to do in PrintMusic. Here’s a quick review
of what you’ve covered, in order:
- Use the Selection tool to arrange measures.
- Use
the Music Spacing command to space and align notes, avoid collisions of
lyrics and accidentals, and set ideal measure widths.
- Especially
after using the Music Spacing command, it’s important to choose Update
Layout from the Edit menu, so you can see what the final layout will be.
You should get in the habit of updating the layout just before printing—so
that you never get unexpected results when you print.
- Use
the Page Layout tool to adjust the spacing of all systems on the page.
- Use
the Text tool to add titles, composer credits, copyright notices, and
so on.
- Use
the Graphics tool to Import/Export Graphics.
If you’ve had enough for this session,
choose Exit from the File menu. If you want to go on, close
the document you have open.