User manual

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Entering and editing notes
• If two notes on the same position are too close to each other
or if you want their “graphical order” in the score reversed, you
can do this without affecting playback, see
“Graphic moving
of notes” on page 614.
• Stem direction and length is normally automatic, but you can
set it yourself, see
“Background: Note stems” on page 604.
• If you are scoring for piano and therefore (or for other reasons)
need a split staff, there are special techniques for this, see
“Split (piano) staves” on page 583 and “Polyphonic voicing”
on page 593.
Selecting notes
In the operations described in the rest of this chapter, you
often work on selected notes. The text below describes
how to select notes:
By clicking
To select a note, click on the note head with the Object
Selection tool. The note head turns red to indicate that it is
selected.
• To select more notes, hold down [Shift] and click on
them.
• To deselect notes, hold down [Shift] and click on them
again.
• If you hold down [Shift] and double-click on a note, this
note and all the following notes in the same staff are se
-
lected.
Using a selection rectangle
1. Click in an empty area in the score with the Object Se-
lection tool and keep the mouse button pressed.
2. Drag the mouse pointer to create a selection rectangle.
You can drag to select notes on several voices or staves if you wish.
3. Release the mouse button.
All notes with note heads inside the rectangle are selected.
If you want to deselect one or more of the notes, hold
down [Shift] and click on them.
Using the keyboard
By default, you can step through (and select) the notes in
the staff using the left and right arrow keys. If you press
[Shift], you can select a series of notes as you step
through them.
• If you are working with polyphonic voices, you step
through the notes on the current track, i.e. in a split sys-
tem, you step through the staves.
• If you want to use other keys for selecting notes, you
can customize the settings in the Key Commands dialog
(in the Navigate category).
Selecting tied notes
Longer notes are often displayed in the score as one note
with a tie. If you intend to select the entire note (e.
g. for de-
leting), you should select the first note, not the tied note.
Deselecting everything
To deselect everything, simply click in an empty area of
the score with the Object Selection tool.
Selected notes
!
There is a setting for this in the Preferences dialog
(Scores–Editing page): If you activate “Tied notes
selected as Single Units”, the whole note is selected,
even if you click on one of the tied notes.