There are two ways to change the pitch of a note by semitones using the Score Editor. The first is to select the note (by double-clicking, control-clicking or dragging the mouse - see The Mouse on page 10 of the manual) and then choosing Transpose from the Edit menu. The second is to choose the NS tool, select the note to be transposed by clicking and holding down the mouse over the note, and then, instead of dragging the note up and down with the mouse, which moves the note in key, press the Up or Down arrow keys. Do not try to transpose a note by selecting the note and choosing Accidental from the Edit menu - this will only change the enharmonic spelling of the selected note. You can also change the pitch of a note by semitones using the NS tool in the Piano Roll Editor.
Select the note (by double-clicking, control-clicking or dragging the mouse - see The Mouse on page 10 of the manual) and then choosing Accidental from the Edit menu. Select the accidental you wish for the note. For example, if you want to change a B flat to an A sharp, choose Sharp. If you want to change an E flat to an F double flat, choose Double Flat.
Set the duration in the Durations palette to the smallest duration you will be using in the passage you are entering.
Enter the notes. Use the pencil tool and position the mouse where you want each note to go and then enter the note by clicking the left mouse button. If you have a keyboard you can use step entry to enter the notes. Make sure the notes go in the right place (the start times of the notes are where you want them to be).
If you put a note in the wrong place, you can erase it by selecting the eraser tool and then clicking on the note, or you can move it to the right place using the NS, EW or the NSEW tool.
Now you have all the notes in the right place. The durations should all be equal. Some durations will be what you want and some will be too short. To change the duration of each note that is too short, double click on the note, choose Duration from the Edit menu and change the duration. Another way to do this which is faster and easier is to select all the notes in the passage and choose Make Legato from the Edit menu. This will join up all the notes, so that each note ends at the start of the next note.
When entering syncopated notes, the easiest thing to do is to enter all the notes with the smallest duration you will be using in the syncopated passage. For example, if you are entering an eighth note, a quarter note and then another eighth note, it's best to enter all the notes as eighth notes. For this example, set the duration in the Durations palette to an eighth note and enter the three notes as eighth notes, making sure that the start times for all three notes are correct. Now change the duration of the second eighth note to a quarter note, either by selecting the note and choosing Duration from the Edit menu, or by selecting all three notes and choosing Make Legato from the Edit menu.
To display quarter note triplets, you must first set the display quantization to a triplet value. By default, quarter note triplets display the first triplet as a quarter note, the second triplet as an eighth note tied over the beat to another eighth note and the third triplet as a quarter note.
To display as three quarter notes, set the beat for the measure containing the quarter note triplet to a half note. This will ensure that notes are placed in the measure in half-note groupings. To do this, put the cursor in the bar containing the quarter note triplet, choose Display Bar from the Display menu and then change the Beat option to Half. To change the grouping back to quarter notes (or whatever value you were using) in the next measure, you must move the cursor to the next bar and from the Display Bar dialog change the Beat option to Quarter (or the value you were previously using).
If you don't want to change the beat value, you can do the following: Set the Display Rests option to Off in the Display Bar dialog. Enter the first and second triplet quarter note at the beginning of the first beat and enter the third triplet quarter note in its regular place. Now select the spacing tool and drag the second quarter note triplet over until it is equidistant from the first and the third triplet.
If your bars per line setting is set to two or less, you will not be able to drag the second triplet far enough over. You will have to adjust the bar line or other notes in your bar with the spacing tool or else set the bars per line for that line to a value greater than two.
If you have any rests in the bar you will have to enter them from the symbols palette, since you have disabled the display of rests for that bar.
Rests, ties and tied notes are generated automatically by QuickScore Elite. For this reason it is usually futile to try to edit rests and tied notes. The exception is when you have explicitly entered rests or tied notes yourself.
The level of rests and ties can be adjusted so that they don't overwrite notes or other symbols. This is done from the Display Bar dialog. You can also choose not to generate rests at all in a given section of your music and put them in yourself. You can do this for a given bar using the Display Bar dialog or, for an entire track, using the Display Track dialog. Now you can enter the rests yourself as symbols using the Notes palette
If you really must have a tied figure displayed in a manner that you can't seem to get any other way, you can enter the note, the ties, and the tied notes by hand. Use a slur to simulate the tie. You can set the velocity of the tied notes to zero if you like.
For more information on how QuickScore Elite transcribes music, see Notes on Transcription on page 94 of the manual.
Select voice 1 from the voice palette at the far right of the Score Editor control area and enter the notes for the top voice as you would normally. All the stems for these notes are up. Rests appear by default at the top of the staff, not in the middle, as they do when notes are entered with the default voice. Now select voice 2 from the voice palette and enter the notes for the bottom voice. For this voice, rests appear by default at the bottom of the staff.
You can change the level of the display of rests for a particular voice in a bar by changing the Rest Level option for that voice from the Display Bar dialog, available by selecting Bar from the Display menu.
The best way to enter grace notes is to select Grace from the voice palette at the far right of the Score Editor and then enter the grace notes where you like. This way the timing of the grace notes will not interfere with the timing of the rest of the notes in the measure. Grace notes entered this way do not generate any rests.
If you want to enter grace notes before the first note of the measure, you can enter the grace notes at the beginning of the measure, and then with the spacing tool move the non-grace notes on the first beat over a bit so they are not obscured by the grace note.
Cue notes should be entered on a voice separate from the voice of the notes for the main instrument. For example, if the main voice is the default voice, you should choose voice 1 or voice 2 for the cue notes. Cue notes should be small notes, so when you have entered the cue notes, select them and set the size for the notes by choosing Group, then Small Notes and then Default Group.
If you want all the notes in a track to go up or down, you can set Use Ascending or Descending Stems to the direction you want from the Display Track dialog.
If you want to enter two voices, one with stems up and one with stems down, proceed as explained in the section above on displaying independent voices in a bar on the same staff.
If you want only a selected group of notes to have stems a certain direction, select these notes, and set the stem direction by choosing Group, then either Big Notes or Small Notes and then the stem direction you want. Doing this will also group together the notes that you have selected, so make sure that you select the notes in beam groupings that you want. If you want to set the beam groupings back to the default (grouped by beat) select Default Group.
There are three basic ways to space music, which can be used in combination with each other.
The first is to use engraver spacing. Select Engraver Spacing from the Display Score dialog. When engraver spacing is used, notes are spaced by their appearance, not by their durations. With engraver spacing, a whole note will take up much less space than four groups of thirty-second notes. Engraver spacing does not affect the placement of bar lines or the number of bars in a line.
The next is to adjust the placement of bar lines and the number of bars in each line.
The simplest way to adjust the placement of bar lines and the number of bars in each line is to let QuickScore Elite do the job. Choose the Space Music dialog from the Display menu, set the density you want (the number of 16th notes that would appear on a line at the density you have selected will be shown) and click on OK. The placement of bar lines and the number of bars in each line will be adjusted based on the density of music in each bar and each line. You can choose to only space bar lines or bars per line, and you can select a range of bars instead of your whole piece, but it is worth having QuickScore do everything, at least the first time.
The adjustment of bar lines can be done by hand using the spacing tool (on the far right in the tool bar). The number of bars in a line can be changed line by line by putting the cursor in the first bar of the line and selecting the Display Bar dialog and setting the Bars per Line value. You can also set the number of bars per line globally by setting it in the Display Score dialog.
Finally, you can move individual notes around without affecting their timing using the spacing tool. Use this technique to adjust the few notes that still aren't in the right place. (The second method of drawing quarter note triplets described earlier is an example of using the spacing tool to adjust note spacing.)
Choose Pickup Bar from the Display menu. Check Use Pickup Bar to use a pickup bar. Set the time signature for the pickup bar to set the number of beats in the pickup bar. For example choose a time signature of 2/4 to allow two quarter notes in the pickup bar.
Lyrics can be entered all at the same time once you have entered your notes. Select the Lyric object in the objects palette and the Pen tool from the toolbar. Click on the first note and enter the syllable for that note. Now press the TAB key to move the cursor to the next note. Continue typing and going from note to note using the TAB key (and SHIFT+TAB key to go backwards). If you want to enter a single hyphen between two syllables, enter CTRL+-(dash) instead of TAB. If you want to enter a double hyphen between two syllables, enter CTRL+SHIFT+-(dash). You do not have to click on each note individually to enter its lyric syllable.
You can enter four levels of lyrics. To select the lyric level you want, select the lyric number from the lyric list box at the right of the Score Editor control area.
To adjust the level of lyrics, select the Lyric Positioning dialog by clicking on the Lyrics button in the Display Page dialog, available under the Display menu.
The tremolo symbol is at the bottom at the far right position in the adjustable symbols palette. It is possible to change the number of tremolo lines in the tremolo symbol from one to four by pressing 1, 2, 3 or 4 while entering or editing the tremolo symbol. This is not described in the manual.
After you have completed your score in QuickScore, choose Save As from the File menu.
The Save as file dialog appears. From the Save as type dropdown list box choose Wave. Set the name of your wave file in the File name list box.
If you have chosen to show the Audio Setup dialog when saving audio files, the Audio Setup dialog will appear. Choose the audio line that you will use when saving your wave file in the Saving Files Input list box. This audio line must be a line that will be active when playing your score. It is recommended that you choose a rate of 44100 Hz and resolution of 16 bits, as these ensure best quality when creating audio CDs or when adding your score to a video or film soundtrack. Once you have set your options in the Audio Setup dialog, you can choose to not show the dialog again when recording or saving audio files by checking the Don’t show when recording or saving checkbox. When finished, click OK.
Your score will play from start to finish. When finished your score has been saved as a wave file with the name you chose in the Save As file dialog.
After you have completed your score in QuickScore, choose Save As from the File menu.
The Save as file dialog appears. From the Save as type dropdown list box choose MP3. Set the name of your wave file in the File name list box.
If you have chosen to show the Audio Setup dialog when saving audio files, the Audio Setup dialog will appear. Choose the audio line that you will use when saving your MP3 file in the Saving Files Input list box. This audio line must be a line that will be active when playing your score. It is recommended that you choose a rate of 44100 Hz and resolution of 16 bits, as these ensure best quality. Once you have set your options in the Audio Setup dialog, you can choose to not show the dialog again when recording or saving audio files by checking the Don’t show when recording or saving checkbox. When finished, click OK.
Your score will play from start to finish. When finished your score has been saved as a MP3 file with the name you chose in the Save As file dialog.
First save the files you want to put on your CD as Wave files. See the section How to create a Wave file for a description of how to do this.
To burn your files to CD you will need a CD drive that allows you to write to CDs, and a writeable CD. You can use any of a variety of CD burning software, including the Windows Media Player, which is free and included in the Windows operating system.
To create an audio CD using the Windows Media Player, first add the files you want to put on the CD to the Media library. From the File menu, choose Add to Media Library, then Add File. Select the files you want from the Open File dialog that appears.
Once your files are included in the Media library, it is convenient to set the artist, album and composer for your files. To do this, choose Media Library from the group of tabs on the left, then All Audio from the left panel. In the right panel, find your files and set the artist, album and composer, by first clicking on the file to select it, then clicking on the field you want to change to edit it.
Select the files you want to include on your audio CD by choosing the album you have assigned to each of your files in the left panel under Album. Choose Copy to CD or Device from the group of tabs. Make sure there is a writeable CD in your CD drive and then click on the red Copy Music button in the top left corner. Your tracks will be converted to audio CD format and written to the CD.
It is assumed you have a completed digital video file on your PC and some digital video editing software, such as Windows Movie Maker, which is free and included in the Windows operating system.
You can load your complete digital film or video or a single clip from the film or video into QuickScore’s Video Window, which may assist you in composing your score, as it will play along in sync with your music. To do so, choose Movie from the Options menu, click on Open and using the Open File dialog that appears, choose your movie.
Select the SMPTE offset of the beginning of the movie in the SMPTE Offset portion of the dialog. The offset you enter here will be the offset from the beginning of the movie to which the start of the score corresponds. You can mute the movie by checking the Mute box.
If you have a large film, it may be useful to create your soundtrack score in several pieces. When you have finished your score, save it as one or more Wave files. See the section How to create a Wave file for a description of how to do this.
To add your wave file to your film, use your digital video editing software. If you are using Windows Movie Maker, import your saved wave file or files using Import from the File menu. Select Timeline View by choosing Timeline from the View menu. Now simply drag your audio clips to the Audio track at the bottom the Timeline window. You can move the clips back and forth in time and change the volume before saving your project or your movie.
It is recommended that you publish your scores as Adobe PDF files, as these are portable across all types of computers, will print on all printers with the highest possible quality, and can be viewed by all web browsers, as long as the Adobe Acrobat Reader is installed on the viewing computer. The Acrobat reader is free, and is available for download from Adobe at www.adobe.com.
To create PDF files using QuickScore, you need PDF creation software. You can use the free PDFCreator, which can be downloaded here, or Adobe Acrobat, available from Adobe, which is not free. Once either software has been installed, a printer driver is installed on your system (either PDFCreator or Adobe PDF) and is available when printing from QuickScore.
Once your score is complete, print it using either the Adobe PDF or PDFCreator driver. Make sure that you include the fonts you use with your PDF files. This is important, because otherwise music will appear as text if the viewing computer does not have the Mozart font installed. If you are using the PDFCreator driver, you should not have to do anything special. However, to make sure your fonts are being downloaded, click on Preferences, then the Advanced button, exand the Postcript Options and make sure that the TrueType Font Download Option is set to Automatic. If you are using the Adobe PDF driver, you must click on Preferences, then the Adobe PDF settings tab and uncheck Do not send fonts to “Adobe PDF”.
You can also create JPEG files using PDFCreator. To do so, choose JPEG in the Save as Type dropdown list box in the Save As file dialog in PDFCreator. Make sure you add the .jpg file extension in the File name list box, or PDFCreator may save the file with the .pdf extension.
Once you have created your PDF or JPEG files, they can be incorporated into your website using appropriate website creation software.
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