9. The Score

Reading the Score

The Score pane shows the song as notation: staves, clefs, beams, rests and marks, engraved from the same notes the Editor shows as tab. Nothing is kept twice. Change a note anywhere and the score is written again, so it never drifts from the song.

The Score pane

Available on every platform.

Opening one

Make any pane a Score pane from its kind, on its bar. Built-in workspaces start with one: Tab & Score puts tab and notation one over the other, in step, and Score shows the score on pages with Score Setup beside it. See Panes and Workspaces.

What it writes

Each track the pane shows gets its staves, by its kind:

• Guitars: a treble clef an octave down, and a TAB staff under it when the pane shows one.
• Basses: a bass clef an octave down.
• Keys: a grand staff.
• Drums: a percussion staff, each piece on its line.

What the song holds is written from it: the key and time signatures, the tempo, sections as rehearsal marks, chord symbols, lyrics, articulations and techniques, bends, slurs and ties. Repeated passages are written as repeats where the song repeats them; Score Setup decides how (Score Setup).

The pane’s ⚙

Each Score pane keeps its own settings, from its ⚙:

• TAB Staff: a TAB staff under each fretted part’s notation.
• Align to Time: notes placed by time, as in an Editor, rather than by engraved spacing, so the score lines up note for note with an Editor pane above or below it.
• Concert Pitch, for transposing instruments: see Transposing instruments and concert pitch.
• Page View, with its breaks: see Page view and breaks.
• Music Font and Score Theme: see Fonts and themes.
• Colour Notes By: see Lenses.
• Follow Playhead: Off, Page by Page or Continuous Scroll.
• Score Setup…: the score’s style. See Score Setup.

What it shows

The pane’s context chip says what it shows: the Working Score, all of the song’s tracks or the ones you pick, or one of the song’s presentations, such as a part. See Presentations and parts.

When a playlist is on, the chip also has Follow and the playlist’s name: the score is then written as the playlist plays, its steps’ bars in order. See Playlists and practice steps.

Playing and the caret

While the song plays, the playhead runs through every staff and each note lights as it sounds. The pane follows the playhead as its Follow Playhead setting says; scroll it yourself and following pauses, with a pill to bring it back.

Click an empty place on a staff to put the caret there: playing starts from it, and note input writes there. Click a note to select it. With nothing selected, ← and → move the caret a step (with Alt, ⌥ on a Mac, to the barline), and ↑ and ↓ to the part above or below.

Panes linked by colour share the caret and the time shown, so an Editor and a Score of one colour scroll together. See Link colours.

To write in the score, see Note input and Editing notation.