9. The Score

Score Setup

The Score is always written from the song, so you don’t lay it out note by note. You set its style once, in Score Setup, and every page follows: the paper, the staff’s size, how tight the spacing is, whether repeats are written as repeat signs, which fonts the words use. A presentation, such as a part, can keep the song’s style or change any of it.

The Score Setup pane

Available on every platform.

Opening it

From a Score pane’s ⚙, choose Score Setup…. A Score Setup pane opens beside it (or, if one is already open, comes forward), so you see each change on the pages as you make it. You can also make any pane a Score Setup pane from its kind.

Its sections are listed down its side (in a narrow pane, as a row of chips across the top): Page, Staves, Spacing, Notation, Repeats, Text, Played Rhythm, Song, and Presentation when a presentation is being set. Each change is one undo step.

Score Setup changes what the score looks like, never what plays.

The song’s style, or a presentation’s

The pane’s context chip says what it sets: Song Style, the style every presentation starts from, or one of the song’s presentations. When a Score pane shows a presentation, Score Setup sets that one.

In a presentation, a value shown dimmed is the song’s. Change it and it becomes the presentation’s own, with a ↺ beside it that takes it back to the song’s. So a part can have larger staves and gathered rests while following the song’s fonts. See Presentations and parts.

Page

• Size: A4 or Letter.
• Orientation: Portrait or Landscape.
• Top, Bottom, Left and Right margin, in millimetres.

Staves

• Staff height, in millimetres.
• Shrink to fit the page: the staff gets smaller, down to Smallest staff, until the tallest system fits on a page. On by default.
• Hide empty staves: a staff with nothing to play in a system is left out of it (never in the first system). On by default.
• Part names at the systems’ left: None, First (the first system only), Every (every system), or Short (in full on the first, shortened after).
• Guitar parts: Notation, or TAB alone.

Spacing

• Note spacing, as a percentage: lower is tighter.
• Between systems, in staff spaces.
• Bars per system: As they fit, or at most so many bars a system.
• Bars of rest together: bars of rest gathered into one multi-bar rest, with the count over it.

Notation

• Bar numbers: None, at the start of each system (Systems, the default), or on Every bar.
• Blanks behind TAB numbers: the string lines broken around each fret number.
• Drum beams: Flat or Sloped.
• Swung eighths: written Straight with a swing mark over them, or as Triplets.
• Dynamics: From velocities, so the notes’ velocities are written as p, mf, f and so on, or None.
• Hairpins where the level moves: crescendos and diminuendos drawn where velocities rise or fall steadily.
• Pedals: Lines, Signs, or None.
• Chord diagrams over guitar chords: each chord symbol of a fretted part drawn as a diagram, its name over it.

Repeats

How a song’s repeated passages are written:

• Repeat barlines where clips repeat: a clip that repeats, or linked copies of it, written once between repeat signs.
• First and second endings, where a repeat ends differently.
• D.S. and D.C. where a passage returns, with al Fine or al Coda.
• Simile marks for repeated bars. Off by default.

Each one off writes those bars out in full.

Text

For each kind of text (Titles and names, Chord symbols, Lyrics, Staff text, Techniques, and Tempo, marks, numbers), a family, a Size from 50 to 200 %, and a Face: Auto (as the score sets it), Regular, Bold or Italic. A sample under each shows the result.

The families are listed in their own faces: Serif, Sans, Times, Handwritten and Jazz, then the song’s own fonts, and Add Font… to add one from a font file. See Fonts and themes.

Played Rhythm

Notes you record from a MIDI instrument keep their exact timing in the song. This section decides how the score reads them:

• Read played notes: Tidy, As Played or Simple. Each sets the three below, which you can then change.
• Shortest note: 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32.
• Fill rests shorter than: never, a beat or a bar.
• Hold notes to the next beat.

Only notes played in are read this way; notes you write are written as they are.

Song

The credits written under the title on the first page: Subtitle, Artist, Composer and Arranger. The title is the song’s name.

When the song has no key signature and its notes suggest one, a button here sets it, such as Set the key the notes say: E minor.

Presentation

When Score Setup sets a presentation, this section has its Name, TAB staff under fretted parts, the Tracks in it, and Delete Presentation.