How To Add Breath Marks In Musescore

Using Noteflight: Tips, Best Practices, and Cool Features You Might Non Know About

| October xix, 2014

Dear Noteflighters (or Notepilots, every bit some of you prefer to be called),

In our travels on the forums, on our user support line, and in discussions with composers, students, and teachers (including me, working with my students as my modify-ego the composition teacher), we hear a lot of things about Noteflight: mostly tales of joy and musicality, a few tales of puzzlement (which nosotros aid resolve correct away!), and and so always those tales of… "oh hey! I didn't know Noteflight could do that!"

Yep, we regularly meet things that users tin can do to make their music-making in Noteflight smooth, fast, fun, and trouble-free. Our User Guide gives the total picture, but nosotros want to share a few highlights and "all-time practices", tips from our users, things that "just work", and cool tricks you lot might not know still.

First, and so unbelievably-incredibly-fanstastically of import that it deserves its own pulsate gyre….

SAVE! OFTEN!

Information technology's quickest to employ control-S (watch out: on some browsers command-Southward saves the whole web page to your hard bulldoze, which is not what you want), or one of these options:

If the button looks like this, your latest changes may non have been backed up yet!

When it looks like this, you're safe:

This is a habit thing: if you train yourself to save all the time, even every few seconds, you'll stop noticing and it volition only happen…and you'll be so glad you lot did. If Benjamin Franklin had had Noteflight, he would have added frequent saving to his list of 13 virtues.

A few of our favorite keys

Get to know our Keyboard Shortcuts (a complete list here). You won't regret information technology!

Here are a few of our favorites. These volition instantly increase your honey of Noteflight!

P is for Play

Instead of the Play button, or using the option in the Play menu, simply press:

to play from the beginning, or

Shift-P to play from the currently-selected mensurate.

R is for Echo

Select whatever part of your score: a single note, a chord, a whole bar, a series of bars… printing:

…and voilà! Information technology shall be repeated, as many times equally yous wish. This is likewise a handy way to add new bars: select an empty bar, hitting R a million or so times, and you will have measures to fill up with glorious music until the end of time.

Subclass Keys to change Elapsing
One of the most useful of all: to change the note duration, use the subclass keys:
[ makes the note shorter (quarter/crotchet to 8th/quaver, or 8th/quaver to 16th/semiquaver)
] makes the notation longer

Move notes one step higher or lower: use the Upwards / Downwards pointer keys

Move notes up or downward one octave: hold Control/Command and press the Upwardly / Downwardly pointer keys

A few other handy keystrokes:

Break or connect a beam: shift-[ and shift-]

Necktie vs Slur
One of music notation'due south most confusing tricks: 2 things that expect exactly the same, only mean completely unlike things! Meet the tie and the slur.

For a tie, to connect two of the same pitch into one longer elapsing, type a comma: ,
For a slur, to show smooth playing between different pitches, type the S central

Hither is a sample from our complete listing of Keyboard Shortcuts… click the paradigm to run across the full list!

Sharing Your Scores

Noteflight is a neat annotation editor, and our heart and soul is in helping you to create music. But Noteflight's sharing features make it something more than: the ability to instantly share, collaborate, comment, follow, and favorite brand Noteflight a customs. Each score, similar a Google Drive certificate or Youtube video, is a unique web page with an address on the cyberspace which y'all, every bit possessor and creator of that score/web page, can control admission to. The default setting keeps it private, visible merely to you, simply as it would be if it were a file on your hard drive.

But just like a Youtube video, if y'all want to send your score to a friend for feedback — or for them to add together the brass section as part of a collaboration, mayhap — just re-create-paste the link into an email, blog, even a text message, and they tin can open it instantly…

…IF you have set the sharing options to allow them see it. That's why the Sharing Console is then important: for your colleagues, students, and friends to see your score, you lot must SHARE your score. The default is prepare to private, so this doesn't happen automatically.

Delight review the section on Sharing in our User Guide for consummate details on how to share and publish your scores on Noteflight.

Save your score as a PDF

You can do this in the Score palette, under Impress. But the easiest way is in the same palette under Export and then cull the PDF choice.

Teachers! The Sites carte

If you are the ambassador of a Noteflight Learn site, keep in mind the left console that opens up when you lot click the Noteflight icon on the upper left. This is where you can switch betwixt your scores on our public site at www.noteflight.com and your private school site(s), which accept a dissimilar web address:

If y'all are not seeing the scores you want, check the web accost URL and if it says www.noteflight.com, switch to your school site in the Sites bill of fare!

*If you are a teacher or educatee in a Instructor, Studio, or Classroom site, but not the admin, this doesn't apply.

Other skillful things to know

Alter function names right in the margin!
Yup: just double click the office proper name, then rewrite it as you meet fit. If you're writing for an instrument we don't take yet, you can use an instrument we do take, and then put the correct proper noun in for the player to read. Or if your friend Julia is playing the clarinet function, you can put her proper noun right in there next to the clarinet staff!

How do rests work in Noteflight?
In Noteflight, a remainder occurs when at that place is no note — there can't be a gap in the bar. So if you select a notation and striking Delete/Backspace, Noteflight automatically fills in a rest of the same value.

First and Second endings
In the Repeat palette you volition then encounter the "kickoff ending" symbol, with a i and a line following it.

To create the second ending, add together another kickoff catastrophe and double click the "one" to go the blinking cursor, and then replace information technology with a "2".

You can apply an "incoming tie" to the first notation in the 2d ending. This symbol is on the Duration palette:

Demand a second line of lyrics? So easy, it's easy to miss! Just double click the first syllable of the first line of lyrics: yous need the blinking cursor. Then, merely hit Return/Enter. It volition bound to the second line, and you can continue typing your 2nd (and third, and fourth) verses.

Hymns or Folk songs? Add verses at the bottom

For hymns or folk songs, sometimes you want to add additional verses at the end in block text format. Select a annotation in the middle of the bottom staff. So type "T" to create a new text item with blinking cursor. Then blazon the lyrics, adding line breaks where needed. Then click somewhere else in the window to "prepare" the text (go rid of the blinking cursor). Then drag the text item where you need it to go.

Work with parts right inside your score

Click on the Instruments push button at the top of the screen, and evidence or hide any combination of parts you need. Read more hither.

Hide Time Signatures or Bar Lines

Sometimes for a school practice, or Gregorian dirge, or the like, you don't want to show the time signature and bar lines. You tin can hide them!

Click the fourth dimension signature to open the "modify fourth dimension signatures" box. Choose whatever value will requite you lot plenty space to add all the notes you demand – for example if you want 6 quarters and two 8ths, yous could choose a "7/4" time signature – THEN, click "hidden" before you close that box, and yous'll become a mensurate with enough space only no visible time signature.

To hide bar lines: click the bar line and in the box that pops upwards (or in the Measures palette, choose the dotted line.

Hide Cautionary Fourth dimension Signatures and Key Signatures

Don't desire that "extra" time signature or key signature at the end of a line to warn the reader of a alter on the next line? Select the bar line, concur downward the Control key, and hit return/enter!

Import scores from other notation programs

Accept a score you created elsewhere, and you desire to work with it in Noteflight? Like shooting fish in a barrel!

i. Export as XML (not MXL) from the other program, and salve it to your hard drive.
2. Open a new score in Noteflight, and pick whatsoever instrument (information technology will be replaced after import)
3. New Score > import > choose your XML file

Event: a Noteflight score y'all can edit (you should wait through and brand any needed fixes)

Lost your Metronome Mark?
Have you deleted the metronome marker and you tin't get it back? Just modify the number in the fiddling box at the bottom, and the marker reappears. So you can change the number back.

Last merely not least…

Be creative and look for workarounds!

This can mean a lot of things, so here's an example:

Split one measure betwixt two systems

ane. Create two measures in place of the one you want to separate.

2. Modify both fourth dimension signatures and then that together they add together up to the original time signature; for example if the music is in four/four fourth dimension and y'all want to separate a measure into three beats plus 1 beat, use iii/iv and 1/four…
…Simply before you close the time signature dialog each time, choose "hidden".

3. Select the bar line after the "3/iv" bar and hit return/enter to create a system/line break.

iv. Select the same bar line, which is now at the finish of a line, and make it invisible by choosing the dotted line bar line option.

5. You'll finish up with a "cosmetic" time signature dorsum to 4/4, and you may end up with an actress measure out or two. Delete those bars, and to hibernate the four/4 employ the "subconscious" button in the Time Signatures dialog once more.