This chapter contains further explanations of topics introduced in Chapter 1 through 3. Once symbols are entered into a score, you will want to edit them to make your score appear exactly the way you wish. Virtually every symbol in your score can be dragged, reshaped, moved, or edited. This chapter contains a quick overview of these techniques for some of the more common symbols in a musical score.
Selecting and Editing Symbols in Your Score:
Most Nightingale commands that affect the notation in your score require that you have something selected/highlighted that is to be edited or changed. Your selection can include any kind of symbol, whether it is a note, rest, barline, key signature, time signature, string of text, rehearsal letter, dynamic marking, or anything appearing in your score. If a command is meant to affect only some types of objects, the other types within the selection are ignored. For example, Transpose affects notes, chord symbols, and key signatures, but not time signatures or barlines. Multivoice Notation affects the stems of notes and the vertical position of rests, leaving other objects alone.
The Selection Arrow:
Nightingale employs the standard, solid black Macintosh mouse arrow. In this manual, it will be referred to as the Selection Arrow. You can use it to point to and select various items on your screen. You can also use the selection arrow to double-click on various objects in your score when you wish to edit them, such as beams, slurs, tuplets, chord symbols, tempo markings, and pieces of text (see editing instructions below).
There are three ways to get the selection arrow:
• Press the Enter key on the numeric keypad
• “Shake” the mouse quickly back and forth.*
• Click on its icon in the palette
Either of the first two methods switches back-and-forth between the last-selected tool and the selection arrow.
*“MouseShaking™” threshold is set in the Preferences dialog.
The Dragging Tool:
The hollow, white mouse arrow is the Dragging Tool. Use it to point to symbols/objects in the score, and while pressing the mouse button, drag them to different places. You can also use the dragging tool just like the selection arrow to double-click on objects to edit them.
There are three ways to get the dragging arrow:
• Click on its icon in the palette
• Press and hold the Option key on your Mac keyboard
• Type the “d” key on your Mac keyboard
Selecting a region of the score:
You can use several methods for selecting a region of your score:
• Press the mouse button and drag across a region with black selection arrow.
• Press the Shift key and click on any two symbols in the score — The two symbols and all symbols between them are selected.
• Press the Command key and click on any symbols to add them, one at a time, into a selection.
• Go to the Edit menu and choose the Select All command (or simply type Cmd-A) — This selects the entire score.
• Go to the Edit menu and choose the Extend Selection command — This extends any selection to include everything above and below whatever symbols you have already selected.
Plus two special commands used to copy material in your score:
• Copy System (under the Edit menu) — This copies an entire system’s contents to the clip board, so you can paste it elsewhere.
• Copy Page (under the Edit menu) — This copies an entire page to the clip board, so you can paste it elsewhere.
• Double Selection (under the Edit menu) — Duplicates selected material in any number of measures from one staff to another empty staff.
Continuous Selections:
A few of Nightingale’s editing commands require that you select an area of your score where all objects are considered side-by-side and adjacent, or continuous. The most important of these “restricted” commands include Cut, Copy, and Clear/Delete. The concept of a continuous selection, is important for you to understand when using Nightingale.
If you select a region of your score where all objects lie adjacent to one-another either horizontally within their parts, or vertically between neighboring parts, then the selection is continuous. In other words, everything selected is a neighbor to everything else that is selected.
A discontinuous (or discontiguous) selection means that there lie within a selected group of objects one or more unselected items that separate the selected ones in either the horizontal or vertical direction. So, if you select a number of adjacent notes, for example, and then un-select one note somewhere in the middle, the selection suddenly becomes a discontinuous one.
NOTE: The more serious stumbling block with continuous/discontinuous selections is that the primary divisions of your score comprise breaks in what might seem continuous to you, the user, but are not. The primary divisions in your score are:
1) the breaks between one system and another, and
2) the page breaks in your score.
For example, a string of notes lying in two adjacent systems are not continuous. Nor is a string of notes that is split between two adjacent pages in your score. A continuous selection can only be in a single staff, or adjacent staves, or all the staves within a system.
Thus, a string of notes on separate systems cannot be cut (or copied) and then pasted elsewhere in your score, except by selecting the notes one system at a time.
Commands that always work :
Most of Nightingale’s commands work on whatever you select, continuous or discontinuous:
• Double Selection
• Play Selection, Play Entire, Continue Play
• Transpose Diatonic
• Transpose Chromatic
• Transpose Key (select entire staff by clicking on the initial clef, time signature or key signature)
• QuickChange™ (which contains 21 functions)
• Beam By Beat
• Set Duration
• Respace Bars
• Reformat Systems
• Justify Systems
• Copy Page
• Copy System
• Extend Selection
• Insert by Position
• Realign With Selection
• Remove Gaps in Voices
• Clarify Rhythm
• Enharmonic Respell
• Fill Empty Measures
• Delete Redundant Accidentals
• Check Range
• Remove Modifiers
• Multivoice Notation
• Flip Direction
Commands that require Continuous Selections:
Some commands are suitable only when a region of notes or symbols is selected all together. If the selected area is broken into fragments (and is therefore discontinuous) the command is unintelligible. For this reason, the following commands respond only when Nightingale considers a selected region to be continuous:
• Beam Notes (beam everything together in selected region)
• Transcribe Recording (an entire area of notes of unknown value will be quantized)
• Delete (removes a section of the score)
• Cut (cuts a segment of the score to the clipboard)
• Copy (copy a segment of the score to the clipboard)
• Clear, or press the delete key (deletes a segment of the score)
• Create Tuplet (modifies a selected group of notes)
• Fancy Tuplet (modifies a selected group of notes)
• Octave Sign (modifies a selected group of notes)
Note:The Cut and Copy commands require a continuous selection, which means that you can’t cut or copy selections longer than a system. If you want to cut and paste a whole page or a whole system, use the Copy Page, Copy System, Cut Page, and Cut System commands.
Editing Specific Symbols:
Moving Single Objects
You can move almost every object in the score using the dragging tool. You select the dragging tool by either by typing “d” or clicking on its icon in the Palette, or by pressing down the Option key. The cursor changes into a hollow/white “dragging” arrow. You select the object you want to move by positioning the point of the arrow over it and then pressing down (and holding) the mouse button.
You can drag note modifiers, such as articulations, accents and fermatas, anywhere you like within a measure.
Some objects can be moved in only one direction at a time. The direction of your first mouse movement determines the direction of your change. For example, if you drag up or down to change a note’s pitch, you can’t move the note horizontally without letting go of the mouse button and starting again in the other direction.
Editing Beams:
Edit the slant of beams by double-clicking on the beam with the black selection arrow or the hollow dragging arrow. Two small black “shaping boxes” appear, which can be grabbed and moved up/down to tilt the beam. The amount of slant Nightingale gives automatically to a newly created beam (the “default” setting for beam slants) can be specified by you using the Preferences command under the File menu (select Engraver Preferences to view the settings for beams and other notation defaults).
Drag a beam up/down by dragging, or by double clicking on it with either the black selection arrow or the hollow arrow, and then dragging.
Beams cannot be dragged horizontally away from their notes, but will move and stretch sideways whenever noteheads are dragged sideways.
(For more information, see “Beams” in the Reference Section of this manual.)
Editing Accents, Articulations, and Fermatas:
Note modifiers, such as accents, articulations, and fermatas are not independent symbols, but are attached to notes. To delete modifiers, select their notes and go to the Remove Modifiers command under the Notes/Rests menu.
Drag modifiers anywhere above or below, and sideways within a notes own region using the dragging tool. The modifier’s position, relative to its note, is displayed in the small Activity Window at the bottom of your score.
Editing Text/Lyrics in Your Score
You can edit the contents of any piece of text by double-clicking on it with either the selection arrow or the dragging tool. Nightingale will display the dialog in which you originally typed the text so that you can edit, select a different font style, or select a new size for the text.
By clicking and holding the mouse on the “text style” Popup menu, your choice of four “regular” text styles are displayed, or, if you select the “this item only” command, all of the various font styles and sizes in your system become available for the string of text you are editing or creating.
Using the Mac keyboard for speed and efficiency:
This section describes ways you can use your Macintosh keyboard instead of your mouse to speed up editing your score. The consistency of Nightingale’s interface makes it easy to become a “power user”.
Using the keyboard to control dialogs:
Nightingale’s dialogs operate like all typical Macintosh dialogs, letting you click on the various options in the dialog. Throughout the program, you can press Return to execute the main action of the dialog, and you can always cancel by pressing Command-period.
In addition, many of the action buttons in Nightingale’s dialogs have command keys listed right on the button. You can use the mouse or the command key to execute the action.
Using Popup Menus:
Many of the dialogs include popup menus. You can navigate from one popup menu to another using the left and right arrow keys on the Mac keyboard instead of the mouse. The current popup field is shown with a shaded border. When you’ve selected the field you want, you can use the up and down arrows to choose an item on the list. In addition, the popup fields are “sticky”. The second time you call up that dialog, the popup menu will be set to your last choice, and if you want to do the same thing again, all you have to do is press Return.
Using Elevator Arrows:
Nightingale uses elevator arrows when you need to choose from a list of values, such as when you choose a percentage in the Respace Bars dialog. You can operate the arrows by clicking on them or by pressing the up and down arrows on the keyboard.
Review:
You may wish to take a moment to review what you‘ve learned about editing a score with Nightingale:
• To obtain the Selection Arrow
- press the Enter key on the numeric keypad
- shake the mouse quickly back and forth
- click on its icon in the palette
• To obtain the Dragging Tool
- type the “d” key on your Mac keyboard
- press and hold the Option key on your Mac keyboard
- click on its icon in the palette
• To select a region of the score
- press the mouse button and drag across a region with black selection arrow.
- Shift-click on any two symbols in the score to select all symbols between them
- Command-click on any symbols to add them, one at a time, into a selection.
- use the Select All command (under the Edit menu) to select the entire score
- use the Extend Selection command (under the Edit menu) to extend any selection up/down.
- use Copy System (under the Edit menu) to copy an entire system.
- use Copy Page (under the Edit menu) to copy an entire page
• Continuous Selections
- required when using Cut, Copy, and Clear/Delete.
- the primary divisions in your score are system breaks and page breaks.
- use the Copy Page, Copy System, Cut Page, and Cut System commands to move large portions of your score.
• Edit the slant of beams by double-clicking on the beam
• Editing accents, articulations, and fermatas
- use Remove Modifiers (under the Notes/Rests menu) to delete accents, articulations, and fermatas,
