Using Menus (But Not Too Much)

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First, here's some advice about how you might use Composer's menus. In general, menus provide a reliable way to find commands that accomplish your music editing goals. However, for many commands you also have the alternative of using toolbar and palette buttons or keyboard shortcuts.  For commands that you use often, such as Page View, consider using the Page View button in the toolbar, or the shortcut command characters "qpv" for Quick Page View. Composer's menus show the keyboard shortcuts so that you can easily learn the ones you use often. When you use a menu command, just take a brief look at its corresponding Quick command letters. The next time you may find it more convenient to just type the command letters.

Composer offers a convenient way for you to learn about the purpose and use of any menu command.

prcarrow To display Help for a menu command:

1.Click the menu, and submenu if needed, that has the command.
2.Hold the mouse over the text of the command name.
3.Without clicking the mouse, hit the F1 key. This will display the on-screen help topic that describes the purpose and use of the selected menu command.

-- OR --

Instead of the above steps, use the Index option in this Help to look up the name of the menu, such as "Staff menu", and then choose the name the comment.

Listed below is a summary of each main menu selection in Composer. This summary is intended to help you to better anticipate where a command for a given operation might be found.

B8 File        

Open, create, close, save or download (from the Internet), or print songs.

B8 Edit        

Copy and paste to and from the clipboard. Undo and redo transactions.

B8 View        

Determine how the Composer window displays the score and shows or hides window parts, such as the palettes and staff controls.

B8 Measure        

Edit measures: add and insert measures; temporarily view a range of measure rather than all measures of the score; display measure numbers; add barlines, repeats, and endings.

B8 Staff        

Edit staves: add and delete staves; merge and clone staves; split a staff into two staves for piano right- and left-hand, for drum instruments, and for melody and accompaniment; and transpose notes.

B8 Part        

Prepare separate instrumental and vocal parts that are fully integrated with the main score, so that changes you make in the main score are reflected in the parts, and vice versa. Prepare special parts (sing-along, fake book lead sheet, Easy Notes, and piano reduction).

B8 Region        

Select a region of the score, which is a range of measures or beats in one or more staves. Manipulate the selected region with commands in this menu, as well as with clipboard commands in the Edit menu.

B8 Object (renamed according to currently selected type of musical object)        

In Select Mode, the Object Menu changes according to the type of object selected.

In Add Mode, the Object Menu provides options for the type of object that will be added when the mouse is clicked somewhere. In Add Mode, you can determine the type of object that will be added by navigating through the palettes with the mouse, or by using palette keyboard commands such as SHIFT+N for the Notes Palette or SHIFT+D for the Dynamic Mark Palette.

B8 Perform        

Play, record, and practice portions of a song.

B8 Setup        

Configure Composer to work with Windows, and in particular, the MIDI devices under the control of Windows.

B8 Window        

Within Composer's window, arrange the size and positions of score windows for multiple songs.

B8 Help        

Get help from Composer's online documentation or from Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or other resources at Notation Software's web site.


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