Creating Your Own Song Templates

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Creating Your Own Song Templates

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If over time you intend to create several songs for the same ensemble, or even for a solo instrument for which there is not a pre-defined blank score, , then it is a good idea to create your own customized song template. This is easy to do. A song template really is nothing more than a Notation (.not) file that you have chosen to reuse often as a starting point for a new song.

A song template is kept in a special directory, which is typically C:\Users\Public\Documents\Notation_3\Templates. When you use the New Song Wizard, Composer offers you the list of Notation (.not) files in this directory as candidate templates for your new song. You can prepare and add your own song template to this list.

Note that you can use song templates not only when you are creating a new song, but also when you want to apply formatting to an existing song. See the description of the Format Part Using Template command in the Format menu.

prcarrow To create a song template:

1.Create a new song file.

-- OR --

Open a song file that already has the intended list of instruments. Remove all of the notes and musical annotations in it.

2.Add, modify and delete instrument staves to create the list of instruments you intend for the template.

See, Adding New Staves, Changing the Instrument Sound of a Staff, and Deleting Staves.

3.Add or modify any page text that you want to appear in the score created from the template. For example, add your own name to the title page. See Adding and Editing Page Text and Specifying Page Text in Templates.

Note that if you remove all page text from a song template, Composer automatically adds certain page text to any new score created from the template. On the first page, Composer will add a song title. On subsequent pages, Composer will add a page header, consisting of the song title and page number.

4.Save the song as a Notation (.not) file in the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Notation_3\Templates directory.

prcarrow To edit an existing song template:

1.Use the Open command in the File menu, and choose a template (.not) file in the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Notation_3\Templates directory.
2.Edit the template file just as though you were editing a normal song file. The details of the template file that will be copied to a newly created song file are: the list of staves; the instrument sound assignments (MIDI device, bank, and patch) for each staff; and page text.
3.Save the template (.not) file using the Save command in the File menu.