Essential to any good printed part layout is the page turn. The easiest way to check for good page turns on-screen is to view the music as a two-page spread. We’ll quickly run through how to view music this way in all the major desktop music notation applications as well as in Adobe Acrobat and Mac Preview.
The space is the unit of measurement that defines the appearance of all other notational items. These basic settings in Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico matter as much as anything to affect how your music appears.
MakeMusic has released Finale version 26.1, the first significant update since Finale v26 was released in October 2018. Articulations get further attention in 26.1, and there are also a few new MusicXML features.
Dorico’s various dialog boxes, known as editors, allow users to easily customize areas of notation for specific types of scores. We explore the notation of a Handel secular cantata and an “ars subtilior” virelai. In both instances, Dorico is up to the task.
Finale users know that Jari Williamsson’s plug-ins are practically essential for working efficiently in Finale. JW Fit Music is another valuable tool that will make page layout easier and quicker, automating several steps to get good results.
Finale comes with eighteen standard default clefs. If you need something beyond the standard assortment, you can modify any of these clefs or replace them entirely with another symbol.
We’ve been “road testing” a new edition of the full ballet of Copland’s Billy the Kid with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra to make the music the very best it can be before it’s published.
Dorico makes it quite easy to preface a score with reference pitches, such as timpani tunings or handbells. In this post we’ll walk through the process of creating reference pitches using flows and frame chains.
MuseScore 3 is officially available. This is the first major new version of the software since MuseScore 2 in 2015. The most notable improvement in MuseScore 3 is the new automatic placement facility, and there are many other improvements, including a timeline, a score comparison tool, and much more.
Take maximum advantage of the new articulation features in Finale v26 with this script that automatically splits precomposed articulations (such as the combined accent-tenuto) into separate articulations that automatically stack and position correctly.