Suggestions and Tips
Note: Page numbers in the following tips refer to page numbers you may want to reference in versions 4.x of the MusEdit manual.
Entering music, text, lines, etc.
2) Use keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl + ... )
Once you're used to entering notes and symbols with the keyboard your
efficiency will improve even more if you use keyborad shortcuts for most
common operations (such as inserting different line types, copying, pasting,
etc.) Many of these keyboard shortcuts show up as tool tips (in Win
95) when you pass the mouse over a toolbar button, or you can show all
the keyboard codes by selecting Help|Keyboard Shortcuts. Keyboard
shortcuts are also summarized in Appendix B of the MusEdit manual.
3) Use "insert previous object" shortcuts
Three different kinds of shortcuts are available to make it easy to
re-insert chords, note clusters (groups of tied notes), and bars of music
which have been previously entered. See How
to use "previous object insertion" shortcuts for detailed examples
of how to use these shortcuts.
4) Use copying, cutting, and pasting
Of course it's always great to use Copy (Ctrl+C), Cut (Ctrl+X),
and Paste (Ctrl+V) to edit your document. MusEdit tries to
handle these actions as naturally as possible, though you do have to keep
in mind the peculiarities of having different line types in the document.
This means, for example, that you can't copy a section of a treble line
and try to paste it into a Tab line -they just don't fit together, so in
this case MusEdit will create a new treble line under the tab line and
insert your piece of treble music in there. Check pgs. 27 - 31 of
the MusEdit manual for all the details of selecting, copying, cutting,
and pasting.
5) It's often easier to use the keyboard for making
selections
Sometimes it can be really tedious to make precise selections (to select
a chord or bar of music for cutting or copying for example) with the mouse.
(Part of this is MusEdit's (ie. "my" ) fault - you wouldn't believe how
much stuff is going on programming-wise as you innocently drag that mouse
around!) The easiest and most precise way to make selections is to
hold the Shift key down while using the Arrow Keys ( U/D/L/R
). The quickest way to select a line, for example, is to hold
Shift+Down Arrow (Up Arrow works exactly the same way in this case).
To select a single chord or a series of chords use Shift+Right Arrow,
and you can throw the Ctrl key in also to select whole bars (or
words in text lines) at a time (eg. Shift+Ctrl+Right Arrow selects
a whole bar of music). See Help|Moving and Selecting for a
summary of all the keyboard selection techniques, (and pg. 27).
6) Use
small note position adjustment techniques
Don't be discouraged away from doing a "previous object insertion"
or using copying and pasting because one or two notes in the part you want
to copy aren't exactly right for the new part of music you want: MusEdit
allows you to move individual notes (or whole chords) so you can make small
adjustments to the copied selection. To move a note, place the caret directly
to the left of the note, then use Alt+Up or Down Arrow to drag the note
up or down, as shown here:
all notes in the selection
will move up
with no selection only the note immediately
to the right of the caret will move
See pg. 58 for more details on moving notes, note clusters, and chords.
7) If you do like to use the mouse to insert
symbols, use "Large Symbols" mode
By hitting the "Large Symbols" button: 
the staff (treble, bass, and tab) and all symbols will grow by about 30%.
This makes it much easier to position things correctly when using the mouse.
 | If you know you what the optimum staff size is so your printout will fit nicely within the width of one sheet, set that as the fixed length of the staff lines (eg. about 730 for 8 1/2 x 11 sheets at 100% size). (This can be done when you define the first group, in the line group dialog). If you enter too much into a fixed length staff line, notes will start spilling off the end of the staff. That's a pretty good hint that it's time to start a new staff line! |
| Enter the line with the most complicated information first - this is usually the treble line. This line will probably determine the spacing (positioning) of the content of the other lines. Don't worry too much about getting everything exactly in the right position yet, just enter all the symbols. |
| Now clean up the spacing of the complicated line. Once it has all it's symbols you will know how much space you have within the staff (especially if the staff is of fixed length), and you can distribute the spaces in the nicest way. |
| Enter the less complicated lines (chords, rhythm) and line their objects up appropriately with the treble line. |
| Make corrections to the treble line as needed to accomodate the chords, etc. |
| Finally, enter the lyrics. By saving the lyrics until you are sure the treble line is in it's final form you can take full advantage of using Shift+Tab to position lyrics under treble line notes. |
Shift+TAB
Alt+Right Arrow ...without moving
advances the text slides this selection
these words
caret to these
to the right....
positions in each
text line below the
staff line
Notes:
| The lyric words are not "tied" to the notes, so if you move the notes again later the lyrics will not be dragged along -that's why it's best to enter lyrics after the staff line is finished. |
| Shift+TAB will work on multiple text lines below a staff line -MusEdit looks up among the lines until it finds the first staff line with notes (this means a bass line will also be detected) and lines text up with that line's notes. |
| The example above also shows how you can select a word (double click on it) then use Alt+L/R Arrow to slide the word without moving other words in the line |
Method 1:
First, place the caret in a text line where you
want the special symbol to appear, then:
Hold the Alt key down and then, using
the numeric keypad, enter the code for the special symbol.
For example, to enter a © symbol you hold down the Alt key
and type 0169 then lift the Alt key. The © should
then appear. Here are some codes for symbols available in the Times
New Roman font:
a,b,c....... .y 0121 z 0122
{ 0123 | 0124
} 0125 ~ 0126
0127 0128 0129
0130 0131
0132 0133 0134
0135 0136 0137
0138 0139
0140 0141
0142 0143 0144
' 0145 ' 0146
" 0147 " 0148
0149
0150 0151
0152 0153 0154
0155 0156 0157
0158 0159
0160
¡ 0161 ¢ 0162
£ 0163 ¤ 0164
¥ 0165 ¦ 0166
§ 0167 ¨ 0168
© 0169
ª 0170 «
0171 ¬ 0172
0173 ® 0174 ¯
0175 ° 0176
± 0177 ² 0178
³ 0179
´ 0180 µ
0181 ¶ 0182
· 0183 ¸ 0184
¹ 0185 º 0186
» 0187 ¼ 0188
½ 0189
¾ 0190 ¿ 0191
À 0192 ... the rest are foreign alphabet characters
Method 2:
Start the "Character Map" accessory found under
Start|Programs|Accessories|Character Map.
Select the font you are working with.
Double click on the special symbol(s) you want.
Click on "Copy".
Go back to the MusEdit document and do Edit|Paste
(Ctrl+V) where you want to symbol to be inserted.
Notes:
1) Not all symbols are available in all fonts, and the codes are not always going to be the same in every font.
2) Special symbols can be used in any text in a MusEdit document, including "Staff text" (extended object text) and line labels.
3) Laptops usually don't have a numeric keypad (which you must use
to enter the symbol code!) but many laptops have a "Numeric Keypad Overlay"
which means part of the normal keyboard can be made to act like a numeric
keypad by toggling a function key, for example. Activating this feature
will allow you to enter symbol codes, but then you'll have to de-activate
it to resume normal typing.
1) If it's empty you can put the caret anywhere in the line, hit "Home"
to get it to the very start of the line, then hit Backspace
or
2) Put the caret anywhere in the line, hold Shift while hitting
down arrow once -this will select it- then hit the "Delete (Del)"
key. This works even if there's stuff in the line.
Left clicking when the cursor is in the left margin (the "no entry" zone) will also select the whole line, and again Del will get rid of it. The latter techniques work with an empty line too, by the way. (see pg. 28 about selecting, pg. 21 about backspacing at start of an empty line.)
You'll get the "This line cannot be joined to the line above" message
if you are in, say, a Tab line with some stuff in it, and you are at the
start, and you hit backspace -and there is a non-Tab line above the tab
line you're in. If you had a tab line above the current tab line
backspace would have the effect of joining the current tab line to the
tab line above (try it!). But if you have a treble line above and
you hit backspace... well, you can't join a Tab line to the end of a treble
line, so you get the message. I try to describe this situation on
pg. 32 (2nd paragraph) though I didn't mention the error message.
(clicking on this button cycles the symbols toolbox as follows: full size
-> mini size -> hidden -> full size -> etc.) or by using the View
menu. The symbols toolbox looks like this when it is "mini" size:
At first this looks so tiny as to be virtually useless, but if you've worked with the toolbox for a while you may be familiar enough with its layout so that the tiny tool buttons still give you enough of a reminder for you to select the proper symbol. It works just like the full size toolbox: as you pass the mouse over the buttons you will see the keyboard code in the title bar, and you can click on a button to enter the symbol.
(located on the Main Toolbar). To hide the Main Toolbar, Extra Toolbar,
Status Bar (bar at bottom of window), and Symbols Toolbox you can use the
View menu.
NOTE: The visible/hidden status of the various toolbars is saved with the document as a "document preference" so that the next time you open the document the toolbars which were hidden the last time you saved the document will become hidden again.
Drag and drop is a lot easier than doing File|Open and then navigating
through all sorts of folders.
.
This way if you accidentally hit a key which would change the document
later on you will see a warning: "Do you really want to change the
document?" You will have to hit the "YES" button if you really do
want to make a change. Read Only is a "document
preference" which is stored with the document so it has the same status
every time you open it.
Notes:
When a document is in "Read Only" mode most of the toolbar buttons
which might change the document are disabled.
Whenever you are scrolling the document is automatically put temporarily
into "Read Only" mode.
If you make any changes to the new file the changes will be saved in the new .med version of the file, as you'd expect, and the .bak file will look like the one you started with before you began editing.
If you DON'T make any changes then the newly created backup file will be deleted. This is because after you've finished the file and you're using it on a regular basis (as opposed to editing it) you probably don't want to create a backup file every time you open the file just to look at it or print it out -ie. every time you open it but don't make any changes.
PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO THIS: If you mess up a file horribly you should IMMEDIATELY make a copy of the backup file and re-name it to something else (eg. "GoodWatchtower.med"). This is very important! You don't even have to quit MusEdit, close the current file, or do anything like that -in fact, don't do anything in MusEdit! Just minimize the MusEdit window, go to your music folder and find that backup file and rename it immediately. Why? Well, suppose you've messed up a file and it was Auto-saved(!) or you saved it yourself in a messed up state. If you re-open that file later (it's all messed up, but maybe you want to confirm just how horrible the mess up is, or maybe your forgot) that messed up version will overwrite your "good" backup file!! (The backup is created at the moment you open the file).
Backup files are for rescuing you at the moment of disaster. Don't put off copying and renaming your backup file if something disasterous has happened!
MusEdit won't even allow you to open a *.bak file. This is a way to discourage you from courting disaster by messing with your backup file. You must rename the backup file to something ending in .med for you to even be able to use it again.
See pg. 19 for more about Auto-save and backup files.
(I should have put this warning in the manual... it will appear in
all future versions.)
. This will
(temporarily) shrink the size of all text by one or two points each time
you hit it, so you can keep hitting it until all the lyrics fit within
the width or your screen. This change is not permanent though, so
the next time you open the file for printing everything should be as it
was before.
On the other hand, suppose you want to scroll short lines of lyrics
which fit comfortably on the screen (maybe you even have a nice, huge monitor)
but you have to stand five feet from your computer to play your instrument.
In this case you can select View|Change Size of All Text|Bigger,
(Ctrl+Shift+B) or hit 
and the text will grow each time you hit the button until you are satisfied
with the size.
These temporary changes can be cancelled at any time by hitting View|Change
Size of All Text|Restore Original, (Ctrl+Shift+O) or hit 
.
| For editing. Splitting the window into two panes makes it really easy to cut and paste between two parts of the document which are "far apart". |
| To show a chorus in the top pane while the rest of the lyrics scroll in the bottom pane (scrolling can occur independently in each pane) |
| To show chord diagarams in the top pane so you can see what they look like while showing only the chord names (perhaps scrolling with the lyrics) in the bottom pane. |
Pull down on this small bar, located in the very
top part of each document window's scroll bar
Here's the result:
When you are finished with the split window, drag the splitter bar to the top or bottom edge of the window and the window will become a single pane again.
Why is this useful? Because when you translate to treble MusEdit uses the key signature of the Tab line to figure out what the key signature of the Treble line should be. If you set the key sig. of the Tab line to D in advance then you will automatically get a treble line in D when the translation occurs. This will probably result in a lot less accidentals (sharps and flats) than if you let MusEdit assume the key is C when it does the translation.
If you realize that the key should have been something other than C
after the translation was done you can either:
Select all the treble lines (make only treble
visible then select all the treble lines); hit Delete; make all Tab lines
visible again; select them all; set their key signatue (all at once); do
the translation again
or
Select all the treble lines (as above); transpose
them all to the correct key
To see another application for this technique check out How to translate a .bta (bass text-tab) file to graphical bass tab
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