Tricks and treats

To celebrate Halloween, we’re looking at scary things we see in the music notation software and score preparation process, and see if we can sweeten the experience with some tricks and treats. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss the spookiness of using the mouse and how you can better become a jack-o-lantern of all trades by focusing more on keyboard commands and other shortcuts in Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico. We also look at a frightening situation that happens when laying out your music and investigate how to fix it. So don’t be afraid — we won’t ghost you as we lead you unscathed out of the haunted house of software skeletons and onto the pumpkin patch to score some tricks and treats.

More on Scoring Notes:

Finale:

• Quick tip: Dismiss all open dialog boxes in Finale
• Supercharge your Finale workflow on Mac with Keyboard Maestro
• FinaleScripts for faster scoring in Finale
• Articulation metatools in Finale

Sibelius:

• Use keyboard shortcuts to apply text expressions in Sibelius
• Quick keyboard access to your Sibelius plug-ins
• Add custom shortcuts for Keypad features in Sibelius

Dorico:

• Customize keyboard shortcuts in Sibelius and Dorico
• Assigning MIDI commands

Notation Express:

• Stream Deck profile for Zoom; Notation Express updated for Dorico 3.5
• Notation Express released for Musescore; updates to Sibelius and Dorico
• Notation Express for Dorico 3
• Notation Express XL is available for Sibelius and Dorico
• Notation Express demo available
• Notation Express is now on iOS with Stream Deck Mobile