Basic Tutorial Help - Create A Page Of Major Chords for Piano

• Sep 26, 2020 - 22:07

Hi! Newbie Here!
I am requesting some basic help, All of the tutorials it seems start out very very basic then just jump to advanced, I cannot wait to learn this!

I would like to create one page (for Piano) with just basic major scales
a bass and a treble, 2 measure per line, 3 lines, using whole notes
I would like to use the mouse and menu items to start and then learn how to use the keyboard notes.

C Major Scale | G Major Scale
D Major Scale | A Major Scale
E Major Scale | B Major Scale
I have attached an Image
Matt :-)

Attachment Size
MAJOR SCALES.jpg 369.09 KB

Comments

  1. File → New
  2. Fill in score information fields as you see fit; press Next >
  3. For template, choose "Grand Staff" under the "General" category; press Next >
  4. Select your key signature, which in this case is the default Cmaj/Amin blank signature; press Next >
  5. Enter the Time Signature. You want to fit a scale of whole notes into a single measure. That's then "8/1".
    You can also set the Number of Measures at this stage, as you already know you want 6 of them (you can always add and remove measures at any later point in editing if that need should arise).
    Press Finish

As scales are mostly meterless, we'll make it so that our weird time signature doesn't show up:

  1. Right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) within the top staff
  2. Choose "Staff/Part Properties" from the popup menu
  3. Somewhere in the middle column of the top area in this dialog, there is the option "Show time signature": uncheck it.
  4. Press Apply. If you now look at the score (with the dialog still open) you should've seen the time signature vanish on the top staff.
  5. At the bottom left of the dialog, press the ↓ button (down arrow). This will now link the dialog contents with the next staff in the score (the bottom staff in your case).
  6. Uncheck "Show time signature" again and confirm & close the dialog with "OK"

Now we'll start clicking in notes.

  1. Click the 'N' button in the toolbar to activate note entry mode.
  2. Click the whole note duration button in the toolbar
  3. Start clicking in the notes of the top staff. To enter a sharp note, first press the toolbar button for a sharp, then click in the note. Stop once you've entered the 2nd measure, by clicking the "N"-button again.

Instead of clicking in all the other notes (or typing them) we'll copy-and-paste them, and then transpose them.

  1. Click on the first note
  2. Hold shift and click on the last note of the 2nd measure. A blue selection rectangle will appear.
  3. Edit → Copy
  4. Click in the 3rd measure. Either you'll have now selected the rest in it, or a rectangle selection of the whole measure; either one is fine and works for the next step.
  5. Edit → Paste
  6. Tools → Transpose
  7. Select the option "Transpose Chromatically → To Key → Closest" with the value "D major / B minor"

Let's do this one more time, but with a slightly different approach for copy-and-paste.

  1. Normally, measure 3 and 4 should still be selected after the previous steps. If not, then click the first note of m3, hold shift and click the last note of m4.
  2. Press "R" on your keyboard (for 'replicate', or 'repeat'). "R" will attempt to take your selection rectangle and copy and paste it directly after it.
  3. Tools → Transpose: "Chromatically → To Key → Closest" again with the value "D major / B minor" (because the key signature of the staff is still C major/A minor) and we want to transpose the selected range up 1 tone).

If you followed these steps with all current default values, you should now have a filled top staff, an empty bottom staff and ended up with 1 measure per line, filling 2 pages. There are many ways to make two measures fit. From scaling the entire score down (Format → Page Settings…), over squeezing the measures (via stretch), to fiddling with individual note-to-note and note-to-barline distances.
We'll go for the squeezing option here.

  1. Click on an empty spot of paper to ensure that nothing is selected
  2. Format → Add/Remove System Breaks. You'll see the whole score became selected when the dialog opened.
  3. Break systems every 2 measures.
  4. OK; You'll notice hardly anything changes, that is because system breaks can only force less measures on a system, not more (the system breaks are shown by light-gray boxed arrows).
    We still want to have them in place though, so that those are the places to break the systems once we start squeezing our measures.
  5. Select the full score by using the shortcut Ctrl-A (Cmd-A on a Mac). Or when using the mouse: click first, Shift-click last.
  6. Format → Stretch → Decrease Layout Stretch.

You should now have ended up with a single page score with two measures per system. Note that you can decrease stretch of a measure multiple times, if that would be required (up to about 10 times).

Now let's populate the bottom staff.

  1. Click the first note in the top staff
  2. Ctrl-Shift-End (Cmd-Shift-End on Mac) to select till the end of the staff. Or when using the mouse, Shift+click the last note
  3. Edit → Copy (or Ctrl/Cmd-C)
  4. Click the first measure of the bottom staff
  5. Edit → Paste (or Ctrl/Cmd-V)
  6. When you wish to continue using the mouse, you can now use the Transpose dialog again to move the pasted contents down an octave. However there is a very handy keyboard shortcut tailored to this use case:
    Ctrl+↓ (Cmd + ↓ on Mac)

Further octave corrections:
Use the transpose dialog or the Ctrl-down arrow shortcut to move down the notes in the bottom staff of m2 and m4-6. Just make sure to select the correct range on which the command should take effect.
Also move m6 of the top staff down an octave.

This should get you started quite nicely. Let us know if there are any follow-up questions.

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