Hear all The Hear command plays either the
entire piece or whatever is between the "Play from" and "Play to"
markers. Output is via whatever is the chosen type of output instrument.
The Score menu
Hear all The Hear command plays either the
entire piece or whatever is between the "Play from" and "Play to"
markers. Output is via whatever is the chosen type of output instrument.
Hear with Active Listening (tap a part). Active Listening is unique to Ars Nova
products. It can be used to learn your own part in a multivoice piece, or just for fun. It will work with a song with chord symbols or
with a multistaff composition. Let's suppose you have a four part chorale and you are trying to learn the tenor part. Click anything
in that staff to make the tenor part's staff the active staff. Choose Hear with Active Listening, and
you'll be invited to tap the rhythm of your part, using any pair of letter keys from the middle row of keys. As you tap the rhythm
of your part the correct pitches will sound, and the other parts will also follow along so that you can hear how your
part works with the others. If you stop, the others will also stop at the first good stopping place (where they're all together). If you
jump ahead by playing quickly, they'll jump ahead also. You can also choose to hear your part together with just one or two of the others
by turning off the sound on one or more of the other staves.
Take a Picture. Most computers have a "screen shot" command that takes
a picture of a selected portion of the screen. This command is different, though, because the image it produces is
not composed of dots like the screen; it's a true "vector image" that will print at the highest resolution of your printer. Curved
symbols will be curved, not jaggy. On the Macintosh the image is saved as a "PICT," which is readable by most Mac programs. On Windows the
image is saved as an "enhanced meta file," which is supported by newer Windows programs such as the Windows Media Viewer. You can
take a picture of any portion of the music in the edit window. This feature is very handy for creating music examples to be printed as
illustrations for an article or for school assignments.
Turn off Autopositioning for faster editing. Autopositioning should be left on in most
cases - it's how the program aligns notes vertically and gives each its proper space. But it does take a little time, so if you are writing
a long piece with many staves and find the edit process takes too long each time you move something, you can temporarily turn off Autopositioning
as you enter or change notes. When you turn it back on things will get realigned.
Position items now. If you are doing some work with Autopositioning off, this will
cause an immediate reposition. You can use it at any time, in fact, to force a recalculation of symbol positions in the music.
Transpose entire score. Similar commands are in the Staff menu for use on individual
staves - these commands in the Score menu apply to the entire piece. You'll be asked to choose either a new starting note for the
active staff, or a new key from the Key choice tool.
Transpose chords only. Applies only to chord symbols. You'll be asked to choose either
a new key or a new root for the first chord. All chord symbols will be adjusted accordingly, both their names and the notes they contain.
Transpose entire score.
Autobar entire score. As with the same command in the Staff menu, this puts in barlines as
needed, and breaks into tied pairs any notes that cross a barline. It may also break into tied pairs notes that cross major metric divisions of a measure.
Autobeam entire score. Beams together any beamable notes (eighth notes or less), making beat groups clear by
beaming notes together if they are part of the same beat.
Autostem entire score. Adjust stem directions so that upper notes are stem downward and
lower ones are stem upward.
Set Tempo. Sets the tempo for the score, using a system similar to what you'd see on a metronome.
The tempo window has radio buttons for a range of different tempi. You'll notice that each choice has underneath it a small note symbol - that
tells you the value of the shortest note that the computer will be able to play accurately at the given tempo. This is due to the timing system
used - when playing fast there may be certain speeds at which the time used by the smallest note doesn't come out even. But for most music this
won't make any difference.
Set note spacing. Set the number of screen pixels (dots) used by a quarter note. The default setting
is 35, which looks good for most music, but you may want to tighten that up if you need to squeeze more music onto a page. Changing this number to
25 will make quite a difference. We recommend that note spacing should be your first choice for adjusting the spacing of music. After you have this
setting as you like it, you can make further small adjustments by dragging barlines to squeeze or expand a measure, or by using
the Spreader/Shrinker tools to
add or remove space after a note.
Set page margins.For the printed page.
Justify (to print even at right). You'll always want this on when printing, but we suggest that you
turn it off when editing music, because editing is easier without it. With justification on, you'll find that sometimes when you make an editing change the
notes will all move a little as they adjust themselves to come out even at the right side of a page. It's like working with a justified word processor; sometimes
a word will be bumped down to the next line and the others in that line will spread out. With justification off you'll know exactly what the minimum
space is, for example, between two notes that carry lyrics. Justification may add to that space but it will never subtract from it.
Remain in chosen track when entering notes and rests. If you want a certain series of notes
to be, for example, all in track two on a certain staff, then this option will keep that track chosen as you work. Otherwise the program may switch you
back to the primary track one if you get past the end of the existing melody.
Measure numbering... Provides various measure numbering options.
Connections between staves... This is in the Score menu because visually affects all the staves, but
it applies to the currently active staff. The command brings up a window that lets you choose whether to start or end a brace or bracket at the currently
active staff, etc.
Show staff instruments. A duplicate of the command in the staff menu.
Hide line breaks. If not hidden, line breaks will appear on the upper line of each staff, and look like
this: 
.
Don't print the line joining staves at left. However, in most cases you would want this to appear.
Number pages. If on, the page number will appear at the bottom of each printed page after the first,
centered. The typeface and size will be whatever is the default typeface and size for the piece (you can set that by choosing a typeface/size without having
a particular text item selected).