Steinberg Cubase 6 Manual

							601
Polyphonic voicing
10.Select the two notes that you want to be moved to 
voice 1 and move them, too.
All notes in the right voices.
The voicing is now correct, as you can tell from the stem 
directions. However, there is still some work to do on the 
notes graphical positions (see 
“Graphic moving of notes” 
on page 614) and the display of stems and beams for 
some of the notes (see “Manual adjustment of beams” on 
page 612). When you have made those adjustments, the 
score may look like this:
After making graphical adjustments.
Automatic polyphonic voicing – 
Merge All Staves
If you have already created some tracks which look and 
play back as they should, and you want to combine these 
into one track with polyphonic voices, there is a special 
function on the Scores menu for this:
1.Open the tracks (up to four) in the Score Editor.
2.Pull down the Scores menu and select “Merge All 
Staves” from the Functions submenu.
Now a new track is created and shown in the score. The track has poly-
phonic voices activated, and the four original tracks are assigned to one 
voice each (voices 1, 2, 5 and 6 are used).
Before…
…and after merging the staves
Furthermore, all non-linked symbols that belong to the 
staff that become the first polyphonic voice in the merged 
staff are copied. They have the same positions as the orig
-
inal symbols. 
!When you later play back the music, you need to mute 
the four original tracks, or you get double notes.  
						

							602
Polyphonic voicing
Converting voices to tracks – 
Extract Voices
This function does the opposite of “Merge All Staves” – it 
extracts polyphonic voices from an existing track and cre
-
ates new tracks, one for each voice. Proceed as follows:
1.Open a track containing 2 to 8 polyphonic voices in 
the Score Editor.
2.Pull down the Scores menu and select “Extract 
Voices” from the Functions submenu.
A number of new tracks is created and added to the display of the Score 
Editor. Each track contains the music from one polyphonic voice. If there 
were non-linked symbols in the original track, each new track gets a copy 
of these symbols. 
!When you later play back the music, you need to 
mute the original track (the one with polyphonic 
voices), or you get double notes.  
						

							7
Additional note and rest formatting 
						

							604
Additional note and rest formatting
About this chapter
In this chapter you will learn:
• How to control stem direction.
• How to control beaming, and create cross-staff beaming.
• How to make detailed adjustments to note appearance.
• How to perform “graphic moving” of notes.
• How to create grace notes.
• How to create tuplets.
Background: Note stems
The direction of stems is governed by five things:
• How notes are grouped under beams.
• Any manual manipulation of beams.
• The Flip Stems function.
• How the note information is set for each note.
• How the Polyphonic tab on the Staff page of the Score Set-
tings dialog is set up (if you use polyphonic voices).
The order of this list corresponds to the priority of the set-
tings, i. e. on conflict, the grouping under beams has the 
highest priority and the settings made on the Polyphonic 
tab the lowest.
Setting stem direction
In polyphonic voices
In the Score Settings dialog, on the Staff page (Poly-
phonic tab), the stem direction can be set separately for 
each voice.
Using Flip Stems
Flipping the stem of one or several notes
1.Select the notes.
2.Click the Flip icon on the extended toolbar.
All the stems in the selection are now flipped. Those that pointed up now 
point down and vice versa.
•You can also assign a key command for this.
In the Key Commands dialog on the File menu, the command is called 
“Flip” and is found in the Score Functions category.
•You can also right-click a note or a selection of notes 
and select the Flip option from the context menu.
Flipping the stems of notes grouped under a beam
1.Select any note in the group.
2.Invoke Flip as described above.
The entire group is now flipped. 
Before and after the flip. No matter which note you select, the entire 
group is flipped.
!If you have edited the stem length of a note and then 
flip it, the stem is reset to default length.
!If you have activated the “Fixed Stems” option on the 
Staff page of the Score Settings dialog (Options tab, 
see 
“Fixed Stems” on page 592), a lot of the auto-
matic stem length settings are ignored. However, you 
can still edit the stem length and direction of individ
-
ual notes.
!This does not work if you have adjusted the slanting 
of the beam by dragging. If you have, you must first 
reset the beam as described in the section “Stem 
length” on page 605.
The voice stem 
settings
The Flip icon 
						

							605
Additional note and rest formatting
Independent stem direction under a beam
If you need stems attached to the same beam to go in dif-
ferent directions, this is achieved by dragging the beam’s 
start and end points, as described in the section 
“Manual 
adjustment of beams” on page 612. This feature is avail-
able in Page Mode only.
Independent stem direction under a beam
Stem direction in the Set Note Info dialog
The Set Note Info dialog can be opened by double-click-
ing on a note head. In its lower left corner you can find a 
pop-up menu for setting stem direction.
• Setting this pop-up menu to Up or Down is the same as using 
Flip Stems, see 
“Using Flip Stems” on page 604. 
• Setting this pop-up menu to Auto makes the program set the 
stem direction automatically. 
Stem length
Adjusting stem length (Page Mode)
1.Click on the end of the stem so that a handle appears.
The stem handle is selected.
2.If you want to change the lengths of several stems at 
the same time, hold down [Shift] and select these stems 
as well.
3.Drag the stem handle (on one of the selected stems) 
up or down.
All selected stems are lengthened or shortened by the same amount.
Resetting stem length and beam slants
1.Make sure that the filter bar is visible.
If the filter bar is not visible, click the “Set up Window Layout” button on 
the toolbar and select the Filters option.
2.Make sure that the “Stems/Beams” checkbox is acti-
vated on the filter bar.
Now, below the notes where stems have been changed or beam slant 
adjusted manually, the word “Stem” appears.
3.Click on the “Stem” text to select it.
4.Press [Backspace] or [Delete] to remove it.
Before and after deleting the “Stem” item. 
						

							606
Additional note and rest formatting
Accidentals and enharmonic shift
Making global settings
In the Score Settings dialog, on the Project page (Acciden-
tals subpage), you can find a number of options for how ac-
cidentals are displayed in the score. Once set, these are 
valid for all tracks in the project. Proceed as follows:
1.Open the Score Settings dialog on the Project page 
and select the Accidentals subpage from the list dis
-
played on the left.
Now, you have the following possibilities:
•Activate the “Courtesy Acc Distance” option and enter 
a value in the bars field.
This determines after how many measures courtesy accidentals are 
shown. If you set this to “0”, notes outside the scale get accidentals and 
no courtesy accidentals are shown.
•Activate one of the following options by clicking on the 
graphics:
2.With the radio buttons to the right, you can decide 
how five of the most common intervals outside the scale 
are displayed, as sharps or as flats.
Enharmonic shift
If one or several notes are not displayed with the acciden-
tals that you want, you can perform an Enharmonic Shift 
operation on them.
1.Select the notes to be shifted.
2.Click the desired option on the extended toolbar.
3.If you want the enharmonic shift to be repeated in the 
whole bar, activate the “Enharmonic shift for entire bar” op
-
tion in the Score Settings dialog (Project–Accidentals sub-
page).
Changing the note head shape
1.Select the notes for which you want to change the 
note head shape.
Make sure not to select the stems, only the note heads.
2.Open the Set Note Info dialog.
To do so, double-click one of the notes, click the “i” button on the ex-tended toolbar, or right-click on a note head and select “Properties” from 
the context menu.
3.Pull down the “Note Head” pop-up menu in the top 
left corner of the dialog.
The pop-up menu contains all the available head shapes and an “Auto” 
option, which selects the normal default shape for the note.
OptionDescription
ForceNotes outside the scale get accidentals and accidentals 
are repeated even within the same bar.
Force allEvery single note in the score gets an accidental.
!If you activate the “Accidentals for Each Note” option 
in the Score Settings dialog, on the Project–Nota
-
tion Style subpage (in the “H.W. Henze Style” cate-
gory), all notes are displayed with accidentals (even 
tied notes).
OptionDescription
Use these buttons when you want regular Enharmonic 
Shifting (select one option).
Use this button when you want to deactivate Enharmonic 
Shifting for the notes.
Use this button when you want to hide the accidental 
completely.
Use this button when you want to create a “help acciden-tal” for the selected notes only. 
Use this button when you want to enclose the accidental 
in parentheses. To remove these, select “off”. 
						

							607
Additional note and rest formatting
4.Select one of the note heads.
5.Click Apply.
The settings are applied to the selected notes.
6.If you like, select other notes and make settings for 
them.
7.When you are done, close the dialog.
Other note details
Each note has a number of settings in the Set Note Info 
dialog.
The Set Note Info dialog contains the following settings:
OptionDescription
Note HeadUsed for selecting custom note head shapes (see “Changing the note head shape” on page 606).
Tablature  on/off and 
numberUsed for creating or editing tablature (see “Creating tab-lature” on page 680). This feature can be used for indi-vidual notes or together with the automatic tablature 
function.
Bows pop-up 
menuUsed for adding bow up/bow down articulation. When 
selecting “Off”, bow symbols are not displayed for the 
selected notes.
Bow up and down
Display LengthThis allows you to change the displayed length of notes, 
without affecting playback. Note that the display quantize 
settings still apply (see 
“Display Quantize values” on page 589). To reset this value to “Auto” (so that notes are dis-played according to their actual length), scroll the value 
down to zero.
Accidental 
DistanceUse this to specify how far from the note, horizontally, you 
want the accidental. The higher the number the greater 
the distance.
No Ledger 
LinesTurns off ledger lines for notes with high or low pitches.
With and without ledger lines
No StemHides the note stem completely
No Flag/BeamActivate this to hide the flags or beams of the selected 
notes.
Bracket HeadWhen this is activated, notes are displayed with brackets:
Bracket Head on and off
X Stem 
(Spoken)When this option is activated for a note, it is displayed 
with an x across its stem. This is normally used to indicate 
spoken words.
Hide NoteActivating this checkbox hides the selected notes.
Stem pop-up 
menuDetermines the stem direction, see “Using Flip Stems” on page 604.
Tie pop-up 
menuDetermines the direction of ties. When this is set to “Auto”, 
the program chooses a tie direction depending on the 
stem direction of the tied notes.
Type pop-up 
menuDetermines the note type. There are four options:– Normal. This is how notes usually are displayed.– Grace. When this is selected, notes are displayed as 
grace notes. This is described in detail on “Grace notes” on page 615.– Cue. When this is selected, notes are displayed as cue 
notes (smaller notes, often used as “guide notes” or op-tional lines). See “Cue notes” on page 614 for details.– Graphic. These are special notes, useful for example for 
guitar notation (pull-offs) and trills (as “help notes”, indi-cating which notes to trill between). In both these cases 
the “No Stems” option could be useful.  Graphic notes are not included in the “automated cut-ting” (see “The Cut Notes tool” on page 613). They are positioned after the notes they “belong to” (as opposed 
to grace notes).
CrossedActivate this option, when you want the stem to be crossed 
by a slanted line (to indicate that the note is a grace note).
Grace note 
optionsThese options are available when Grace is selected on 
the Type pop-up menu, see “Grace notes” on page 615.
Option Description 
						

							608
Additional note and rest formatting
Coloring notes
You can assign colors to notes using the Event Colors 
pop-up menu on the toolbar. Proceed as follows:
1.Simply select the notes for which you want to use col-
ors, open the Event Colors pop-up menu on the toolbar 
and pick a color.
Only the note heads are colored. Note that the color is only visible once 
the notes have been deselected.
2.On the far right in the Score Editor toolbar you can 
find the Hide Colors button.
If you assigned colors to some or all of the notes in your score, this but-
ton allows you to switch between display of colored or uncolored notes. 
This may help you to find selected notes among other colored notes.
If the Preferences dialog (Scores–Colors for Additional 
Meanings page) you can specify different colors for ele
-
ments in the score in order to indicate that they are “spe-
cial” in any way. You can for example choose a color for a 
“Moved Graphic” or a “Moved Slur”. These objects are 
colored accordingly when they are moved from their de
-
fault positions (see “Moving note symbols” on page 632).
1.Open the Preferences dialog (Scores–Use Colors for 
Additional Meanings).
2.Click in the Active column to activate this function for 
the corresponding element.
3.Click in the Color field to the right to select a color.
When color-printing a score, you get the colors you se-
lected for the notes. When you are using a black-and-white 
printer, the notes appear in black (notes that have not been 
assigned a color) and different shades of gray (depending 
on how bright/dark a color was used for the note).
Copying settings between notes
If you have made various settings in the Set Note Info dia-
log for a note, and want to use these settings for other 
notes as well, there is an easy way to do this:
1.Set up the first note as desired.
This includes the settings in the Set Note Info dialog, but also any note-
related symbols (such as accents, staccato, articulation, etc. – see 
“Add-
ing note symbols” on page 622).
2.In the score, select the note and select “Copy” from 
the Edit menu.
3.Select the notes to which you want to copy the attri-
butes.
4.Right-click the notes to which you want to copy the at-
tributes, and select “Paste Note Attributes” from the con-
text menu.
The selected notes now get the attributes of the first, copied note, but 
their pitches and note values remain unchanged.
Handling beaming
Turning beaming on/off
Beaming is enabled/disabled independently for each staff.
1.Click the Options tab.
2.To turn off beaming, activate No Beams and click Apply.
Even if beaming is deactivated for the staff, you can put 
some notes under beams, as described below.
Grouping
When beaming is on, the program automatically groups 
notes under beams. However, there are a number of ways 
to determine how notes are grouped.
Using the Edit Time Signature dialog
The time signature for the score naturally affects grouping. 
But you can control this yourself by creating a composite 
time signature used only for grouping:
1.Open the Edit Time Signature dialog by double-click-
ing the time signature symbol for the staff.
2.Set up the numerator with the grouping you desire.
If you for example want eighth notes in two groups of three and one 
group of two, enter 3+3+2. 
						

							609
Additional note and rest formatting
3.Set the denominator, if necessary.
4.Activate “For Grouping Only”.
5.Click OK.
Regular grouping of a number of eighth notes or smaller 
(“Beam”)
If the grouping the program assigns is not the one you 
want, you can put any selection of eighth notes or smaller 
under a beam:
1.Select at least two notes, where you want the beam to 
begin and end.
All notes between these two notes are grouped under a beam.
2.Click the Group Notes icon on the extended toolbar or 
right-click on one of the notes to be grouped and select 
“Beam” from the “Group/Ungroup” submenu of the con
-
text menu.
The Group Notes icon
Before and after grouping
•Double-clicking on the “Grouping” text opens the 
Grouping dialog, allowing you to adjust the “note value” 
for the symbols.
Grouping quarter notes or larger under a beam 
(“Brillenbass”)
It is also possible to use the grouping feature for notes 
that are not displayed with beams (quarter notes, half 
notes, etc.). The result are so called “Brillenbass” sym
-
bols, commonly used for indicating repeated accompani-
ment patterns, etc.
•Double-clicking on the “Grouping” text opens the Group-
ing dialog, allowing you to adjust the “note value” for the 
symbols.
Grouping notes using Repeats
To show Repeats for the grouped notes, proceed as 
follows:
1.Make sure that the filter bar is visible in the Score 
Editor.
If the filter bar is not visible, click the “Set up Window Layouts” button on 
the toolbar and select the Filters option.
2.Activate the “Grouping” checkbox in the filter bar.
Now, you see the text “Grouping” below all groups you have created.
3.Select the desired notes.
4.Right-click on one of the notes and from the Group/
Ungroup submenu, select “Repeat…”.
5.In the dialog that appears, use the radio buttons to 
select the desired note value for the repeats.
In this example, the “Repeat” feature is used to display two pairs of six-
teenth notes as two eighth notes with “repeat bars”. Note that the sec-
ond and fourth sixteenth note have only been hidden – playback is not 
affected!
6.Click OK to close the dialog.
!Note that the “For Grouping Only” setting only affects 
the way the numerator is divided. Any changes you 
make to the “sum” of the numerator number or the de
-
nominator result in a change of actual time signature in 
the project. If you need a grouping which cannot be 
entered in the current time signature, you have to 
group notes manually, see below. 
						

							610
Additional note and rest formatting
•Double-clicking on the “Grouping” text opens the Group-
ing dialog, allowing you to adjust the “note value” for the 
symbols.
Creating an accelerando/ritardando
To create an accelerando/ritardando, proceed as follows:
1.Select the notes as described above and select 
“Accelerando” from the Group/Ungroup submenu.
A dialog appears.
2.Use the radio buttons to select the desired combina-
tion (i.e. define whether you want an accelerando or a ri-
tardando and specify the desired note values) and click 
OK to close the dialog.
Example for accelerando (left) and ritardando (right)
•Double-clicking on the “Grouping” text opens the Group-
ing dialog, allowing you to select another combination.
The Grouping dialog
As described above, the Grouping dialog can also be 
opened by double-clicking an existing grouping text in the 
score.
•Which Grouping dialog appears depends on the group-
ing option you used for the notes (Beam, Repeats or Acce-
lerando, see above).
Removing groups
If you have created a group as described above and want 
to remove it, proceed as follows:
1.Make sure that the “Grouping” checkbox is activated 
in the display filter bar.
2.Select a group by clicking on its “Grouping” text.
3.Press [Backspace] or [Delete].
The grouping is removed.
•If you need to remove all groups from the score, hold 
down [Shift] and double-click on the first “Grouping” text. 
This selects all “Grouping” symbols, so you can delete them all at once 
by pressing [Backspace] or [Delete].
Removing a note from a group
There is no dedicated “ungroup” command, simply be-
cause it is not needed. A group can consist of one note if 
you wish. In other words… 
• To remove one note at the end of a group, select it and pro-
ceed with grouping as above.
• If you select notes in the middle of a beam and then group, 
three groups are created.
Before and after grouping