reference.book Page 174 Monday, August 31, 2009 2:47 PM
2. Notations
Slur handles Although Sibelius’s default settings produce pleasing slur shapes in most situations, you may occasionally find that you need to adjust an individual slur in order to make it as graceful as possible. When you select a slur, a gray frame appears showing you the slur’s handles:
(To make slur handles visible all the time, switch on View Handles – 5.23 View menu.) Holding down Alt or and typing / moves through the six handles as follows: the left end of the slur, the left-hand curve point, the bottom middle of the slur, the top middle of the slur, the right-hand curve point, and the right end of the slur. With any handle selected, use the arrow keys (with Ctrl or for bigger steps) to adjust its position: If you move the left- or right-hand end with the arrow keys, you can move its position relative to
the note to which it is attached, but it will not attach to another note; to re-attach the slur, use Space or Shift-Space. Moving the bottom middle handle of the slur changes its vertical position relative to the notes to which it is attached, but without changing the curvature. Moving the top middle handle of the slur up or down changes the height of the slur while retaining its relative curvature. You can also alter the angle of the slur’s curvature by moving the top middle handle left or right. Moving the left-hand or right-hand curve point changes the curvature of the slur, allowing you to make fine adjustments to the slur’s contour. You can also move the slur’s handles using the controls on the Lines panel of Properties: End X and Y show the offset of the left or right end of the slur, if selected, measured in spaces.
(Normally both X and Y will read 0.) Slur left curve X and Y and Slur right curve X and Y express the position of the left-hand and right-hand curve points, if they have been manually adjusted. The X value is expressed as a percentage of the length of the slur, and the Y value is expressed in spaces. You can reset the position of either curve point by switching off the appropriate checkbox. Finally, you can change the shape of a slur by dragging any of its handles with the mouse. The effect on the shape of a slur of moving its handles is determined by Magnetic Layout, if it is switched on – see Adjusting Magnetic Layout for slurs below. To reset a slur’s shape, select the slur line itself and choose Layout Reset Design (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+D or D); to reset the position of a single handle, select just that handle and choose Reset Design. This also “unflips” a slur, if you flipped it with Edit Flip.
174