reference.book Page 220 Monday, August 31, 2009 2:47 PM
3. Text Positioning Expression and Technique text Expression text goes below the staff it applies to, but above in staves with lyrics. Technique text goes above the staff. For music in two voices, both Expression and Technique text goes above the staff for Voice 1 and below for Voice 2. If Expression or Technique text applies to both hands of a keyboard instrument, it should go between the staves. The left-hand side of Expression text normally goes just to the left of the note to which it applies. If f has to be written on a staff (which is best avoided), the crossbar should be positioned over a staff line for clarity. Similarly, p on a staff should be centered on a space.
Expression For writing dynamics and other similar instructions to players, e.g. legato, lively, marcato, normally written in italics. Expression text is positioned below the staff for instrumental staves, and above the staff for vocal staves with lyrics. Dynamics such as mf or sfz are special bold italic characters that use a special “music text” font ( 8.11 Music fonts), normally Opus Text. You can create these characters from the word menu (right-click or Control-click), or by holding down Ctrl or and typing the letters, e.g. Ctrl+MF or MF to produce mf. The exception is z, for which you must type Ctrl+Shift+Z or Z (because Ctrl+Z or Z is the shortcut for Edit Undo). All common expression markings can be created quickly from the word menu, to save you typing them.
Although nearly all dynamics you create in your score are played back automatically, beware that the words cresc. and dim. do not play back (because it’s unclear by how much or for how long you want to get louder/softer) – if you need them to play, create hairpins as appropriate and hide them ( 2.17 Hairpins). A couple of special effects, e.g. fp, don’t play back quite correctly, but you can achieve the right effect using MIDI messages if playback of this particular marking is very important to you. Dynamics only apply to a single staff (except in keyboard music – 4.1 Working with playback), but you can quickly add dynamics to multiple staves in a couple of ways: Copy the dynamic with Edit Copy (shortcut Ctrl+C or C), then select the staves you want to copy the dynamic to and type Ctrl+V or V to paste it to all selected staves. This is called “multicopying” – 1.9 Selections and passages Select the dynamic and use Alt+click or -click to copy it onto other staves; you can hold down Shift while you Alt+click or -click to put each dynamic at its default vertical position; to align them later, select the bar in which they occur, then choose Edit Filter Dynamics (shortcut Shift+Alt+D or D) and use Layout Align in a Column (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+C or C).
Technique This is for writing technical instructions that are not normally written in italics, e.g. mute, pizz., a2, solo, tremolo. You can also write musical symbols such as accidentals in Technique text using the word menu, which is useful for things like harp music.
Metronome mark Metronome marks look something like q = 72, and are often accompanied by a tempo marking (see Tempo below). To write a metronome mark: Select an object (e.g. a note or rest) in your score where you want the metronome mark to go, normally the first note of a bar, and choose Create Text Metronome mark; a flashing caret
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