Utilities
Menu
How to get there
The Utilities Menu is one of SongWriter's unchanging Menus.
What it does
The Utilities Menu is one of the most versatile menus in SongWriter. Its commands transform your music in many powerful ways. Its commands work on selected regions as small as a single beat, or as large as the entire score. All the commands described below work on partial or full-measure selections, except as noted otherwise. Select a region with any tool that supports measure selection and these commands are available.
Note that commands in the Utilities Menu that affect a selected region of music (such as Music Spacing) can be interrupted. Simply press Escape to stop processing the command.
- Transpose. Choose this command to display
the Transposition dialog box, which lets you specify how you want the
selected music transposed—up an octave, down a third, or whatever interval
you specify. See Transposition
dialog box.
- Move to Previous System • Move to Next System. Choose this command to move a selected measure (or measures) to the previous or next system, respectively. See
- Fit Measures. This command, only available
in Page View, is extremely useful in laying out the measures of your piece—avoiding
awkward page turns, placing 4 bars on a line, and so on. You can also
specify a number of measures-per-line you want for the selected region.
See Fit
Measures dialog box for details. (This command only affects full-measure selections.)
- Apply Music Spacing. This command lets
you space the notes and measures of your score the same way a professional
engraver does—by consulting a table of width values for each note, and
spacing the notes and measures accordingly. The result is nonproportional
spacing, where a whole note isn’t allotted four times as much width as
a quarter note—it’s actually allotted much less space.
- Update Layout. If Automatic Update Layout is
not checked under the Edit Menu, SongWriter doesn’t constantly recalculate
the positioning and page layout of measures within your score. Instead,this recalculation only takes place when you request it by choosing Update
Layout from the Edit Menu. (Automatic Update Layout is checked by default,
the following assumes you have unchecked Automatic Update Layout).
If you enter Page View without choosing Update
Layout, you may discover strange measure spacing if you’ve made any changes
to the widths of measures (by using, for example, the Resize tool, the
Music Spacing command, the Page Layout tool, or the Measure tool). Any
of these actions can result in very wide or very cramped measures, or
duplicated or missing systems on each page. By choosing Update Layout,
you tell SongWriter to lay the measures out again within each system,
taking such changes into account, in order to create attractive, neatly
justified systems with appropriate measure spacing.
To further save you time, when you’re in Page
View, SongWriter only readjusts the measure layout from the page you’re
viewing to the end of the document. In other words, if you’re satisfied
with the layout of the first five pages, you don’t have to wait for SongWriter
to readjust them; scroll to page six before choosing Update Layout. (Update
Layout affects the entire piece if you’re viewing page one, or if you’re
in Scroll View.)
Update Layout performs another useful function.
One way to manually arrange measures on the page is to use SongWriter’s
measure group features (such as the Fit Measures command in the Utilities
Menu, or the Selection tool up/down arrow trick). For details on these
techniques, see Measue Layout.
If you ever want to delete such measure groups (and restore
all measures to their original “floating” status), press shift while
selecting Update Layout from the menu.
- Update Smart Word Extensions and Hyphens. Choose
this option to update Smart Word Extensions and Hyphens manually. This
allows you to update the automatic Smart Word Extensions and hyphens without
selecting a different tool (which has the same effect).
- Apply Articulation. This powerful command
lets you add a certain articulation mark (a staccato, for example) to
every note in a selected region at once.
- Check Notation Submenu. From this submenu, choose Fill with Rests to automatically fill rhythmically incomplete measures with rests or remove manual adjustments made to slurs. See Utilities/Check Notation.
- Add
Drum Groove. Choose this option to compose unique rhythms and percussion
parts. See Drum Groove dialog box. See Drum
Groove.
- Apply
Band-in-a-Box Auto Harmonizing. Choose this option to harmonize a melody.
Any melody line with chord symbols can be harmonized using one of several
musical styles. See Band-in-a-Box
Auto Harmonizing.
- Create
Coda System. This command allows you to automatically add a gap between
measures in order to create an independent coda system on the same line.
See Create
Coda System dialog box.
- Score
System Divider. This utility automatically adds system separation marks
between systems in a score. See Score
System Divider dialog box.
