User Manual

Contents

• Contents
• Guide
• Keyboard control
• Further functions available via screen buttons
  • Settings
  • Download
  • Input Modes
  • Delete
• Grouping
  • Tuplets
  • Polyphony
• Keys off screen?

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Guide

Follow the guide on the startup screen of the app to get an introduction. Press the screen button with the question mark (?) to return to that page anytime.
Exit the guide and return to the sheet music overview by pressing the same question mark button again.

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Keyboard control

If you opened the app from a laptop or desktop computer, you can control it with the computer keyboard. Tooltips on the How to begin page as well as tooltips for each screen button will reveal hotkeys.

• Alpha-numeric keys define pitches like on a piano keyboard. On a US keyboard, QWERTYUI for white keys in the higher octave, ZXCVBNM and comma for the lower octave. Numbers and S-D, G-H-J etc. are black keys.
• Space bar writes a rest.
• Up arrow doubles the duration, down arrow halves it (normally affects the next note or rest to write, but the current one in correction mode.)
• Enter activates the focused button, Tab moves focus forward, Shift+Tab back.
• Ctrl+Enter triggers the pencil (🖉) button (submit the note or rest, whichever is currently in the zoom panel under edit, to the sheet music.)
• Backspace erases the last note or rest.
• Insert changes the input mode (see below.)

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Further functions available via screen buttons

Settings

The cogwheel screen button opens the settings tab.

• Define things that affect the whole song there: clefs, key, time signature.
• Change which octave to access with the computer keyboard
• In case you have an older browser and a non-US keyboard layout, you may experience that key associations are wrong. Set up your keyboard layout for a workaround, but better consider updating the browser.
• Push the active cogwheel screen button or the × button in the corner of the orange zoom box to return from the settings.

Download

Down arrow (⇩) screen button starts the PDF download. The document will contain your whole composition in a printable format.

Input Modes

Use the buttons in the zoom panel, bottom of the screen to change the input mode.

• Chord mode allows writing chords: several noteheads to the same point in time.
• Correction mode allows you to play on the piano keyboard without recording the notes in the sheet music as a melody; it will keep rewriting the same note until you exit this mode or push the pencil button.
• When neither mode button is active, consecutive piano key hits get recorded in the sheet music as a melody; we could call it melody mode.
• Independently of the modes above, you can select hacking; if you are familiar with GNU LilyPond notation, you can insert such text after pushing the @ button. See [Hacking Manual]

Delete

Find the left arrowhead (❮) in the zoom panel or Backspace on your keyboard.

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Grouping

The group buttons affect several consecutive notes. Beams, slurs, crescedos etc. can be written using group buttons. Push them where the effect should begin. See them showing active from then on. Reaching the last note of the effect, push them again to deactivate.

Tuplets

Write triplets, quintuplets etc. using the button with the number 3 on it. After closing the group, it will prompt you for the number.

Polyphony

If you want to write a section with several voices in one staff, with the possibility of different rhythms in each voice, use the polyphony grouping button. When you end the group, you can start writing a second voice.
See the chord input mode for a polyphony where voices share the same rhythm.

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Keys off screen?

You can pan the piano keyboard up and down in case you cannot see the registers you need.