Grand staff and drums

Add piano and drum tracks, and place notes for instruments that have no strings.

Piano and the grand staff#

Adding Piano (Grand Staff) gives you two rows, an upper and a lower staff, that act as one instrument.

Piano has a single staff; Piano (Grand Staff) has two, in treble and bass clef. In the left panel the lower staff’s row is indented.

The two staves of a grand staff always share their name, colour, sound program, volume and pan; changing one changes both. Mute and solo also affect the whole instrument whichever row you use. To move between the staves, click a row in the left panel or click that staff in the score.

Place piano notes#

Place piano notes by clicking the keyboard in the bottom panel.

While playback is stopped, clicking a key puts a note on the beat under the cursor, and clicking the same key again removes it. You can also click + in Notes (Pitched) on the Selection tab of the inspector and choose a note name. Boards explains the keyboard.

A placed note takes the length of its beat. To change the length, use the steps in Note values, dots and tuplets.

Drum tracks#

Adding Drums gives you a track for placing percussion.

Drum tracks have no tuning, capo or transposition. They play with dedicated drum sounds and normally don’t go through the pedalboard.

Place drum notes#

Place drum notes by clicking the drum pads in the bottom panel.

While playback is stopped, clicking a pad puts that instrument on the beat under the cursor, and clicking again removes it. You can also click + in Notes (Drums) on the Selection tab of the inspector and choose an instrument. A beat can hold each percussion instrument only once. Boards explains how to arrange the pads.

Sustain pedal#

Write where the pedal goes down and comes up with Sustain Pedal in Structure & Symbols in the inspector.

Clicking + adds Press and Release alternately. You can adjust each row’s position within the bar.