To celebrate Halloween, we’re looking at scary things we see in the music notation software and score preparation process, and see if we can sweeten the experience with some tricks and treats. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald discuss the spookiness of using the mouse and how you can better become a jack-o-lantern of all trades by focusing more on keyboard commands and other shortcuts in Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico. We also look at a frightening situation that happens when laying out your music and investigate how to fix it. So don’t be afraid — we won’t ghost you as we lead you unscathed out of the haunted house of software skeletons and onto the pumpkin patch to score some tricks and treats.

More on Scoring Notes:

(Re)learning how to use music notation software

Finale:

• Quick tip: Dismiss all open dialog boxes in Finale
• Supercharge your Finale workflow on Mac with Keyboard Maestro
• FinaleScripts for faster scoring in Finale
• Articulation metatools in Finale

Sibelius:

• Using Sibelius Effectively: a guide to Sibelius Ultimate
• Sibelius from A to Z
• Use keyboard shortcuts to apply text expressions in Sibelius
• Quick keyboard access to your Sibelius plug-ins
• Add custom shortcuts for Keypad features in Sibelius

Dorico:

• Dorico from A to Z
• Customize keyboard shortcuts in Sibelius and Dorico
• Assigning MIDI commands

Notation Express:

• Notation Express for Dorico 5 released
• Stream Deck Mobile 2.0 brings native iPad support for the first time — and a whole lot more
• Notation Express for Dorico 4 released
• Notation Express for Dorico 3
• Notation Express XL is available for Sibelius and Dorico
• Notation Express demo available
• Notation Express is now on iOS with Stream Deck Mobile