capella is an extremely flexible tool. While many music settings can be accomplished quickly and easily through the score wizard, there are some settings that while easy are not obvious, or where the idea may not have occurred to you. The Tips tabs below give you advice on how to do things you thought impossible or that had not occurred to you.

Composers

Tips for composers

Do you want to work in a single line of music? You can do this if you have Page Layout View switched off. When you switch it back on you will return to the start of the line of music.

Using the automatic wrap around feature you can then either click 'Optimum' or specify the number of bars you want per line of music. Or you can chop it up manually, if you prefer.

The tenor clef in SATB scores and how to use Score Templates

If you produce four part vocal scores you will need the octave treble clef for your tenors. To get it you have to go into the Score Template and look under 'Additional Clefs' (the so called 'common clefs' in this the top of this window do not include this, the tenor clef listed there is a C clef).

Until we can have the octave tenor clef more accessible the quick way to start a score containing the octave treble clef is to use a Score Template.

To open a score template go to FILE | NEW and select 'From Template'. You will see your capella files. When you open an appropriate score you will see a single stave - this is intentional! To insert the staves press CTRL+ENTER. If you prefer using the mouse click on INSERT | STAVE. In the window which comes up you can click on the 'Select all staves' button or tick the staves that you need at this point.

If you need more staves in your new score, press the System Template button and expand the template.

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Teachers

Tips for Music Teachers

The tenor clef in SATB scores and how to use Score Templates

If you produce four part vocal scores you will need the octave treble clef for your tenors. To get it you have to go into the Score Template and look under 'Additional Clefs' (the so called 'common clefs' in this the top of this window do not include this, the tenor clef listed there is a C clef).

Until we can have the octave tenor clef more accessible the quick way to start a score containing the octave treble clef is to use a Score Template.

To open a score template go to FILE | NEW and select 'From Template'. You will see your capella files. When you open an appropriate score you will see a single stave - this is intentional! To insert the staves press CTRL+ENTER. If you prefer using the mouse click on INSERT | STAVE. In the window which comes up you can click on the 'Select all staves' button or tick the staves that you need at this point.

If you need more staves in your new score, press the System Template button and expand the template.

It has always been possible to print large, single notes - with no stave lines - in capella (but apparently this is not possible in other similar programs!).

The instructions below show you how to do it.

• Press File | New | Empty Score
• Ctrl+M to open the Score Template. In the Spacing tab, under Stave Line Spacing, enter a number such as 15. In the Clef tab click No clef. In the Stave Lines tab click 'Delete stave line' and click on all five stave lines to delete them.
  
  Press Ctrl+M to return to the score. Set 'no time signature' and enter the notes you need. You will need to have colour information switched off, because otherwise you will see the tempo setting.
• If you want ta, ta-te etc. underneath the notes enter these as text.
• If you set the zoom for Whole Page you will see how large the notes will print out on an A4 page.
• If you want to save this as a bitmap image you will be able to open the file in Windows Photo and Fax Viewer. If it makes it more flexible for printing elsewhere, you can save it as a TIFF file.

To get the notes on the stave placed regardless of note duration go to FORMAT | SCORE FORMAT | Note Spacing tab and move the slider bar.

• This is useful if you want to produce teaching material, for example if you are asking pupils to insert barlines. It is of course easy just to switch off the time signature by selecting No Metre, however the relative spacing of the notes will still be logical, making it visually quite easy to spot where the barlines should be inserted.

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Singers

Tips for singers

Lyrics are entered by typing underneath the notes in your score. However by using the Lyrics dialogue box you can improve the result. To open this window press EXTRAS | Lyrics | Edit in Window. The work below is all done in the Lyrics dialogue box, after the lyrics have been written in the score.

1. When a word or syllable continues underneath two notes it is necessary to put an underline character after the end in order to centre the syllable. You might wish to show the underline, but depending on the spacing the underline can sometimes display as a small mark. When you remove the underline in the Lyric dialogue box the word will still be centred correctly and there will be no underline.

2. In music where a word is spread over several notes the hyphens will be spread evenly. If you wish to see a hyphen underneath each note enter your word by typing in the score (for example 'alleluia' spread over eight notes). Then go into the Lyric Entry window. To centre a hyphen underneath a note use a [ \ ] before the [ - ] (). You will probably have an extra hyphen, this should be deleted. In this example, in the Lyric window you will see Al-/-/-/-/lu-/ia which gives equal spacing of the hyphens. Change to Al/\-/\-/\-/lu-/ia and you will see a hyphen beneath each note.

3. If you want to add a hyphen after the last syllable (rather than between syllables) you will need to add a dummy letter after the last syllable to get the spacing right. You can delete the dummy letter after adding the hyphen. Use the same technique to continue an underline to the end of the music.

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