The Edit Menu

Undo
Cut
Copy
Paste
Delete
Select all

---

Beam or unbeam selected notes
Flip stem direction of selected notes
Slur or unslur selected notes
Tie or untie selected notes

Many, but not all, operations can be undone. To make the program run more quickly we've made just the most dire operations undoable. For example, if you select everything on a staff and then accidentally hit the Delete key you can Undo that. Of course, if you make a really bad mistake you can always just close the file without saving changes and open the most recently-saved version (a wise computer user uses the Save command frequently!).

Deletes and simultaneously copies the selected items so that you can Paste them elsewhere.

Just copies the selected items without deleting them.

Pastes at the current blinking insertion point a copy of whatever was last copied. This does not remove the original from memory, so you can repeatedly Paste the same copied item or items. In music there is of course much repetition, so you'll often find it convenient to copy a passage, click somewhere else in the music to set the blinking insertion point, and Paste it there.

When entering lyric text in a multivoice piece you can select whole text blocks from one voice, activate the staff of another voice, click where you want the copied text to go, and Paste. There's no need to retype the text for all the voices if each part is singing the same words. Note that with text and other non-rhythmic symbols you can drag the pasted item with the arrow tool after placing it.

Does the same thing as the Delete key: deletes whatever is selected, without copying it. (The Backspace key will also delete whatever is selected, but if nothing is selected it will delete whatever item is previous to the insertion point.)

Selects everything in the current layer. If the text layer is chosen this will select all text associated with the active staff; if the chord layer is chosen this will select all chord symbols; if the staff symbol layer is chosen this will select all staff symbols past the initial Clef/Key/Meter. If you have chosen a secondary track in a multitrack staff (so that notes not in the selected track are green) only the symbols of the secondary track will be selected.

This does the same thing as the keyboard shortcut ctrl-B (cmd-B on Macs) - beams or unbeams selected notes. The Beam button on the keyboard tools palette is more specific: it will always just beam items, and the Unbeam button will always just unbeam.

Toggles both the default stem direction and also the direction of any selected notes. The stem direction button on the keyboard tools palette also sets the default stem direction and alters selected notes to the desired direction.

If notes are slurred, they become unslurred, or vice-versa. The Slur and Unslur buttons can also be used to slur selected notes together, or to remove a slur. Slurs are used to indicate that several notes of different pitch are to be played smoothly together, or to receive just one syllable in a vocal work.

Similar to slur/unlur, but ties are for notes of the same pitch. You can tie together only notes that are in the same voice or track - if two notes of the same pitch will not tie they are probably in different voices.

Back to Table of Contents