The score

The score shows everything your instrument tracks play as a conductor's score, on pages. It reads the same notes as the piano roll, so there's nothing to export or keep in step: change a note, and the score shows it a moment later.

How the score writes your notes never changes what you hear. When you edit notes in the score, you change the notes themselves, just as in the piano roll, and Ctrl+Z takes each edit back. Dynamics you add play back, without changing your notes.

Open the score#

Click Score next to Stage, or press Ctrl+R (Cmd+R on a Mac). Press it again to close the score.

• Beside the arrangement: the score opens where the piano roll and the audio editor open. Only one of them shows there at a time.
• In its own window: click the placement button in the score's header and choose Detach. The piano roll or the audio editor can then stay open while the score shows too, for example with the score on a second screen.
• Size: use + and - in the header, or hold Ctrl and turn the mouse wheel. Until you zoom, the pages fit the width of the score.

Choose the look#

Use the Theme and Sheet switch in the score's toolbar:

• Theme shows the page in your theme's colors: on a dark theme, a dark page with soft, light notes, the staves set back and playing techniques in the theme's accent color. It changes with your theme.
• Sheet shows the traditional look, black on a white page.

Blazar Core remembers your choice.

Play from the score#

The score follows the playhead. A line shows where you are, and the pages turn by themselves so that the music playing stays in view. Click an empty part of a bar to move the playhead to the nearest note there.

Edit notes#

The keys work as they do in the piano roll.

Click a note to select it, and you hear it. Ctrl+click adds a note to the selection or takes it out. Drag from an empty part of the page to draw a box around notes, on as many staves as it crosses, and hold Ctrl to add them to what's selected. Press Esc to deselect.

Everything below works on all the selected notes at once.

• Pitch: drag a selected note up or down the staff. Up and Down move the notes a semitone, and Shift+Up and Shift+Down an octave.
• Time: press Left or Right to move them one grid step.
• Length: click a note value in the toolbar, and . for dotted.
• Articulation: the toolbar shows the Prism articulations of the selected note's track. Click one to play the notes with it. Each note gets its key switch, and the score writes the articulation.
• Delete: press Delete or Backspace.

Add slurs#

Select the notes and click the slur button in the toolbar, or press Shift+S. The slur runs from the first selected note to the last, on each staff you selected. With one note selected, it runs to the next note. Do the same on any note under a slur to remove it.

A slur changes nothing you hear. It belongs to its notes, so it stays with them when you move or copy them, in the score, the piano roll or the arrangement. Ctrl+Z takes it back.

Add dynamics#

Select a note and choose a dynamic from the list in the toolbar, which shows the last one you chose: pppp to ffff, then fp, sfp, sf, sfz, sffz, fz and rfz. The dynamic goes under the first selected note on each staff, in place of the one that note has. In Search Commands (Ctrl+K), type its name, such as mf.

To add a hairpin, select the notes and click the crescendo or diminuendo button in the toolbar, or press <** or **>. It runs from the first selected note through the last, and stops at a dynamic on the last note. With one note selected, it runs along that note, which suits a long note swelling across several bars.

To remove them, select the notes and choose Remove Dynamics in Search Commands. It takes the dynamics on those notes and any hairpin over them.

The score writes dynamics under the staff, on one line along each system, and between the staves of a piano or harp. Voices have theirs over the staff. Like slurs, they stay with their notes.

Hear your dynamics#

Dynamics shape what you hear, in playback and in everything you export. They don't change your notes or controllers: remove a mark, and the music plays as it did.

• Before the first mark on a staff, notes play as you recorded them.
• From the first mark on, each note's velocity comes from the level at that note: pppp 16, ppp 24, pp 33, p 49, mp 64, mf 80, f 96, ff 112, fff 120, ffff 127.
• Hairpins ramp from the mark before them to the mark after them. With no mark after, they go one step along that scale. With no mark before, they start one step short of the mark after, or at mf.
• Accents act on their own note: fp at 96, then p; sfp at 112, then p; sf and fz at 112, sfz at 120, sffz at 127 and rfz at 104, then back to the level before.
• The mod wheel (CC1) follows the same level, as a smooth curve through hairpins, so sustained samples swell. In a container where the track has its own CC1, your CC1 plays from its first point to its last, and the marks shape only the velocity.
• A staff's marks shape every track on it, so Violins 1 Legato and Violins 1 Spiccato play by the same dynamics. A staff with no marks plays exactly as it did.

The piano roll still shows the velocities you recorded.

Write notes#

Click Write, or press I. A line shows where the next note goes: at the selected note, or else at the playhead. Press I again or Esc to stop.

Choose the note value in the toolbar. It follows the grid, so Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4 choose a quarter note down to a 32nd note, as they set the grid everywhere.

• With a MIDI keyboard: play a key to write it at the line, and the line moves on by the note value. Keys played together are a chord.
• With the mouse: click a staff to write a note there, on the grid of the note value chosen. A faint note shows where it will land. Hold Shift to add it to what's there, as a chord.
• Rests: press Right to move the line on and leave a rest. Left moves it back.
• Fixing as you go: the note you just wrote stays selected, so Up, Down and Delete work on it.

A new note replaces what is already at that place. Click a Prism articulation in the toolbar to write the next notes with it.

While you write, the track selected in the arrangement has a staff even if it has no notes yet, and empty bars follow the music.

What the score shows#

• Instruments: the score knows an instrument from its track's name, such as Flute, Horn 1, Violins 2 or Celli, along with common short forms such as Vln, Vc and Tpt. It gives each one its clef, its place in the orchestra and its short name on later pages.
• One staff for an instrument: tracks of the same instrument and number share a staff, so Violins 1 Legato and Violins 1 Spiccato are one line of music.
• Piano, harp, celesta and organ have two staves. Notes from middle C up go on the upper staff.
• Other tracks keep their own name, on a clef that suits their notes, at the bottom of the score.
• What's left out: audio tracks, tracks without notes, and the Polaris guide track.
• Key signature: the score uses the session's scale, which you set in the piano roll or with Polaris. With no scale, it's in C.

Parts#

Every instrument in the score has its own part: the same notes, laid out for its player. Choose it from the list next to Concert Pitch and Transposed, or Full Score to go back.

A part shows the instrument's own staff on an A4 page, with its name at the top, such as Horns 1 in F, and the session's name. Later pages carry both at their head. Bars where the instrument doesn't play are written as one multi-bar rest with its number over the staff. A rest stops at a change of tempo or time signature, so the player sees it.

A part is always written as its player reads it, whatever the Concert Pitch and Transposed switch says. What you edit in a part changes the same notes as in the full score.

Export the score#

Click Export in the toolbar, or open Export Score in the Project menu:

• Full Score as PDF... writes the score, as Concert Pitch or Transposed shows it, on A3 pages.
• Parts as PDF... asks for a folder, and writes every part as its own A4 PDF in a new folder named after the session.
• Score as MusicXML... writes a .musicxml file for Dorico, Sibelius, Finale or MuseScore, with your notes, rhythm, articulations, slurs, dynamics, tempo and time signatures. Each instrument is written as its player reads it, and the file says how it transposes, so the other program can show concert pitch too.

The PDFs are black on white whichever look you use on screen, with their fonts inside them, so they print the same anywhere.

Your articulations#

The score writes the articulations you set with Prism and your key switches:

• On each note: staccato, staccatissimo, tenuto, accent, marcato, trill and tremolo.
• In words, where they start: pizz., con sord., col legno, sul pont., sul tasto, flautando, harm. and flz. The score writes arco, senza sord. or ord. where they end.
• Anything else: a technique the score doesn't know shows by its own name, so nothing you play is hidden.

The score goes by the articulation's name, so a name like Short Spiccato or Pizzicato is all it needs. Legato and sustained articulations show nothing: use a slur to show legato on the page.

Concert Pitch or Transposed#

Use the switch in the score's header:

• Concert Pitch writes every instrument at the pitch it sounds. Instruments that always read an octave away, such as piccolo and double bass, still do.
• Transposed writes each instrument as its player reads it, such as trumpet in Bb and horn in F.

Blazar Core remembers your choice.

How played notes are written#

Your notes keep their feel in what you hear. The score writes them tidily:

• Notes are written to the nearest sixteenth, or to triplets where that fits better.
• A note released just before the next one, or overlapping it as legato does, is written up to the next note. A real gap stays a rest.
• Short notes on the eighths are written as eighths.
• Notes that overlap at different times go on a second voice.