Creating Your Own Song Templates

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If over time you intend to arrange several songs for the same ensemble, or even for a solo instrument for which there is not a pre-defined blank score, , then it is a good idea to create your own customized song template. This is easy to do. A song template really is nothing more than a Notation (.not) file that you have chosen to reuse often as a starting point for a new song.

A song template is kept in a special directory, which is typically C:\Program Files\Notation\Musician\Templates.  You can prepare and add your own song template to this list.

Note that you can use song templates not only when you are creating a new song, but also when you want to apply formatting to an existing song. See the description of the Format Part Using Template command in the Format menu.

prcarrow To create a song template:

1.Open a song file that already has the intended list of instruments. Remove all of the notes and musical annotations in it.
2.Add, modify and delete instrument staves to create the list of instruments you intend for the template.

See,Changing the Instrument Sound of a Staff, and Deleting Staves.

3.Add or modify any page text that you want to appear in the score created from the template. For example, add your own name to the title page. See Adding and Editing Page Text and Specifying Page Text in Templates.

Note that if you remove all page text from a song template, Musician automatically adds certain page text to any new score created from the template. On the first page, Musician will add a song title. On subsequent pages, Musician will add a page header, consisting of the song title and page number.

4.Save the song as a Notation (.not) file in the C:\Program Files\Notation\Templates directory.

prcarrow To edit an existing song template:

1.Use the Open command in the File menu, and choose a template (.not) file in the C:\Program Files\Notation\Templates directory.
2.Edit template file just as though you were editing a normal song file. The details of the template file that will be copied to a newly created song file are: the list of staves; the instrument sound assignments (MIDI device, bank, and patch) for each staff; and page text.
3.Save the template (.not) file using the Save command in the File menu.
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