Editing Note Pitch

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Editing Note Pitch

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When you add a new note with a mouse click, its pitch is determined by the vertical position of the mouse on the staff, and the key signature of the measure. If you hold the mouse button down and drag the mouse vertically up and down on the staff, Composer will play the pitches. You can release the mouse when you hear the pitch you want. For details, see Determining the Pitch of a New Note. You can also drag the pitch of an exiting note with the mouse.

Composer also lets you easily raise or lower the pitches of existing notes.

prcarrow To raise (or lower) the pitch of one or more note by one or more half-steps using the computer keyboard:

1.Select one or more notes by clicking or dragging the mouse cursor over them.  (To select all the notes in a staff, you can click the Staff Select button for that staff.  Then in the Region menu, select the "Convert Region to a selection of notes" command.)
2.Type the NumPad PlusKey or MinusKey key one or more times to raise or lower the pitch one half-step at a time.
-- OR --

Type P+UpArrowKey (or P+DownArrowKey) one or more times to raise (or lower) the pitch by that many half-steps.

Composer will play the pitches of the notes as you raise or lower them, unless you have turned off this feature.

-- OR --

While holding down the left mouse button, select the note and drag it up or down.  If this does not work, be sure that the option for "Enable Dragging of Note Pitches" is selected in the Note menu.

prcarrow To raise (or lower) the pitch of one or more notes by an octave:

B833Hold down the SHIFT key as you type the NumPad PlusKey or MinusKey key.

-- OR --

B833Type P+PAGEUP or P+PAGEDOWN.

You can also change the pitch of a note by adding or removing an accidental, as described in the next topic.