Lengthening/Shortening items

You can lengthen/shorten items with duration rhythmically after they have been input, for example, if you want an octave line to cover more/fewer notes.

Lengthening figured bass or playing techniques, including string indicators outside the staff and vibrato bar indications, that were input without a specified duration gives them duration and shows duration or hold lines if required.

Note

Lengthening/Shortening playing techniques does not affect playback. The sounds produced in playback rely on the playback technique associated with the playing technique and the audio units loaded in the project.

Procedure

  1. In Write mode, select the items you want to lengthen/shorten.
    Note
    • When multiple items are selected, you can only lengthen/shorten them by the current rhythmic grid resolution.

    • You can only lengthen/shorten one of the following items at a time: slurs, gradual dynamics, groups of gradual dynamics, and bar repeat regions.

    • When using the mouse, you can only lengthen/shorten a single item at a time. Figured bass and playing techniques, including string indicators and vibrato bar lines, must have duration already.

    • When lengthening/shortening multiple figured bass or playing techniques using the keyboard, they must all have duration already.

    • You can only lengthen/shorten non-grouped playing techniques or the last playing technique in a group.

    • You can only lengthen/shorten cross-staff slurs to notes on the same staff as the corresponding endpoint, and you can only lengthen/shorten cross-voice slurs to notes in the same voice as the corresponding endpoint.

  2. Lengthen/Shorten the selected items in any of the following ways:
    • To lengthen them by the current rhythmic grid resolution or to the next notehead, whichever is closer, press Shift-Opt-Right Arrow.

    • To shorten them by the current rhythmic grid resolution or to the previous notehead, whichever is closer, press Shift-Opt-Left Arrow.

      Note

      Bar repeat regions are lengthened/shortened by the duration of their grouping.

    • To lengthen a single item to the next notehead, press Cmd-Shift-Opt-Right Arrow.

    • To shorten a single item to the previous notehead, press Cmd-Shift-Opt-Left Arrow.

    • Click and drag the circular handle at the start/end to the right/left.

      Note

      Playing technique groups only have a single handle at their start and end, not individual handles for each playing technique within the group.

Result

The selected items are lengthened/shortened by moving their end rhythmically to the right/left. Most items are lengthened/shortened either by the current rhythmic grid resolution or to the next/previous notehead, whichever is closer, or directly to the next/previous notehead.

Bar repeat regions are lengthened/shortened by the duration of their grouping. Slurs are lengthened/shortened to notes.

If figured bass or playing techniques previously had no duration, they now have duration and show duration or hold lines if required.

If any part of slash regions now overlap rhythmic positions with other slash regions, the staff positions of slashes are automatically adjusted to accommodate multiple slash regions at the same positions.

Dynamic groups are lengthened/shortened proportionally by lengthening/shortening the gradual dynamics and moving any other type of dynamic in the group. This retains the relative durations of the gradual dynamics in the group.

Note
  • The minimum length of a bar repeat region is one bar. If you shorten regions with longer groupings, such as every four bars, the length of the region is halved until a one-bar repeat region remains.

  • Only a single bar repeat region or chord symbol region can exist at each rhythmic position on each staff. If a bar repeat region or chord symbol region collides with another item of the same type when it is lengthened/shortened, the existing item is deleted or shortened accordingly. For bar repeat regions, this can mean the grouping of other bar repeat regions is changed.

    You can undo this action and restore the previous lengths of the other regions. However, if you lengthened/shortened a bar repeat region or chord symbol region using the mouse and it overwrote another region of the same type completely, the other region is permanently deleted.

Example

In the example, lengthening the phrase moves the at the end two quarter notes to the right, but moves the in the middle only one quarter note to the right. This keeps the lengths of the gradual dynamics equal.

Figure 1. Original dynamic phrase
Figure 2. Lengthened dynamic phrase