Moving notes/items to other staves

You can move notes and items to other staves of any type; for example, if you want to move individual notes from one keyboard staff to another after importing a keyboard part from a MIDI file.

Note
  • These steps do not apply to pedal lines or system objects.

  • If you want notes to appear on a different staff but remain attached to their original staff, such as to create a cross-staff beam, you can cross notes to other staves instead.

Prerequisite

If you want to use the mouse, you have enabled mouse editing.

Procedure

  1. In Write mode, select the notes and/or items you want to move to another staff.
    Tip

    To select multiple items of the same type, you can use large selections and/or filters.

  2. Move the selected notes/items another staff in one of the following ways:
    • To move them to the staff above, press Alt/Opt-N.

    • To move them to the staff below, press Alt/Opt-M.

    • Click and drag notes to other staves.

      When you drag notes, shadow noteheads indicate their destination positions, and the affected region appears highlighted with the rhythmic grid shown above it.

    • Choose Edit > Paste Special > Move to Staff Above.

    • Choose Edit > Paste Special > Move to Staff Below.

    Tip

    You can also choose these options from the context menu.

Result

The selected notes and/or items are moved to another staff by cutting them from their original staff and pasting them to the new staff. By default, notes are pasted into the first voice active on that staff.

Notes within tuplets remain tuplets even if you did not select the tuplet bracket, tuplet number/ratio, or tuplet signpost.

When you copy or move chord symbol regions to other staves, the corresponding players are set to show chord symbols.