Text palette

• Mar 31, 2025 - 17:48

If I want to add a simple staff text expression, and there is one in the palette that is already the text size and style that I want, should I just enter that one, and then edit the text? Or is there a better way?

How can I tell which are text expressions which might affect playback? Playback doesn’t matter at this point, but it might when I go to generate part-predominant files, so I wouldn’t want to add anything that might cause problems later.


Comments

The staff text “Expression” initially has no playback properties. You can edit it afterwards or, if you need the expression frequently, include it in the text palette so that you can set it more quickly.

However, which texts from the text palette influence playback varies. For example, “Swing” and “Straight”, or “arco”, “pizz.” and ‘mute’ or “open” will affect playback.

(From 3.7, may be different in 4.x)

In reply to by HildeK

In addition, "normal", "distort", "overdrive", "jazz tone", and "harmonics" have playback effects on electric guitar (and similar) instruments in MS Basic or Guitar Vol. 1 sound fonts. At least, in v.4.*.

[A few moments later] I rarely use Parts. However, it's always been my understanding that you would want to apply these effects in the main score, rather than in a Part. Can someone verify that? Or correct me? :-)

If you don't want the specific playback or special layout effects of the various elements on the text palette, you shouldn't use any of them. Just generic staff text (Ctrl+T), system text (Ctrl+Shift+T), and expression text (Ctrl+E). Then if you wish to customize the formatting, do so in the Properties panel (and optionally use the "..." menu to set that as the style for the score).

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