Steinberg Cubase 6 Manual

631
Working with symbols
Dragging symbols across staves
If you drag a symbol across the staves, you can see how 
the “active staff” indicator to the left follows the mouse 
pointer. Use this as an indication to make sure that sym
-
bols end up in the correct staff.
•If you are editing several tracks at the same time, and 
want to make sure that a symbol is not accidentally moved 
to another track when you drag it vertically, activate the 
Lock “L” button on the extended toolbar.
When this is activated,...

632
Working with symbols
The following happens:
•If you activated “Note Symbols”, the note symbols are 
copied from the “source” bar and pasted onto notes at the 
same positions in the “target” bar. If there is a note symbol 
for a certain note in the “source” bar, but no note at the 
corresponding position in the “target” bar, the symbol is 
ignored.
The actual positions of notes are used as a basis for this operation – not 
the displayed positions.
•If you activated other types of symbols, these are...

633
Working with symbols
Altering the shape and direction of slurs and 
ties
ÖThis section describes how to alter the “regular” slur 
and tie symbols. How to add and edit Bezier slur symbols 
is described in the section 
“The Bezier slur” on page 624.
There are two types of slurs and ties in the Symbols In-
spector. The up/down variation of each actually represent 
the same symbol but with different initial direction. You 
can perform the following editing to slurs and ties:
•By dragging the middle...

634
Working with symbols
The following options are available:
The “Dynamics” option is a special function for aligning 
dynamic symbols, as described in the section 
“Aligning 
dynamics” on page 635.
Symbol details
This section further describes some of the symbol tabs.
The “Clefs etc.” tab
Clefs
You can insert a clef symbol anywhere in the score. This 
has an effect on the notes, just as the first clef on the staff 
has. And just as with the first clef, the type is selected from 
the Edit Clef dialog...

635
Working with symbols
•You can select a font and size for time signatures in the 
“Text Settings” subpage of the Score Settings dialog 
(Project page).
The default font for this is the included “Steinberg Notation” font.
The Dynamics tab
There are dynamic symbols ranging from ffff to pppp, plus 
“special” dynamic symbols such as sforzando, fortepiano, 
etc. 
•By selecting a dynamic symbol and clicking the “+” and 
“-” buttons on the extended toolbar, you can quickly edit 
dynamics in the score.
Use...

636
Working with symbols
The Line/Trill tab
Octave symbols
The octave symbols (8va and 15va) act as a “local display 
transpose” (see 
“Transposing instruments” on page 565) 
– they shift the display of the score one/two octaves 
down.
•By dragging the end of the dotted line, you can specify 
exactly which notes are affected by the octave symbol.
Only notes beneath the dotted line are display transposed.
•You can also right-click on the octave symbol and se-
lect the “Extend (+)” or “Reduce (-)” command...

637
Working with symbols
Box (rectangle) symbol
This is a “generic” box symbol, which may be useful for 
different purposes. If you double-click on a box, a dialog 
opens in which you can specify whether the box is trans
-
parent or not, and whether the border is visible. This dia-
log can also be opened by selecting “Properties” from the 
context menu.
The box symbol is available on the “Other” and “Layout” 
tabs.
The keyboard symbol
This is described in the section “Adding a keyboard sym-
bol” on page...

638
Working with symbols
Endings are available on the Layout tab (for the layout 
layer), the Project tab (for the project layer), and the Line/
Trill tab (for the note layer). Which one to choose depends 
on the score; while it is handy to insert endings once and 
for all as Project symbols, this does not allow you to make 
individual adjustments for the different parts.
•You can right-click on an ending symbol and select the 
“Extend (+)” or “Reduce (-)” command to extend it to the 
next chord or to...

639
Working with symbols
The User Symbols editor – tools and functions
The toolbar contains the following tools and settings, from 
left to right:
The Note Linked pop-up menu lets you create symbols 
linked to note positions. This affects the whole symbol, not 
a selected graphic object:
The Functions pop-up menu contains the following items 
(some of these can also be accessed on the context menu 
for the User Symbols tab):
ToolDescription
ArrowUse this to select objects – press [Shift] to select more...

9
Working with chords