Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Score Layout And Printing Manual

							CUBASE SXAdditional note and rest formatting 7 – 151
Grace notes and beaming
• If two grace notes are at exactly the same position (the same tick), they will be 
put onto the same stem, as a chord.
• If multiple grace notes in front of the same note are put on different positions 
(even if they are only one tick apart), they will be grouped under a beam.
• Please note that it is possible to have beamed grace notes overlapping a 
beam of regular notes, as in the example below:
Grace notes in the middle of a group of regular notes.
Editing a grace note
1.Select one or several grace notes and open the Set Note Info dialog.
The grace note settings in the Set Note Info dialog.
2.Select a note value for the stem.
3.Activate Crossed, if you wish.
When this is activated, the stem will be crossed by a slanted line, to further indicate 
that the note is a grace note.
4.Click Apply.
The settings are applied to the selected note(s).
5.If you like, select other notes and make settings for them.
When you are done, close the dialog by clicking its close box. 
						

							CUBASE SX7 – 152 Additional note and rest formatting
Converting grace notes to normal notes
1.Select the notes you want to convert.
If you want to make sure that all notes in the score are normal notes, you can select all 
notes (using the Select All command on the Edit menu).
2.Double click on one of the selected grace notes.
The Set Note Info dialog appears.
3.Select “Normal” from the “Type” pop-up.
4.Click Apply.
Tuplets
The regular display quantize values do not apply to any other divisions 
than triplets. To create quintuplets, septuplets etc., follow the instruc-
tions below. 
There are basically two methods of creating tuplets:
• With permanent alteration to the MIDI data. This is the “drawing” mode to use 
when you want to build the tuplet from scratch. It doesn’t put any demand on 
the notes’ positions before the tuplet is created.
• As display quantize. This is the method you use when the tuplet is recorded 
and plays back as you want it, but is not displayed correctly.
Actually, in the first case, you make permanent alterations and set dis-
play quantize settings, all in one go. In the second case you only make 
display quantize settings.
With permanent change to MIDI data
1.Insert as many notes as the tuplet consists of.
This would typically be 5, 7 or 9. If the tuplet contains rests, simply leave space for 
those, but make sure the current display quantize value allows them to be shown.
Five sixteenth notes, about to be converted to a quintuplet.
2.Select all the notes that make up the tuplet. 
						

							CUBASE SXAdditional note and rest formatting 7 – 153
3.Select “Build N-Tuplet” from the Staff Functions submenu on the 
Scores menu.
The Tuplets dialog appears.
4.Set the type of tuplet in the Type field.
“5” means a quintuplet, “7” means a septuplet etc.
5.Set the length of the entire tuplet using the “Over” field.
6.Activate Change Length, if you need it.
If you do, the program will alter the length of all notes so that they are exactly the note 
value the tuplet indicates. If you don’t, the lengths of the existing notes won’t be af-
fected in any way.
7.If you want any other text than the standard above the tuplet, type it in 
the “Text” field.
The standard text is simply the number in the type field. If the tuplet is put under a 
beam (see page 155) the text is put just above it. If there is no beam, the text is found 
in the middle of a bracket.
8.Click Build.
The tuplet appears. The notes have now been moved to the tuplet positions and their 
length might have changed. 
9.If needed, edit the lengths and pitches of the notes in the tuplet.
You can also make various settings for the appearance of the tuplet – see below. 
						

							CUBASE SX7 – 154 Additional note and rest formatting
Without permanent change to MIDI data
1.Select the notes in the tuplet group.
In this case, the notes play back correctly but aren’t displayed as a tuplet (yet).
2.Select “Build N-Tuplet” from the Staff Functions submenu on the 
Scores menu to bring up the Tuplets dialog.
3.Make settings in the dialog, as described above.
4.Click Quantize.
Now the tuplet is displayed correctly. You can make additional settings for how the 
tuplet should appear, as described below.
5.If necessary, adjust the notes.
❐Lengths and positions in a tuplet group are probably best edited using 
the info line.
Editing tuplet settings
1.Double click on the text above the Tuplet group to bring up the Tuplets 
dialog.
2.Adjust the Text setting.
3.Click Apply.
The changes are applied to the tuplet, without affecting the tuplet type or length.
Grouping
If the Tuplet is a quarter note long or shorter, the notes will be auto-
matically grouped under a beam. If it is longer you have to perform the 
grouping manually. See page 134 for details.
Double-click here. 
						

							CUBASE SXAdditional note and rest formatting 7 – 155
Tuplet display options
The Switches tab in the Notation Style dialog on the Scores–Global 
Settings menu contains the following settings for tuplets:
Option Description
Display Tuplets without 
Brackets
and 
Always Show Tuplet 
BracketsThese two options are mutually exclusive – turn one on and 
the other is turned off. When “Display Tuplets without 
Brackets” is activated, tuplets never have brackets. When 
the other option is active, tuplets always have brackets. 
When neither option is activated, tuplets may have brackets, 
depending on the position of the beam (above or under the 
note heads).
Display Tuplet values by 
the BeamsWhen this is activated, tuplets will be displayed on the 
“beam side” of the notes instead of on the note head side.
Suppress Recurring 
TupletsWhen this is activated, and you have several tuplets of the 
same type in the same bar, only the first of these is displayed 
as a tuplet.
Show Tuplet Brackets as 
“Slurs”When this is activated, the tuplet brackets will be “slur-like” 
(rounded). 
						

							CUBASE SX7 – 156 Additional note and rest formatting 
						

							8
Working with symbols 
						

							CUBASE SX8 – 158 Working with symbols
In this chapter you will learn:
• What the different types of symbols are.
• How to insert and edit symbols.
• Details about special symbols.
Background: The different layers
A score page is always made up of three layers – the note layer, the lay-
out layer and the global layer. When you add symbols, these will be in-
serted into one of these layers, depending on the type of symbol. Those 
symbols that have a general relation to notes – accents, dynamic mark-
ings, slurs, lyrics etc. – will be put in the note layer. Other symbols – 
such as repeats, rehearsal marks, some types of text, etc. – can typically 
be put either in the layout layer (which is individual for each layout) or in 
the global layer (common for all layouts). Later in this chapter you will 
find detailed information about which symbols belong to which layer.
We will now look at the symbols in these three layers, in more detail:
Note layer symbols
Let’s look at the note layer symbols first. These come in three flavors:
• Note symbols. These are each tied to a single note. Examples of note symbols 
are accents and lyrics. When you move the note, the symbol moves with it. 
The same is true if you cut the note and then paste; the symbol is cut and 
pasted at the same time.
• Note dependant symbols. Only a few symbols belong to this category, for ex-
ample the arpeggio lines. In one way, these behave just like grace notes (see 
page 150). They must always be in front of a note or chord. If there is no note 
“after them” on a staff, they will disappear.
Layout layer symbols
Note layer symbols 
						

							CUBASE SXWorking with symbols 8 – 159
• All other note layer symbols (tempo, dynamics, chords etc.). These have their 
position related to the bar. No matter what you do to notes, they remain unaf-
fected. However, their positions are tied to their position within a measure. If you 
for example change the spacing of the bars across the page (see page 259) 
this will affect the symbols’ positions.
Layout layer symbols
Now let’s examine the layout layer symbols. As described above, there 
is a certain collection of symbols, which are drawn in a different “layer” 
on the page than all other graphic elements. These are called layout 
layer symbols. All these symbols are collected in the Layout symbol 
palette, see below.
How the layout layer is stored
❐It is very important to understand how the layout layer is handled to 
avoid some otherwise potential confusion.
The layout layer is not stored individually for each track, as the other 
symbols are. Instead it is common to a “set of tracks”. Let’s illustrate 
this with an example:
You have four tracks that make up a string quartet. You edit them all at 
the same time and add symbols to the score, both note layer symbols 
and layout layer symbols.
Now let’s say you close the Score Editor and open only one of the 
tracks for editing. All your note layer symbols are there just as you left 
them, but the layout layer symbols have disappeared!
Don’t worry, close the editor again, and open all four tracks for editing 
and the symbols are back.
You have probably got a clue as to what is going on by now. The layout 
layer symbols are part of a “bigger entity” called … “layout”. And a lay-
out is something that is stored not per track, but for a group of tracks. 
Each time you open the same combination of tracks for editing, you 
get the same layout.
There are also other things that are part of the layout — apart from the 
symbols in the layout layer. You will find more info about this in the 
chapter “Working with layouts”. 
						

							CUBASE SX8 – 160 Working with symbols
Global layer symbols
The global layer symbols are layout symbols that are present in all lay-
outs. The global layer holds the symbols found in the Global Symbols 
palette, but also barline types and bar number offsets.
Using global layer symbols in conjunction with the Play Order mode, 
you can have playback in the program follow the score – repeats, da 
Capos and endings will be played back properly allowing you to hear 
your compositions as they would be played back by live players.
Why three layers?
There are several reasons for this division into layers:
• Many of the symbols that are in the layout layer can be stretched to span over 
several staves, or for other reasons make more sense to think of as belonging 
to a certain group of tracks.
• The layout layer is only one part of the bigger concept of layouts. Layouts al-
lows you to easily extract parts from a full score and perform automatic format-
ting. This is all described in the chapter “Working with layouts”.
• Typically, you want to display some symbols – repeat bar lines, endings, score 
titles etc. – for all layouts in a score. To make this easier, they can belong to 
the global layer.
On page 163 and onwards you will find out which symbols are part of 
which layer.