Welcome to Canorus v0.7, a free cross-platform music score editor. Visit our website at http://www.canorus.org.
The first thing you’ll notice when starting the application is the main window. It should look something like this:
The main window consists of a menu at the top, insert toolbar on the left, general and music properties on the top and a tabbed score view.
Each document can have one or more sheets - a sheet is represented as a tab (similar to spreadsheet applications). Multiple sheets can be used for different score parts, transpositions, variations or just as a temporary place to write your ideas down.
To add notes and rests to your score, click on the staff, select the voice at the top and
the click the “Insert playable” icon
in the left toolbar. The
toolbar on the top now shows you the note/rest length, visibility, tuplets
etc.
To add a note to a score, click on the staff using the left mouse button. To add a rest, use the right mouse button. For raising/lowering a note for half a step, use +/- keys. To fix the just added note, use up/down keys. To toggle a dotted note, use the . key.
To insert clefs, key signatures, time signatures, barlines and other music elements, use the buttons located in the left toolbar, set their properties at the top and click on the score. The left toolbar shows you the elements you can add to the currently selected context.
For slurs, first select two or more notes and add a slur.
A special keyboard shortcut b manually inserts a single barline at the current location (eg. for pickup measures).
If you want to change any music elements properties once they were already inserted,
you have to enter Edit mode using a special keyboard shortcut e or the red arrow
icon in the left toolbar
. When selecting one or more elements, their
properties appear in the toolbar at the top.
You can leave any mode and going to Select mode by hitting esc key.
To insert a new staff, click on the “Insert context” dropdown icon in the left
toolbar
, select a context (staff, lyrics or function marks) and click on
the score.
To insert a new voice, select a staff and click on the “New voice” icon
.
To play the music you inserted from the current selection hit the spacebar key or
click on the green playback icon
. To stop the playback, click on the
icon again.
Canorus uses LilyPond application for printing.
Unfortunately, LilyPond is not bundled with Canorus. The first step is to install LilyPond - visit http://www.lilypond.org and download it. You can also use your distribution package manager to install it on Linux.
For print preview, you should have a working PDF viewer installed on your
system. Use File->Print preview
.
You can print the document directly using the File->Print or you can print it indirectly from your PDF viewer application (preferred).