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X / Cross Noteheads in Music Notation

X noteheads, also referred to as “cross” or “crossed” noteheads have a number of functions in modern music notation.

In percussion writing, they are the go-to for non-pitched metallophone instruments such as cymbals or tamtam or gong. For drum set, particularly in jazz or rock charts, cymbals are typically the most active part, and X noteheads help these stand out from the other parts on a 5 line staff.

In vocal music, x noteheads are often used tor spoken text, or for unvoiced sounds / vocal effects. In both instrumental and vocal writing, they can be used to indicate notes of indefinite pitch. And in jazz charts, X noteheads can be used to indicate “ghost” notes in a melodic line.

(for drum set writing, there is an actual “ghost” notehead, which is a regular notehead in parenthesis.)

Cross (x) noteheads can also be used as a special effect to indicate hand / finger damping of instruments such as guitar, or tuned percussion such as vibraphone.

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Expression maps and Play mode improvements | New Features in Dorico 3.5

🎬  This article is a transcription of one of the excellent tutorial videos posted to the official Dorico YouTube channel.

Presented here in written form with the kind permission of its creator, Anthony Hughes, this tutorial is titled “Expression maps and Play mode improvements in Dorico 3.5“…

Hello, I’m Anthony Hughes, and I’m here to show you the improvements we’ve made to VST Expression Maps and working in Play mode, here in Dorico 3.5.

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JetStream Finale Controller Update Announced

If you are a Finale user, you may have already heard about JetStream Finale Controller. JetStream is a tool designed to increase your speed and productivity in Finale, which works with Elgato’s 15 key or 32 key Stream Deck hardware, its Mobile apps for iOS and Android, and also Keyboard Maestro for Mac.

JetStream Finale Controller is a community-driven project; written by a small group of Finale users with diverse backgrounds. JetStream itself is (and its developers promise) will remain, free to download and use.

Today, an update to JetStream Finale Controller was announced, with a number of new features, as well as various bug fixes and enhancements. Here’s what’s new:

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Perfect Layout Plugin for Finale

Music notation software has evolved considerable over the last 20 years, A goal for Finale and the other big players in this space continues to be automation; eliminating, as much as possible, the need for manual edits.

For instance, as of Finale 26, when you add more than one articulation to a note, they stack intelligently; and automatically adjust to avoid collisions with slurs. But collision avoidance of articulations is just the starting point for any good layout.

What if you could just enter notes and rests, articulations, phrasing and text, define a page size and margins, and the software would automate nearly all of the little details to make the music look great on the page? Magical, right?

Perfect Layout for Finale by Elbsound Studio aims to automate more than 100 processes for aligning, balancing and collision removal – and extends from articulations, and smart shapes to hairpins, lyrics and much more.

The Mac version of Perfect Layout was released today, bringing parity with the Windows version.

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Point Release Update to JetStream Finale Controller

If you are already using JetStream Finale Controller, hopefully by now, you’ve had a chance to explore and enjoy many of its time-saving productivity functions, which range from simple tool and menu selection to multi-step productivity macros for Finale.

There are currently close to one thousand functions in the Stream Deck versions of JetStream, with almost 500 functions in the Keyboard Maestro version. The first point release update to JetStream v1 was released on November 1st.

Here is a list of the new features in the update:

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