Help & guides
Short, task-shaped how-tos for getting things done in QuickStave.
Getting started
Creating spanners — hairpins, slurs, and lines
Select a start note and press a spanner's shortcut — a range applies it immediately, a single note lets you pick the end point with a live preview.
Editing the note before your cursor
After you enter a note, your cursor moves on to the rest that follows — press an accidental, octave, or tie key without moving back, and it edits the note you just entered instead of doing nothing.
Entering notes
Add notes by selecting a beat and pressing a duration key, then setting the pitch — every duration and action on the Note palette prints its own shortcut.
Selecting notes and ranges
Your cursor is already a selection — extend it to a range with Shift, a whole measure at a time with Ctrl+Shift, or a whole staff with a triple-click.
Using the palette
The palette under the score holds every editing tool in eight tabs, F1 to F8, and F10 shrinks it to a button in the corner when you want more of the score.
Note
Building chords by stacking intervals
Alt+2 through Alt+8 add a diatonic interval above the selected note — or above every note in a range — so you can build chords without leaving the keyboard.
Creating tuplets
Select the first note of the group and press F1 P, then a digit from duplet through nonuplet — or dial in a custom ratio.
Playing notes in from a MIDI keyboard
Connect a MIDI keyboard or drum pad and play notes straight onto the staff, one step at a time — pitch from the key, duration from the Note palette.
Sharps, flats, and courtesy accidentals
Required accidentals are computed automatically from the key signature — the F1 K submenu is for overriding a pitch, respelling it enharmonically, or adding a courtesy reminder.
Dynamics
Articulations
Articulations, fermatas, and breath marks
Staccato, accent, and the rest of the F3 direct-toggle cluster apply with one keypress — no end point to pick, unlike a spanner.
Bowing and guitar technique marks
F3 9 marks bowing direction and harmonics on any instrument; F3 G marks guitar-specific techniques, gated to fretted instruments and drawn only on the TAB staff.
Changing how notes are beamed
QuickStave beams notes by the time signature. F3 B breaks, joins or removes the beam at one note, divides inner beams, beams a selection together, or feathers a group.
Using different notehead shapes
F3 N swaps a note's head between 10 shapes — X, diamond, triangle, slash, and more — for percussion cues, harmonics, slash charts, and silent counting.
Ornaments
Adding grace notes
F4 N adds an acciaccatura at the cursor's pitch, or toggles acciaccatura/appoggiatura on a grace note you've already selected.
Adding slurs
A slur phrases together notes of different pitches, using the same select-then-shortcut spanner mechanic as hairpins and lines.
Glissando and tremolo
Both are set directly on a note, with no end point to pick — despite looking spanner-adjacent, neither glissando nor tremolo uses the select-start-then-navigate-to-end mechanic.
Trill lines and octave-shift lines
A trill line and an octave-shift line both use the same select-then-shortcut spanner mechanic as slurs and hairpins, stretching across a passage rather than sitting on one note.
Turns, mordents, and trills
Trill, mordent, turn, and their variants are a direct one-key toggle on a note — press a key, done, the same "no end point" mechanic as articulations.
Voices
Select & edit
Copying, cutting, and nudging a selection
Standard clipboard shortcuts work on the current selection; nudge moves it earlier or later in time by a duration step you choose, with no change to pitch.
Narrowing what a selection affects
A filter narrows which events inside an existing range selection an operation touches, without changing what's highlighted.
Transposing a selection
F6 T opens a dialog to transpose the current selection chromatically, diatonically, or by a named interval, with an independent direction and octave count.
Text
Adding chord symbols
Type a chord like "Cmaj7" or "G7/B" and see a live voicing preview and audition button — chord symbols transpose correctly with the score, unlike plain text.
Adding expression text
F7 E adds interpretive text like dolce or con fuoco — over 50 known terms carry a bound playback effect shown as an Effect indicator, or type freeform text with none.
Adding lyrics
Lyrics attach per note, one syllable per verse — Space commits and advances, a hyphen continues a word, and Enter commits and exits lyrics mode.
Adding rehearsal marks
F7 R stamps a boxed or circled letter/number at a measure, auto-suggesting the next one in sequence, for verbal navigation during rehearsal.
Adding staff text
F7 X adds free multiline text above or below the staff for anything the other text types don't cover, with no playback effect.
Adding technique text
F7 K adds upright instrument-action text like pizz. or arco — techniques form cancel-pairs and can change MIDI program, octave, velocity, and duration on playback.
Adding tempo markings
Eight tempo categories under F7 T — each affects playback differently, from a hard BPM value to a gradual interpolated change to a swing feel.
Swinging the eighths
F7 T F marks a swing, shuffle or straight feel — one marking that both prints on the page and changes how playback lands the off-beats, with the ratio set by ear.
Using the sustain pedal
Sustain-pedal marking is a spanner with three notation styles under F7 P — text (Ped. / *), a bracket that steps down at the release, or both together.
Bar
Adding and removing measures
"+" adds a measure after the current one; F8 I inserts before it instead; Ctrl+Delete deletes the current measure or selection.
Barlines and repeat signs
A repeat pair needs both ends set independently — a begin-repeat on the measure that starts it, a repeat-end on the measure that ends it.
Changing clef mid-score
A clef change is a normal, fully-supported mid-score edit — the new clef stays active on that staff from that point forward until the next explicit change.
Changing time and key signature
F8 T opens the time signature picker and F8 K opens the key signature circle of fifths — both apply from the selected measure forward.
First and second endings (voltas)
A volta brackets which measures play on a given pass through a repeat — select the range first for one keypress, or enter volta mode with no selection and navigate to the end.
Jumping to a measure or rehearsal mark
Ctrl+G opens Goto — type a bar number, or pick from a merged list of named sections and rehearsal marks, to move your cursor there instantly.
Segno, Coda, and D.S./D.C. markers
F8 N toggles Segno, Coda, and Da Capo/Dal Segno markers at a measure — playback actually jumps on them, resolving repeats and codas the way a performer would read them.
Splitting a score into sections
F8 S marks a titled heading within one continuous score — a forced system break, an optional title/subtitle, restarted bar numbering, and per-part staff visibility.
Instruments
Adding and managing instruments
Ctrl+I opens the Instruments panel to add instruments by name or from a ready-made ensemble preset, remove them, and drag to reorder how parts stack.
Guitar tablature
TAB is a view of the same notes, not separate data — one part, two synced staves, with a Tab Display toggle controlling which staff or staves actually show.
Percussion and drum kit notation
Picking a percussion preset from the instrument list sets everything — staff lines, clef, and a notehead-per-pad map — with no separate percussion-staff toggle.
Playing the virtual piano
Play any QuickStave instrument from your computer keyboard, a touchscreen or a MIDI keyboard — up to four at once, linked to sound together from one key.
Files & sharing
Editing score properties
Ctrl+P opens Score Properties — title, composer and header fields, paper size, margins, staff size, page numbers, and a live print preview, all saved with the score.
Exporting your score
Ctrl+S opens Share & Export — download the score as MXL, MusicXML or MIDI, render WAV or MP3 audio, or open Print Preview to save a paginated PDF.
Importing and scanning sheet music
Bring in a MusicXML or MIDI file, or turn a photo or PDF into editable notation with on-device optical music recognition (OMR).
Restoring an earlier version
The History toggle in Score Properties lists every saved version of a cloud-synced score, with a live preview and one-click restore.
Sharing a score
Ctrl+S's Share & Export panel shares a private link, invites collaborators to co-edit, publishes to the public gallery, or generates an embed snippet — separate from the file/audio export it also offers.
Using the audio mixer
Alt+A opens the per-part mixer — volume, pan, reverb send, mute, and solo for every instrument, plus a master strip, saved with the score.