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G7
User guide
Edition 2.7
March 2003
User Guide written and typeset by Daniel Spreadbury, and sub-edited by Ben Finn.
‘Getting started in the music business’ chapter written by Sarah Marten.
See the About G7 dialog for full G7 credits.
Please email any suggestions for improvements to this User Guide to userguide@sibelius.com
(but please do not use this address for suggestions or queries about the G7 program itself – see the
separate Latest information and technical help sheet for the correct address for your country).
G7 copyright © Sibelius Software Ltd and its licensors 1987–2003

G7 User Guide copyright © Sibelius Software Ltd 2003
Published by Sibelius Software Ltd, The Old Toy Factory, 20–22 City North, Fonthill Road, London
N4 3HF, UK
All rights reserved. This User Guide may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic,
recording, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise – in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of the publisher. Although every care has
been taken in the preparation of this User Guide, neither the publisher nor the authors can take responsibility for any loss or damage arising from
any errors or omissions it may contain.
G7, Sibelius, Scorch, Flexi-time, Espressivo, Rubato, Rhythmic feel, Opus, Inkpen2, magnetic, the G7, Sibelius and double helix logos, G7music.net,
‘The fastest, easiest way to create, play and post tab’ and ‘Play, write and publish songs’ are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Sibelius Soft-
ware Ltd in the USA, UK and other countries. All other trademarks are acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.
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Contents
Introduction ....................................................5 Graphics files .................................................97
Before you install ............................................7 Guitar Guide................................................103
Installing G7 for Windows ..............................8 Hiding objects..............................................105
Installing G7 for Mac.....................................11 Internet publishing......................................106
Key signatures.............................................110
Quick tour 13
Layout and formatting ................................111
Tutorial 25 Lines ............................................................113
About this tutorial.........................................27 Lute tablature..............................................117
Running for the first time .............................28 MIDI devices ...............................................118
Finding your way around .............................31 MIDI files.....................................................121
Playback ........................................................36 MIDI for beginners ......................................126
Starting a new score......................................39 MIDI setup for Windows.............................129
Tab input .......................................................42 MIDI setup for Mac .....................................131
Notation input...............................................48 Mixer...........................................................139
Working with lyrics and chords ....................54 Page and staff size........................................142
Reference 63 Printing........................................................143
Advanced guitar markings ............................65 Properties ....................................................146
ASCII tab files................................................70 Repeats ........................................................147
Beams............................................................72 Scanning......................................................149
Breaks............................................................73 Tab input .....................................................164
Chord diagrams.............................................74 Text .............................................................166
Clefs...............................................................77 Time signatures ...........................................172
Colored objects..............................................78 Triplets and other tuplets ............................174
Display settings..............................................79 Tunings and Staff Types ..............................175
Drums and percussion...................................81 Voices ..........................................................179
Files ...............................................................85 Index 183
Filters.............................................................89
Flexi-time™ ..................................................90 License Agreement......................................191
Getting started in the music business............94
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Introduction
Introduction
Thank you for purchasing G7. Over the next few pages we’ll tell you what G7 can do for you and
how to use this User Guide.
What can G7 do for me?

G7 is the first tab and notation software designed specifically with guitarists and songwriters in
mind. It’s easy to use and so fast to learn that it’ll change the way you play and write music.
If you’re a guitarist, you can create tab or notation instantly using the on-screen fretboard display,
or by playing your MIDI keyboard or guitar directly into the computer using G7’s Flexi-time fea-
ture. G7 also loads ASCII tab and MIDI files. You can even scan in notation and turn it into tab so
that you can play it, and the on-screen fretboard will show you how to finger the music as it plays
back.
If you’re a songwriter, you’ll quickly be able to write out songs, add chords, generate accompani-
ments, hear them play back, and then print them out at publication quality, post them on the
Internet, or send them to your friends in MIDI or ASCII tab format.
If you’re a teacher, you can create educational materials incorporating pictures and colored notes,
or show your students how to play particular pieces using G7’s expressive playback and on-screen
fretboard.
Whether you’re writing for solo guitar or a rock band, G7 will help you produce the results you
want quicker and easier than ever before. With comprehensive support for fretted instruments
from guitar to sitar, from dulcimer to dobro, the only limit is your imagination.
About this User Guide

This User Guide is designed to help you get the most out of G7, taking you right through from the
first steps of installing the software to using its most sophisticated features, such as creating your
own tunings, in easy-to-follow steps.
You don’t have to read the whole User Guide to get started with G7. If you are fairly familiar with
computers and just want a rapid summary of how to use G7’s main features, read the Quick tour
on page 13, which introduces all the main concepts and features of the program in just a few
pages. Alternatively, if you want to be introduced to G7’s features a little more gently (and learn
more about them as you go), work through the Tutorial on page 25 instead, which will take just a
couple of hours.
Then you can dip into the other main section, Reference, to find out how to use particular
advanced features as you need them.
You should find that G7 is so intuitive to use that after a few days you’ll rarely need to refer to this
User Guide, but if you get stuck, just turn to the comprehensive Index at the back. The back cover
also gives a handy ready reference to some of G7’s basic features.
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Introduction
Typography in this User Guide
* Names of computer keys, menus and dialogs are written like this.
* Items in menus and sub-menus are denoted with >, so ‘choose File > Open’ means ‘choose Open
from the File menu’.
* b Tab input means ‘see the Tab input topic’, normally found in the Reference section unless
otherwise specified.
Basic terminology in this User Guide

If you know how to point and click with your mouse, you probably know enough about using
computers to use G7. Here are some computer terms used in this User Guide:
* G7 is almost identical on Windows and Mac, but where there are differences, mainly in key-
board shortcuts, the Windows convention is listed first, e.g. ‘Type Ctrl+A or XA’ means hold
down the Ctrl (Windows) or X (Mac) key and type A. (Even though A is written as a capital let-
ter, don’t type Shift unless explicitly told to do so.)
* Similarly, ‘Alt+click or z-click’ means hold down the Alt (Windows) or z (Mac) key and click.
* On Windows, to ‘click’ something means to move the mouse arrow over it and click the left
mouse button. To ‘right-click’ something means to point at it with the mouse and click the right
mouse button.
* To ‘drag’ something means to point at it with the mouse, and then click and hold the left mouse
button (or the only mouse button on Mac) while moving the mouse. To finish dragging, just let
go of the mouse button.
* A ‘dialog’ is a window that asks you for information, with buttons for you to click when you’ve
finished. Most dialogs are accessed by choosing menu items with the mouse, or by typing the
appropriate keyboard shortcut.
* The ‘numeric keypad’ is the rectangle of numbers and other characters at the very right-hand
side of your computer keyboard (unless you have a laptop computer; laptops don’t usually have
a separate numeric keypad.)
* ‘Return’ is the large key to the right of the letter keys. On some keyboards it is labeled with
‘Enter’ or a special arrow symbol, but we always call it Return.
* ‘Enter’ is the large key at the bottom right of the numeric keypad. On some keyboards it is unla-
beled, but it still means Enter.
* Some keys are labeled differently on different keyboards. We’ll use the standard symbols for
these keys on Mac, but here are the corresponding names which may appear on your keyboard:
Mac symbol Mac name Windows equivalent
X Command Ctrl (‘Control’)
x Shift Shift
z Option Alt
R Return Return (on main keyboard)
E Enter Enter (on numeric keypad)
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Before you install
Before you install

What’s in the box?
Before you get down to the important business of installing G7, it’s worth checking the contents of
your box to make sure you have everything you need. Inside your box you should find:
* This User Guide (obviously)
* G7 program CD-ROM – both Windows and Mac versions come on the same disc
* A separate booklet called Latest information & technical help – check this for any last-
minute changes, and also for details on how to get help with using G7.
If any of the above items are missing, please contact technical help (see the enclosed Latest infor-
mation and technical help booklet).
Computer requirements
The minimum computer requirements for running G7 on your computer are listed on the soft-
ware box. It’s worth checking them over before you install the software.
Privacy policy
When you register G7 with us, we ask for your software’s serial number, your name, address,
email, phone number, and other details such as your musical activities. Some of this information is
optional.
Your registration information is used to:
* Provide you with technical help and upgrades
* Find out what kinds of people use our software
* Prevent unauthorized people using your software (e.g. if your computer is stolen)
* Contact you by post or email about upgrades, new software and occasionally other products and
services which we think will be of interest to you. If you don’t want to receive this information
by email, just use the unsubscribe link in our emails; or for post, contact Sibelius or the distribu-
tor for your country (see the Latest information and technical help booklet supplied with
your software for contact details).
We may share registration information between Sibelius Group companies. If you are not in
North, South or Central America or the UK, we may share this information with the distributor for
your country, so they can provide you with technical help, upgrades, etc.
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Installing G7 for Windows

It’s traditional for software manuals to gloss over the installation process, and say something like:
“Follow the instructions on the screen.” What this normally means is that the author isn’t quite
sure what will happen next – for all he knows, the programmers have changed the installation
procedure at the last minute.
However, we’ll go out on a limb and tell you what actually happens when installing G7:
* Exit any programs that are running. It’s a particularly good idea to exit any anti-virus programs
loaded automatically when your computer starts up (e.g. McAfee VirusScan or Norton Anti-
Virus).
* Take the G7 CD-ROM out of its case, put it (labeled side up) in the CD-ROM drive of the com-
puter, and close the drive tray
* Wait for a few seconds. The CD-ROM drive should start up and a dialog will appear on the
screen.
(If there’s no sign of activity after a few seconds, click the Start menu, choose Run and type
D:\autorun.exe – where D is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive – then hit Return on the
main keyboard.)
* Click Install G7 to start the installation process.
* The installer warns you to close any programs which may be running (which you should
already have done). Click Next.
* You are given the opportunity to read the G7 license agreement (which is also printed at the
back of this User Guide). Click Next to agree to it.
* Then you’re asked to type in your serial number. This is on the back of the CD case, and starts
with the letters GC. Type in the serial number carefully, though you needn’t type spaces, or cap-
itals for the letters.
* Click Next. (If you typed the number in wrong, you’ll be given an error message and you’ll have
to try again.)
* The installer suggests a folder to install G7 into. Click Next (unless you want to change it, in
which case feel free to do so).
* If you’re running Windows 2000 or XP, you’ll be asked whether you want the program to be
made available to all users on the computer or just the current user. We recommend that you
choose All users, then click Next.
* The installer tells you it’s ready to install G7. Click Next.
* Things flash and zoom past on the screen as G7 is installed. This only takes a few seconds.
* Now it gives you the opportunity to install some additional components. You are encouraged to
accept the default options, which are as follows:
% Install Adobe Acrobat Reader: this is required for the built-in Guitar Guide
% Install QuickTime: this is required to hear the music examples in the Guitar Guide
% Install Sibelius Scorch: this web browser plug-in allows you to view G7 and Sibelius files on
the Internet
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% Install Neuratron PhotoScore Lite: this program is required for scanning sheet music into
G7
% If you’re running Windows 98 or later and have Internet Explorer 4 or higher, you shouldn’t
need to install the Microsoft Common Controls Upgrade, so leave that option switched off.
* Click Next to start installing the additional components
* First, Acrobat Reader will start to install. Click Next.
* It will ask you where you want to install Acrobat Reader – just click Next
* You will be thanked for choosing Acrobat Reader. Click OK.
* There may be a long pause at this point, and it may appear that your computer has crashed.
Don’t worry: it’s just doing things in the background, and this takes longer on some machines
than others. Why not have a cup of coffee to calm your nerves if things seem to be going slowly?
* Next, QuickTime will install. Click Next twice.
* You’ll see QuickTime’s license agreement; click Agree
* You’re asked where you want to install QuickTime – just click Next
* QuickTime asks you what kind of installation you want. The default setting is Recommended,
which (surprisingly enough) we recommend, so just click Next again.
* Click Next a couple more times, and QuickTime will finally start to install.
* To further test your patience, a little program called the QuickTime Setup Assistant will appear.
Click Next repeatedly until it relents and goes away.
* Finally, you are asked if you want to launch the QuickTime player now, and whether you want
to read the ‘readme’ file. Switch off both options, and click Close.
* Next, Scorch will install. Click Next and you’ll be presented with Scorch’s license agreement.
Read it and then click Next to agree to it.
* Scorch installs to the by-now customary accompaniment of progress bars and whizzing num-
bers.
* Click Finish; if you are using Windows 2000 or XP, the installer will tell you that you may need
to restart your computer for Scorch to work correctly. Don’t worry about this, since we may be
restarting your computer in a minute anyway. If you see this message, just click OK.
* Now PhotoScore Lite will start to install. If your screen resolution is smaller than 1024 x 768, a
message will pop up recommending that you increase it. Just click OK.
* Click Next to see the license agreement for PhotoScore Lite. Read it and click Next to agree to it.
* You’re asked to fill in a few details: type in your Name and Company (if applicable); the Prod-
uct ID field is filled in for you. Then click Next.
* PhotoScore Lite tells you where it will be installed; again, you can change this if you have strong
feelings about it. Otherwise, click Next.
* Click Next once more and PhotoScore Lite will be installed
* Click Finish
* If you switched on the option to install the Microsoft Common Controls Upgrade, you’ll now be
asked if you want to install them. Click Yes; click Yes again to accept the license agreement; and
when told that the common controls have been installed, click OK.
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* Now the installer will do one of two things:
% You may be asked if you want to start your copy of G7 now; click Yes if you like
% You may be told that your computer needs to be restarted, in which case click OK and wait
for the computer to restart
If you can’t see any window offering you any choices, chances are that QuickTime has left a
window open on your desktop containing its shortcut icons; close this window and you should
see the G7 installer’s final choices.
* Eject the CD-ROM, put it back in its case, and into a safe (or at least, into a safe place). The CD-
ROM case is just as important as the CD-ROM itself, as it has your serial number printed on it.
Now turn to Running for the first time on page 28 for what to do next.
Installing additional components

If you chose not to install additional components like Adobe Acrobat Reader, PhotoScore Lite and
Scorch when first installing G7, you can easily install them at a later date. Just insert the G7 CD-
ROM into your computer’s CD-ROM drive, and when the menu appears, click the appropriate
option.
(If the menu doesn’t appear automatically when you insert the CD-ROM, click the Start menu,
choose Run and type D:\autorun.exe – where D is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive – then
hit Return on the main keyboard.)
Installing G7 on two computers

You are allowed to install G7 on two different computers for your own use, such as a desktop com-
puter at home and a notebook (laptop) you carry around with you. However, you’re not allowed
to install G7 on a second computer for someone else to use; nor can you use G7 on more than two
computers (it automatically checks this).
Reinstalling G7
If you need to reinstall G7, simply insert the CD-ROM into your computer and proceed as if you
were installing G7 for the first time. The installer will detect that G7 is already installed on your
computer and simply reinstall the program for you.
Uninstalling G7
Uninstalling means taking your copy of G7 off your computer, probably so that you can install it
on another computer.
To uninstall G7, choose Uninstall G7 from the Sibelius Software program group in the Start
menu, or use the standard Add/Remove Programs utility in Control Panel.
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Installing G7 for Mac

It’s traditional for software manuals to gloss over the installation process, and say something like:
“Follow the instructions on the screen.” What this normally means is that the author isn’t quite
sure what will happen next – for all he knows, the programmers have changed the installation
procedure at the last minute.
However, we’ll go out on a limb and tell you what actually happens when installing G7:
* Take the G7 CD-ROM out of its case, put it (labeled side up) in the CD-ROM drive of the com-
puter, and close the drive tray
* Wait for a few seconds. An icon for the CD, labeled G7, should appear on your desktop, and a
window containing icons should open automatically; if it doesn’t, double-click the G7 icon.
* Double-click the G7 Installer icon to start the installer
* You are given the opportunity to read the G7 license agreement (which is also printed at the
back of this User Guide). Click Accept to agree to it.
* The installer will tell you where it is going to install G7; the default is the Applications folder on
your Mac’s hard disk, although you can change it if you feel strongly about this kind of thing.
We suggest you just click Install to continue.
On Mac OS 9, we strongly recommend that you install G7 onto the same disk or partition as
your System Folder, otherwise you will be unable to open the score examples in the Guitar
Guide directly in G7.
* Things flash by as the program is installed – this takes a few seconds.
* You will be told that installation was successful. Click Quit to exit the installer.
Now turn to Running for the first time on page 28 for what to do next.
Installing additional components

A number of additional components are included on the G7 CD-ROM. We recommend you install
most or all of these now, simply by double-clicking the appropriate icons and following the on-
screen instructions. The additional components are as follows:
* Adobe Acrobat Reader: this is required for the built-in Guitar Guide
* Sibelius Scorch: this web browser plug-in allows you to view G7 and Sibelius files on the Internet.
Note that although Scorch works with all web browsers in Mac OS X, it only works with Opera
under Mac OS 9.
* Opera: if your computer uses Mac OS 9.x, you will need this web browser if you want to use
Scorch. If your computer uses Mac OS X, you can use Internet Explorer, Netscape or Safari
instead. See www.opera.com for more details about Opera.
* Neuratron PhotoScore Lite: this program is required for scanning sheet music into G7.
* Apple QuickTime 6.1: used for playback if you do not have any external MIDI devices, and also
used by the built-in Guitar Guide – see www.apple.com/quicktime for more details.
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Installing G7 on two computers
You are allowed to install G7 on two different computers for your own use, such as a desktop com-
puter at home and a notebook (laptop) you carry around with you. However, you’re not allowed
to install G7 on a second computer for someone else to use; nor can you use G7 on more than two
computers (it automatically checks this).
Reinstalling G7
If you need to reinstall G7, simply insert the CD-ROM into your computer and proceed as if you
were installing G7 for the first time.
Uninstalling G7
Uninstalling means taking your copy of G7 off your computer, probably so that you can install it
on another computer.
To uninstall G7, simply drag the G7 folder to the Trashcan.
12
Quick tour
Quick tour
If you just want a quick summary of how to use G7, this is the chapter to read! Over the next
eleven pages we’re going to introduce all the main features of G7, and tell you where to look in
this User Guide for more details about them.
However, if you want to learn G7 at a gentler pace (and in greater depth), skip this chapter and
read the Tutorial on page 25 instead.
Installing G7
Installing G7 is as simple as following the instructions on the screen after putting the CD-ROM
into your computer, but if you need more help, see Installing G7 for Windows on page 8 or
Installing G7 for Mac on page 11 for more help.
Registering G7
So that you can get access to technical help and future updates to G7, you need to register it
within the first few days of using it. This can be done automatically over the Internet, and all you
need to do is follow the instructions on the screen when you first run the program – it will keep
prompting you to register every time you run it until you eventually give in. See Registering G7
in Running for the first time on page 28 for more details.
Quick Start dialog

The first thing you’ll see when G7 loads is the Quick Start dialog, which allows you to open the
last song you were working on, start a new song, import a MIDI or tab file, scan printed music, or
use the Guitar Guide (see below). It also gives you a handy ‘tip of the day’ on using G7.
Opening a score
In this User Guide, we’ll call the files you work on (whether they contain tab or notation) scores.
You can open a score from the Quick Start dialog, or by clicking the Open button on G7’s toolbar,
or by choosing File > Open (shortcut Ctrl+O or XO).
Look and feel

G7 is designed to be as intuitive as possible. If you get stuck, try doing the most obvious thing – for
example, to move the virtual paper around on the screen, just click and drag it. If you’re familiar
with other computer programs, you’ll be able to work out what the various buttons on the toolbar
do, and what most of the options in the menus are for.
You may not be quite so familiar with the various floating windows on the screen, which are:
* Navigator: this is like a very zoomed-out version of your score. It appears by default in the bot-
tom left-hand corner of the screen and allows you to move quickly around your score just by
clicking and dragging the white rectangle. To hide or show it, choose Window > Navigator
(shortcut Ctrl+Alt+N or zXN).
* Keypad: this appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, and corresponds with the
numeric keypad on your computer’s keyboard. The five buttons at the top of the Keypad switch
between the five available pages – or ‘layouts’ as we call them – and the buttons at the bottom
are for inputting music in different voices, i.e. where you need different rhythms simultaneously
on the same staff. To hide or show the keypad, choose Window > Keypad (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+K or
zXK).
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Quick tour
* Fretboard: switch this on and off by choosing Window > Fretboard (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F or
zXF). The Fretboard can be used both as a way of inputting music into your score, and also for
showing you how to play any of the staves in your score on a standard guitar or a four- or five-
string bass. Click the Setup button to choose which staff the Fretboard should follow during
playback – it doesn’t have to be a tab or guitar staff, because the Fretboard can intelligently work
out a suitable fingering for any music, whether or not it’s for guitar. Alternatively, it can show
you how to play the chord diagrams in your score.
* Mixer: switch this on and off by choosing Window > Mixer (Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM). The Mixer
allows you to change the playback of your score in real-time.
* Properties: switch this on and off by typing Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP, or by choosing Window > Prop-
erties. You won’t often need to use Properties, but it’s useful for e.g. changing the font and size
of text, selecting different notehead designs and so on.
All of these windows are discussed in more detail in Finding your way around on page 31.
Playback
To play back a score, just click the play button on the toolbar or hit P on your keyboard (the Esc
key stops playback). G7 follows your score during playback with a blue line, and the toolbar also
displays the time elapsed since the beginning of the song. Drag the slider on the toolbar during
playback to change the tempo; as you drag, the time display shows the current tempo in beats per
minute (BPM). Note that to change tempo permanently so that your score always plays back at a
particular speed, you should insert a metronome mark in your score using text.
G7’s MIDI playback is very sophisticated, and responds to just about every marking in your score,
including dynamics, hairpins, tempo changes, bends, slides, glissandos, trills, repeats, and more.
You can tweak playback in real time using the Mixer window (just choose Window > Mixer, or
type Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM at any time to make it appear), and more advanced playback options
(such as swing and other rhythmic feels, reverb, and so on) can be found in the Play > Perfor-
mance (shortcut Shift-P) and Play > Playback Options dialogs.
If you don’t get any sound during playback, go to the Play > Devices dialog and make sure that the
Use column at the top of the dialog is set to Yes for only one of the listed devices.
For more information about playback, see Playback on page 36.
Guitar Guide
G7 includes a very useful resource called the Guitar Guide. Simply click the Guide button on the
toolbar or choose Help > Guitar Guide to access it.
The Guide is split into three sections: Guitars describes the many different kinds of guitars, and
includes recordings and pictures of them and details of their main features; Techniques describes
how to play and notate special effects such as pull-offs, hammer-ons, slides, bends, vibrato, har-
monics and so on, complete with informative illustrations and audio samples so you can hear the
effects for real; and Styles contains dozens of examples and descriptions of a wide variety of styles
of music – from jazz to rock to blues and back again – both as tab and notation (ready for you to
open and edit directly in G7) and high-quality audio clips.
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Quick tour
For more information about the content of the Guitar Guide and how to use it, see Guitar Guide
on page 103.
Starting a new score

To start a new score, click the New button on the toolbar or in the Quick Start dialog, or choose
File > New (shortcut Ctrl+N or XN). A helpful dialog will appear, allowing you to choose from one
of the pre-defined instruments or groups (like guitar + tab, pop group, rock group, and so on), or
choose your own instruments by choosing the Blank template and clicking the Add Instruments
button.
You can move back and forth through the dialog using the Next and Previous buttons, and click
Finish at any time to create your new score. The dialog allows you to set options such as the visual
style of your score (standard or handwritten), add musical markings such as the time and key sig-
natures, and add text such as the title and composer/songwriter to the first page.
But if you don’t want to decide any of that to start with, just choose the most appropriate template
and click Finish – you can add more instruments, a title and so on later.
For more information about using this dialog, see Starting a new score on page 39.
Inputting music
There are six ways of inputting music into G7, which are:
* Using the mouse to choose note values (the different lengths of notes, e.g. eighth notes (qua-
vers) and quarter notes (crotchets)) and articulations (markings that go above or below notes
and give particular playing instructions, e.g. accents, staccatos, etc.) from the on-screen Keypad,
then clicking on the staff or Fretboard window to add notes
* Using the computer’s keyboard to enter music by typing fret numbers or note names (A–G) to
choose the pitch and the numeric keypad to choose the note values and articulations.
* Using a MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar to record music in real time using G7’s unique Flexi-
time™ feature
* Using a MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar to input music one note/chord at a time, using step-time
input
* Importing music from another program. G7 can import ASCII tab and MIDI files. G7 can also
open and save files from the music notation program Sibelius.
* Scanning printed sheet music and editing it in G7 using the supplied PhotoScore Lite program.
Just click the Scan button on the toolbar to get started; once you’ve sent the music to G7, you
can even turn scanned notation into tab with just a few clicks!
Read on for more details of each of the above note input methods.
Mouse input with the Keypad and Fretboard windows

Mouse input is probably the simplest way of inputting notes into G7. Just click the note value you
want on the Keypad, then click on the staff where you want to add the note. A helpful gray
‘shadow note’ shows you where the note will be created when you click, and you can create notes
anywhere in the bar – if you click near the end of an empty bar, G7 will automatically fill the start
of the bar with rests. To make a chord, just click above or below an existing note.
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When using mouse input on tab staves, G7 always creates notes on open strings, so to change the
fret number just type the number you want using the number keys on the main keyboard (not the
numeric keypad) after creating the note.
You can also use the on-screen Fretboard window to input and edit notes. Instead of clicking on
the staff, just click on the Fretboard to add notes. The Fretboard offers two ways of inputting notes,
Notes mode and Chords mode. Switch between these modes by clicking the appropriate button on the
Fretboard window.
In Notes mode, clicking a note on the Fretboard automatically advances you to the next rhythmic
position. In Chords mode, you can keep clicking notes onto the Fretboard to build up a chord, and
you only move on to the next rhythmic position when you click the 1 button on the Fretboard, or
type 1 on your keyboard.
Notes are represented by purple dots on the string and fret that you’re playing; to delete a note in
chords mode, just click on the purple dot and it will be removed. If you want to start off by using
the Fretboard, you first need to tell G7 where to start inputting notes. To do this, select the bar in
which you want to input notes and type N (the shortcut for Notes > Input Notes), then click the
appropriate fret/string position on the Fretboard.
Unplayably high notes (i.e. higher than the 21st fret) are indicated on the fretboard as 1 arrows at
the right-hand end of the fretboard. Unplayably low notes (i.e. lower than the nut) are indicated
on the fretboard as 0 arrows at the left-hand end of the fretboard. Open strings are shown as hol-
low circles at the left-hand end of the fretboard.
For more information about inputting notes using the fretboard, see Tab input on page 42.
Tab input on the computer keyboard

To input tab using the computer keyboard, you use the numeric keypad to choose the duration of
notes, as with other note input methods. To get the caret (the vertical blue line that shows you
where you will create notes), select the bar in which you want to start inputting tab and hit N (the
shortcut for Notes > Input Notes). To move the caret use the 3/2 keys to move it up and down a
string at a time, and use the 0/1 keys to move forward and back through the bar; by default, 1
moves you to the next quarter note (crotchet) position in the bar, unless there is another note on
the same string before that next quarter note position (you can change the default rhythmic unit
for the 0/1 keys in the Notes > Note Input Options dialog).
To add a note in a tab staff, just type the fret number using the number keys on the main keyboard
(not the numeric keypad). To move a note to the string above or below, type Ctrl+3/2 or X3/2 –
G7 even works out what fret to play to keep it sounding the same.
For more details on tab input, see Tab input on page 164.
Notation input on the computer keyboard

Notation input on the computer keyboard is very similar to step-time input (see below), except
that you use the letter keys A–G to specify the pitch of notes, and you can build chords using the
number keys above the letter keys on the main keyboard (not the numeric keypad), e.g. type 3 to
add a note a third above the selected note, or Shift-5 to add a note a fifth below.
17
Quick tour
When you input notes using the computer keyboard, G7 puts the note in the nearest octave to the
previous note, so if you enter a C followed by a G, G7 will place the G a fourth below the C. To
change the octave of a note you’ve entered, just type Ctrl+3/2 or X3/2. You can also move indi-
vidual notes up and down a step at a time using just the 3/2 keys.
For more details on notation input using the computer keyboard, see Notation input on page 48.
Flexi-time™ input
Flexi-time is G7’s intelligent real-time music entry method. Connect a MIDI keyboard or MIDI
guitar to your computer, and select it as the Input Device in the Play > Devices dialog, select the
staff you want to record into by clicking an empty bar, or a note or a rest, and then just click the
Record button on the toolbar. A metronome click will give you one bar’s introduction, and then
you just start playing.
Flexi-time is so named because it will follow your tempo: if you speed up your playing slightly,
Flexi-time will speed up its recording tempo, and if you slow down, Flexi-time will slow down.
You can use Flexi-time on any staff, including tab staves – G7 will even automatically work out
the best way to finger the music you play as it writes it in the score.
For more information about Flexi-time, see Flexi-time™ on page 90.
Step-time input
Step-time input allows you to use a MIDI instrument to play notes and chords directly into G7
while using the Keypad to choose note values, add articulations and so on. To start step-time
input, select the bar, note or rest where you want to start inputting and choose Notes > Input
Notes, or just hit N on your keyboard. (You can select just about anything in G7 simply by clicking
it, and it changes color to show that it’s selected – see Selections and passages below for more
details. To select a bar, for example, just click somewhere on a blank bit of staff within that bar,
and it will be surrounded by a blue box to show that it’s selected.)
After hitting N, a vertical blue line – called the ‘caret’ (like in a word processor) – will appear. Now
choose the note value you want to input on the keypad, and add any other articulations etc. you
want, then simply play the note or chord on your MIDI instrument to input it into the score. Carry
on inputting more notes/chords in the same way – you only need to choose a note value or artic-
ulation again if they change.
If you use a MIDI guitar and want to play chords in step-time, try adjusting the slider in the
Notes > Note Input Options dialog to adjust how long G7 should wait to ‘hear’ all of the notes in
a chord before moving on to the next note or chord. (This is because if you strum a chord slowly,
G7 may think you’re playing separate fast notes.)
When inputting onto tab staves using step-time, G7 automatically works out the best way to finger
the music you play, but beware that if you’re playing a MIDI guitar, it will probably not match the
exact fingering you are using yourself to play in the music. But you can correct it afterwards sim-
ply by dragging a note on the tab staff to a different string with the mouse – G7 will correct the fret
number appropriately for you.
For more information about step-time input, see Tab input on page 42.
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Quick tour
Importing files from other programs

Opening a MIDI or ASCII tab file is as easy as choosing File > Open, finding the file you want to
open, and clicking Open. An options dialog will appear, allowing you to make various choices
about how the file should be imported; click OK and the file is imported into G7. You can then
edit, play or print it as if you had inputted it yourself.
Learning a song with the Fretboard

Having opened a MIDI or ASCII tab file in G7, you can use the Fretboard window to learn how to
play particular passages. Whenever you select a note or chord (by clicking on it), the Fretboard
shows how to play it. You can then use the 0 or 1 Fretboard buttons or computer keys to move
backwards and forwards through the song at your own speed.
Alternatively, you can play the song back very slowly by dragging the tempo slider to the left; see
Playback above.
Inputting versus editing

In G7 you use exactly the same methods for editing existing notes and creating new ones, e.g. to
change the duration of an existing note, you just select it and then click the new note value on the
Keypad. The simple way to tell whether an operation is going to edit the selected note or create a
new one is the presence of the caret (vertical blue line).
If the caret is visible, then whatever selections you make on the Keypad etc. apply to a new note
you’re about to create with your MIDI instrument, mouse, the Fretboard, or computer keyboard.
If the caret is not visible, then anything you click on the Keypad or Fretboard, or any note you play
on your MIDI instrument etc. will affect the currently selected note.
Once you get used to this idea it’s always very clear whether you’re creating new notes or editing
existing ones.
Adding and deleting bars

During note input, G7 automatically creates bars as necessary, but if you want to add bars to your
score, just choose Create > Bar at End (shortcut Ctrl+B or XB).
To clear the contents of a bar without deleting the bar itself (e.g. to remove all the notes in it, or to
consolidate a bunch of rests into a single bar rest) click on a blank part of the bar so that it is sur-
rounded by a single blue box, then hit the Delete key on your keyboard.
To delete a bar altogether, select it using Ctrl+click or X-click so that it is surrounded by a double
blue box, then hit Delete.
In both of the above cases, you can use Shift-click to extend your selection, so that you can either
clear or entirely delete multiple bars.
Adding and deleting instruments

To add a new instrument or staff to your score at any time, choose Create > Instruments (shortcut
letter I). This dialog shows you the instruments already in your score, and you can add more by
choosing them from the lists at the left, then clicking Add. When you click OK, any new instru-
ments are added to your score.
19
Quick tour
To delete an instrument, hit I, select the instrument you want to delete in the list of staves in the
score (on the right) and click Remove, then click OK. Alternatively, you can triple-click a bar in
the instrument you want to delete. This selects the staff throughout the entire score, and you can
then just hit the Delete key on your keyboard to remove it from the score.
Adding text, lines and other objects

The Create menu contains all of the other musical paraphernalia you’re likely to need. To add an
object (which is the general term we use to cover anything you can click on in your score, e.g.
notes, text, lines, clef changes, key signatures, and so on) to your score, select the note or other
object next to which you want the new object to appear, then choose the option from the Create
menu, and it’ll be created at that position.
So what kinds of things can you create using the Create menu? Here’s a selection:
* Items such as dynamics (e.g. mf ), text chord symbols (e.g. Cm7), tempo markings (e.g. Fast),
technique directions (e.g. TABU – for tremolo arm bend up), fingerings (e.g. p i m a) and lyrics
are all accessed via the Create > Text submenu. See Text on page 166 for more details.
* Hairpins, slurs, bends, wide vibrato lines, string number indicators, 1st- and 2nd-ending brackets
and more are found in the Create > Line dialog (shortcut L). See Lines on page 113 for more
details.
* Chord diagrams – sometimes known as guitar frames, chord shapes, chord boxes or fretboard
diagrams – are added using the Create > Chord Diagram dialog (shortcut Shift-K). See Chord
diagrams on page 74 for more details.
* Change key or time signature with the Create > Key Signature (shortcut K) and Create > Time
Signature (shortcut T) dialogs. See Key signatures on page 110 and Time signatures on page
172 for more details.
* Change clefs anywhere in your score using the Create > Clef dialog (shortcut Q for ‘qlef’). See
Clefs on page 77 for more details.
* Add TIFF graphics to your score using Create > Graphic. See Graphics files on page 97 for
more details.
* Add special symbols, e.g. for vibrato scoops, using Create > Special Symbol (shortcut Z for ‘zpe-
cial zymbol’).
There’s a useful shortcut to the Create menu: with nothing selected in your score, right-click
(Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on a blank bit of paper to make the menu appear. If you right-
click or Control-click while a note or other object is selected, you get a useful context menu with
options from the Edit menu, such as the ability to change the color of the selected object or move
it into another voice.
Selections and passages

We’ve talked about selecting things already, so let’s take a moment to explain this term further. To
select something in G7, all you generally have to do is click it; it then changes color to show that
it’s selected. You can add and remove objects from a selection by holding down Ctrl or X and click-
ing; this is called a multiple selection.
20
Quick tour
You can also make passage selections, which are selections of one or more bars. To make a passage
selection, click a blank part of a bar; the bar will then be surrounded by a single blue box. You can
then hold down Shift and click on another bar to extend the selection, either along the same staff
or on a different staff (if you click another staff, the selection extends around all the staves in
between the original staff and the second staff you clicked on).
Finally, you can make a system selection, which selects all the staves in the score. To make a system
selection, hold down Ctrl or X and click a blank part of a bar: all the staves will be surrounded by
a double blue box. Again, you can extend the selection by holding down Shift and clicking.
You can do all kinds of useful things to selections, including copy them, transpose them and delete
them. For further details about selections and passages, see Selections and passages on page
46.
Converting notation to tab and vice versa

You can quickly convert staff notation into tab and vice versa just by copying it between staves. To
convert notation to tab, select the music you want to convert as a passage (so that it is surrounded
with a single blue box), then Alt+click or z-click on the tab staff to copy the music across. G7
automatically works out the best way to finger it, according to the settings in the Notes > Guitar
Tab Fingering Options dialog, where you can set things like the preferred range of frets to use.
To convert tab to notation, do exactly the same operation in reverse: select a passage of tab, then
Alt+click or z-click on the notation staff.
G7 also automatically converts special markings like bends and slides between notation and tab, so
you never need to input them more than once.
Tab styles and tunings

G7 supports a wide variety of tab styles and instrument tunings. The common alternate tunings for
guitars are included in the Create > Instruments dialog (see Adding and deleting instruments
above), but you can also access more than 25 different guitar tunings (plus many more for other
fretted instruments such as dobro, banjo and lute), and even create your own.
To change the tuning used by an instrument in your score, select a bar in that instrument so that it
is surrounded by a single blue box, then open the Properties window (by choosing Window >
Properties, or typing Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP) and choose the new tuning from the drop-down list.
The list is in alphabetical order, so all of the tunings for guitars are called things like Guitar tab
(dropped D tuning) or Guitar tab (open E tuning).
For further details, see Tunings and Staff Types on page 175.
Special tab markings

All of the special tab markings – including bends, slides, pre-bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato,
harmonics and more – are easy to create in G7. For example:
* To create a bend, select the first note of the bend and choose the bend line from the Create >
Line dialog (or simply hit J)
* To create a slide, select the first note of the slide and hit the – key on the numeric keypad (or
click the corresponding on-screen button, )
21
Quick tour
* To create a hammer-on or pull-off, select the first note and hit S to add a slur.
Chord diagrams and chord symbols

We’ve already briefly mentioned chord diagrams, but it’s worth spending a few moments discuss-
ing them in more detail. G7 contains a number of useful tools for working with chord diagrams
and text chord symbols:
* The Create > Chord Diagram dialog (shortcut Shift-K) allows you to create chord diagrams
(with optional text chord symbols) for any chord in any tuning. By default G7 shows you the
chord diagrams in its built-in default library; these have been carefully chosen to be playable by
most guitarists. If you don’t like the default options, switch on the Automatically generated
shapes option, which displays all of the possible fingerings of that chord rather than the default
ones.
If you still don’t find the shape you’re after, click New to create a new chord diagram, which
you can then add to your own library of chord diagrams by clicking Add. Any library of chord
diagrams you create is then available in each new score you write, and you can choose which
library to show shapes from by changing the Shapes from library drop-down.
* Once you’ve inputted the chord diagram into your score, you can choose a different fingering
for the same chord by selecting the chord diagram and choosing Edit > Alternative Chord Dia-
gram (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+K or xXK) to cycle through the available fingerings. But if you want
a completely different diagram, just double-click it and the Chord Diagram dialog will pop up,
with the correct chord selected.
* To create text chord symbols (without chord diagrams), choose Create > Text > Chord Symbols
(shortcut Ctrl+K or XK for ‘kord’). A flashing cursor will appear: now right-click (Windows) or
Control-click (Mac) to see a useful context menu – called a ‘word menu’ – containing all the
building blocks of chord symbols, or you can just type them on the keyboad (e.g. type CM7 to
get CM7). Hit space to move on to the next note or beat to add another chord symbol.
* To hear your chords play back, you can use Notes > Make Notes from Chord Symbols to create
a simple accompaniment based on chord diagrams or text chord symbols. See Playing back
chord symbols and chord diagrams on page 58 for more details.
* G7 can even automatically add appropriate text chord symbols to your score based on the music
you’ve entered. Select the staff or staves you want to work out chord symbols for, then choose
Notes > Make Chord Symbols from Notes. There are some quite advanced options for working
out the most appropriate chord symbol, but you can usually just click OK to accept the default
options.
For more details about chord diagrams, see Chord diagrams on page 74.
Lyrics
To add lyrics to your score, select the first note to which you want to add lyrics, then choose
Create > Text > Lyrics (shortcut Ctrl+L or XL). A flashing cursor will appear: just type the word you
want, and hit – (hyphen) at the end of a syllable or space at the end of a word. Hit – or space
several times (once per note) if a syllable lasts for more than one note.
You can create up to five verses of lyrics using the different lyrics styles in the Create > Text sub-
menu, and each new verse will appear in the correct vertical position.
22
Quick tour
For more details, see Working with lyrics and chords on page 54.
Laying out your score

G7 automatically lays out your music on the page in the most pleasing way. It shifts bars onto new
systems if the spacing starts to get cramped, and will always try to stop each page from getting too
crowded. However, you can alter the layout of your score yourself in a number of ways if you
want to:
* Change the page and staff size using the Format > Page and Staff Size dialog – see Page and
staff size on page 142 for more details
* Change the space between staves by simply clicking an empty part of a bar so that it’s sur-
rounded by a single blue box, then drag it up and down. You can also change the space between
staves throughout the whole score by triple-clicking a bar (so that the entire staff is enclosed by
a single blue box) and then dragging it up and down.
* You can insert manual system and page breaks at specific points by selecting the barline where
you want the system or page break to go and choosing either Format > System Break (shortcut
Return on the main keyboard) or Format > Page Break (shortcut Ctrl+Return or X-Return)
* To make a gap before a coda at the end of your score, first select the coda music, then select the
barline directly before the start of the coda and choose Format > Make Gap Before Coda.
For more details on laying out your score, see Layout and formatting on page 111.
Printing
To print your score, just click the Print button on the toolbar, or choose File > Print (shortcut
Ctrl+P or XP). For more details, see Printing on page 143.
Sharing your music

Aside from printing it out, G7 allows you share your music in a variety of ways. You can:
* Publish your music on the Internet. Click the Publish button on the toolbar to send your score
straight to our self-publishing web site G7music.net, or use File > Save As to save your score as a
Scorch web page that you can post on your own web site. Visitors to your site can download
the free Scorch web browser plug-in to view, play back and print your music without needing to
own G7 themselves. See Internet publishing on page 106 for more details.
* Export a MIDI file. Just choose File > Save As to save a standard MIDI file of your score. See MIDI
files on page 121.
* Export an ASCII tab file. Just choose File > Save As to save an ASCII tab file of the tab staves in
your score; you can then email it to your friends, or post it to a web site or message board. See
ASCII tab files on page 70 for more details.
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Quick tour
What to do next
There’s plenty more to know about using G7, and we recommend that you work through the
Tutorial before you abandon this User Guide altogether. It will show you how to use G7 in prac-
tice, and it’ll only take you a couple of hours to work through.
Alternatively, feel free just to jump right in and get started. You can always use the Index to get
help later on if you get stuck.
Have fun!
24
Tutorial
26
Tutorial
About this tutorial
About this tutorial

Over the next thirty or so pages we’ll explore most of G7’s features in some detail, in a series of
task-based chapters that you can work through at your own pace. Working through the entire
tutorial will only take you a couple of hours, and by the end you’ll have created your first scores,
learned how to add text, lines and other markings, create drum patterns, convert notation to tab
and vice versa, how to type lyrics, work with chord symbols and chord diagrams, and more
besides!
If you haven’t already read the Quick tour on page 13, you don’t have to read it before working
through this Tutorial. Everything that is covered in the Quick tour is covered in the Tutorial, plus
more, and in greater depth.
Note, hower, that the Tutorial doesn’t cover everything there is to know about G7. If you find you
need something advanced not covered here, it’s probably in the Reference section – you can use
the Index at the back of this User Guide to find where to look.
Let’s get started!
27
Tutorial
Running for the first time

Having successfully installed G7, now run the software for the first time:
* On Windows, choose Start > Programs > Sibelius Software > G7.
* On Mac, navigate to the G7 folder inside the Applications folder on your hard disk, and double-
click the G7 icon:
% You will be asked to enter your serial number. This is on the back of the CD case, and starts
with the letters GC. Type in the serial number carefully, though you needn’t type spaces, or
capitals for the letters.
% If you typed the number in wrong, an error message will appear, and you’ll have to restart G7
by double-clicking its icon again.
Registering G7
When you first install G7 on your computer, you will be prompted to register your software. This
is quick and easy to do, and once you have registered you will be eligible for technical help, future
upgrades, and access to the Help Center at www.g7info.com.
Note that to protect us against piracy, and to protect you against having your software stolen,
unregistered copies of G7 will not save after five days after installation.
* Each time you run an unregistered copy of G7, you will be prompted to register. A dialog will
appear offering you the choice of registering On the Internet or By Phone.
We strongly recommend that you register on the Internet, as this is quick, secure, and can be
done at any time of the day or night without calling us. Choose On the Internet and click Next.
(If you don’t have an Internet connection on your computer, choose By Phone, then click Next,
and follow the instructions on the screen.)
* If you connect to the Internet via a telephone, you will be prompted to connect to the Internet.
Click Connect to do so.
If you instead have a broadband, DSL, cable or network Internet connection, you shouldn’t
have to do anything at this point.
* A progress bar will appear for a few seconds – be patient!
* You will then be asked to provide some personal information. We respect your privacy and will
only use this information appropriately. (If you have privacy concerns, please see our privacy
policy on page 7.)
% If this is the first time you have installed G7, all the fields will be blank. Enter all the required
information and click Next.
% If you have installed G7 before, some or all of the fields will be gray (because you’ve already
provided the information). Click Next.
* Next, you’re asked to provide a few details about your musical interests. Choose the appropriate
options from the drop-down lists. Click Next.
* After a few seconds, you should receive a message informing you that G7 has been successfully
registered.
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Tutorial
If you encounter any problems registering on the Internet, please refer to the separate Technical
help and latest information sheet to find out how to contact technical support.
Splash screen
A pretty G7 graphic appears for a few seconds, accompanied by a brief musical excerpt. (Should
you want to silence this music at a later date, switch off Play music at start in the File > Prefer-
ences dialog; this dialog is in the G7 menu on Mac OS X.)
The Devices dialog

Next, a big dialog called Devices appears:
The top half of the dialog, labeled Playback Devices, lists any playback devices you have.
* There may well be two or more things listed – such as an internal soundcard and an external
MIDI device. External MIDI devices are normally referred to by the port, and include the words
‘MIDI Out’.
* Click Test on each device listed to see how it sounds. You may get no sound if the device is not
properly connected, e.g. if your speakers are not connected to your soundcard or are not
switched on.
* If more than one device is listed, you probably just want to play back through the best-sounding
one of them. To do this, click in the Use column on the other devices, to turn them to No.
* On Mac, you may see only one device (QuickTime Music) listed the first time you run G7. If
you don’t have any external MIDI devices, this is fine – but if you do have external devices, you
should click the Change button in the dialog to choose either Mac OS X MIDI (on Mac OS X),
or OMS or FreeMIDI (on Mac OS 9). For further details on setting up external MIDI devices, see
MIDI setup for Mac on page 131.
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Tutorial
The bottom half of the dialog, labeled Input Devices, lists any MIDI input devices you have – i.e. a
MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar.
* In the event that you have two or more input devices, you can select the one you want to use in
the small panel on the right of the dialog
* Switch on MIDI Thru if and only if you have a keyboard with no built-in sounds – this will make
G7 play back notes played on your keyboard using your soundcard or other playback device
* There is a useful indicator which lights up green when you play on a MIDI keyboard or MIDI
guitar. Use this to check that your keyboard or guitar is plugged in correctly.
Now click OK. If you need to change any of these settings again in the future, you can find this
dialog again by choosing Play > Devices from G7’s menus.
Quick Start
The next (and final) thing that appears is the Quick
Start dialog.
This useful dialog allows you to open any of the last five
songs you were working on, or to start working with a
new score in a variety of ways, e.g. by importing a MIDI
or ASCII tab file, or by scanning some printed sheet
music.
At the bottom of the dialog is the Tip of the Day, which
hopefully tells you something useful you didn’t know
already.
If this sort of thing annoys you, switch off Show this at
the start, and G7 won’t display the Quick Start dialog
the next time you start the program. (Should you decide
that you do want this dialog to appear when you start
G7 after all, choose File > Quick Start, and switch Show
this at the start back on.)
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Tutorial
Finding your way around

Opening a score
To introduce you to the look and feel of G7, let’s open one of the supplied example scores (this is
the word we use to refer generically to files you create in G7).
Click the Open button on the toolbar (shown on the left), or choose File > Open (shortcut
Ctrl+O or XO). In the dialog that appears, open the Example Scores folder (inside the
Scores folder), select one of the scores, then click Open.
(On Mac, the Scores folder is inside the G7 program folder; on Windows, the Scores folder is
inside your My Documents folder.)
When you’ve opened the score, the music appears, looking somewhat like this:
Menus
Toolbar Score view
Navigator Fretboard Keypad
Let’s just take a moment or two to explore the display.
Score view
The bulk of the screen is taken up with the music itself. G7 is completely WYSIWYG (What You
See Is What You Get) – in other words, when you print your score, it will look exactly the same as
it does on the screen. You can think of the screen as a virtual desk, with all the pages of your score
laid out side by side.
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Tutorial
To move around, you can use the navigator (see below), or you can simply click on a blank part of
the virtual paper and drag the view to where you want it to be. You can also use the Page Up and
Page Down keys (8 and 9 on Mac) to move the display up and down a screenful at a time, and
the Home and End keys (4 and 7 on Mac) to move left and right a screenful at a time. Give it a
try.
You can also zoom in to get a closer look at the music, or zoom out to get a view of the
whole page, or even see more than one page at once. To zoom, click the Zoom button on
the toolbar (shown on the left).
The mouse pointer turns into a magnifying glass icon (which looks like ), and you can then click
the left mouse button to zoom in and the right mouse button to zoom out (on Mac, hold down z
and click to zoom out). You can also click and drag the left mouse button to draw a box around a
particular area you want to see more closely. To stop zooming, either click the Zoom button again
or hit the Esc key (and we’ll see as we go on that the Esc key is useful for stopping all kinds of
operations).
For quicker zooming, you can use keyboard shortcuts to zoom in and out: hold down Ctrl on Win-
dows or X on Mac, then type + and – to zoom in and out respectively. On Windows, if you have a
wheel button on your mouse, you can alternatively hold down the Ctrl key and roll the wheel up
and down to zoom in and out.
Hidden objects
As you look at the example scores, you may spot some objects drawn in light gray. These are hid-
den objects, which do not print out but are useful for e.g. achieving certain playback effects with-
out changing the printed appearance of the score. If they bother you, choose View > Hidden
Objects to hide them (and choose the same menu item if you need to show them again later). For
more details, see Hiding objects on page 105.
Navigator
In addition to simply being able to drag the virtual paper around your virtual
desk, you can use the Navigator, which is the small window in the bottom
left-hand corner of the screen.
The Navigator shows you a very small version of your score. The white rect-
angle indicates the part of the score you can see in the main score view, and
you can drag the rectangle around to move the view around in real time.
You can switch the Navigator on and off by choosing Window > Navigator (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+N or
zXN).
Because the Navigator is so quick and easy to use, G7 doesn’t use normal scroll bars by default, but
if you find using scroll bars more comfortable, you can switch them on by choosing View > Scroll
Bars. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, the scroll wheel will only work if scroll bars are enabled.
(You may also have to ensure you have the correct mouse driver software installed for the scroll
wheel to work in G7.)
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Fretboard
The on-screen Fretboard is just like having a virtual guitarist sitting in front of you, showing you
how to play the music in your score. Because the Fretboard intelligently works out a sensible way
of fingering any music, you can use the fretboard to show you how to play anything in your score
– even if it’s not for guitar! For example, if you select a keyboard chord in the score, the Fretboard
will show how to play it on guitar.
You can also use the Fretboard as an easy way to input notes and chords into your score.
And just for kicks, you can even choose between maple, rosewood and acoustic necks, or between
standard 6-string guitar and 4- or 5-string bass!
You can also choose the size of the Fretboard display; by default the Fretboard opens at its smallest
size, but you can make it larger. Click the Options button in the Fretboard window and then
choose Small, Medium or Large.
We’ll talk a lot more about the Fretboard later on. For now, you can hide and show the window by
choosing Window > Fretboard (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F or zXF).
Keypad
The Keypad is used for inputting and editing notes in your score. Its design corre-
sponds to the numeric keypad at the right-hand side of your computer’s keyboard
(unless it’s a laptop, which don’t usually have room for a keypad). Typing one of
the keys on your keyboard’s numeric keypad is exactly the same as clicking on
one of the on-screen buttons.
The five black buttons along the top of the keypad correspond to the five different
pages – or ‘layouts’ – of the keypad. You can cycle through them by typing the +
key on the numeric keypad, or by clicking the button marked > on the on-screen
keypad. You can also jump to a particular keypad layout using the keys F8–F12 along the top of
your keyboard.
All the most common musical symbols, including notes and accidentals (e.g. flat, sharp and natu-
ral signs, used to show that the pitch of a particular note is different from the expected pitch as
determined by the key signature) are on the first two keypad layouts. The third keypad layout is
used for changing the beaming of notes (although G7 beams notes automatically, so you won’t
normally need to use this layout). The fourth layout is for articulations (things like pauses, accents
and harmonics), and the fifth layout is a collection of obscure accidentals (things like three-quarter
sharp) which you’ll probably never need, but you can sleep easy knowing they’re all present and
correct should the desire to write a score containing a quarter flat note ever take hold of you!
At the bottom of the keypad are buttons numbered 1–4, with a fifth enigmatically labeled All,
which determine which voice you’re working in. Normally you won’t ever need to use more than
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Tutorial
one voice, but if you’re writing complex music (e.g. for classical guitar) you will sometimes need
two (or possibly more) independent rhythms on the same staff, and this is where voices come in.
For more details on voices, see Voices on page 179.
As with the Navigator and the Fretboard, you can toggle the Keypad on and off by choosing
Window > Keypad (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+K or zXK).
Other windows
Although we won’t go into the details now, if you sneak a peek into the Window menu, you’ll
also see windows called Mixer and Properties listed there. Try switching on the Mixer, which
looks like this:
You can use the Mixer to change the playback of your score in real-time.
Drag the faders up and down to change the volume, or choose a new sound
from the Sound drop-down menu, and so on. You can switch the Mixer on
and off by typing Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM on your keyboard. We’ll talk about
the Mixer more in Playback, later in this User Guide.
Now try choosing Window > Properties (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP).
Properties is a small floating palette that allows you to change various more
advanced options, e.g. changing the font of some text, changing to a differ-
ent guitar tuning on a tab staff, choosing a different notehead, and so on.
We’ll discuss Properties later in this User Guide.
Toolbar
We’ve already used a couple of buttons on the toolbar, so you’ve probably figured it out by now.
The toolbar offers you quick access to the most commonly-used functions of G7. The buttons are
as follows:
* New, Open, Save and Print should be familiar to you from other programs on your computer
* Zoom allows you to zoom in and out – see Score view above for more details
* Scan lets you scan sheet music into G7
* Publish transfers your score to our self-publishing web site G7music.net where it can be viewed,
played back and printed by people all over the world
* The next five buttons are standard playback and recording controls, so they shouldn’t seem par-
ticularly mysterious
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Tutorial
* Undo and Redo are a kind of time machine, allowing you to undo things you’ve done to your
score, or redo them again if you decide you were right all along
* Guide launches the interactive Guitar Guide, where you can learn all about the different kinds
of guitars, hear examples of different styles of music, and find out both how to perform and
write down special guitar techniques like hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, slides and harmonics.
For more details, see Guitar Guide on page 103.
* Help opens the on-screen help for G7, a cut-down version of this User Guide. It’s useful as a
quick searchable reference for how to use the basic functions of G7 if you don’t have this User
Guide to hand.
Menus
You probably won’t need to use G7’s menus very often, as you can do most things in G7 in the
obvious way – for example, to select something, just click it; to move it, just drag it around or use
the arrow keys. However, lurking in the menus are some of the program’s more advanced fea-
tures.
We won’t go through each menu in detail here. Instead, we’ll just refer to particular menu items
where appropriate. If you feel like poking around in the menus now, go right ahead – don’t forget
that you can undo just about everything you can do to your score simply by clicking the Undo
button on the toolbar.
Customizing the display

If you’re feeling adventurous, now might be the time to try customizing G7’s display to suit your
preferences. You can change the textures used for the virtual paper and desktop, and even adjust
the level of ‘smoothing’ to improve the appearance of the music on the screen. For more details,
see Display settings on page 79.
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Playback
Playback
Now that we know our way around G7’s windows, let’s play back a score.
Click the Play button (shown on the left) or simply hit P to start playback. G7 automati-
cally hides the Keypad (and Properties window, if it’s open) and zooms in to show you as
much music as possible. A blue line moves through the score as it plays back so you can
follow your place easily.
Playback tools
During playback, the following controls appear:
Flexi-time (shortcut
Rewind (shortcut 0) Stop (shortcut Esc) Ctrl+Shift+F or xXF) Timecode / Tempo
Fast-forward (shortcut 1) Pause (shortcut P) Tempo slider
You can drag the tempo slider left and right to alter the speed of playback. As you do so, the time-
code readout (which normally shows the elapsed time since the start of the score) displays the cur-
rent speed of the score in beats per minute (BPM) until you release the slider again. When the
slider is at its central position, G7 exactly follows any metronome marks or other tempo indica-
tions in the score.
When you’ve had enough of playback, hit Esc, or click the Stop button. If your computer or play-
back device isn’t fast enough to cope with rewinding or fast-forwarding at high speed, it may occa-
sionally leave a note hanging on when you stop, in which case choose Play > All Notes Off
(shortcut Shift- O).
Specifying what to play back

* If nothing is selected in your score, G7 will play back the full score from the beginning. To
ensure nothing is selected, click on a blank part of the paper, or hit Esc.
* To play from a particular place in the score rather than the start, select a note before hitting P.
* You can also play any instrument on its own – click a blank part of a bar in the instrument so the
bar is enclosed in a blue box, then hit P.
* You can even play any combination of instruments – simply click a blank part of a bar in one
instrument, and Ctrl+click or X-click in the other staves you want to play back. (They don’t
have to be adjacent.)
Fretboard
The on-screen fretboard is very useful during playback. If it’s not visible, show it by choosing
Window > Fretboard (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F or zXF). Then click its Setup button. The Setup dialog
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Playback
allows you to choose which staff’s notes the Fretboard should display during playback, or whether
it should just show you how to play any chord diagrams that are present instead.
By watching the fretboard during playback you can learn how to play difficult passages; don’t for-
get that you can use the tempo slider on the toolbar to slow playback down so that you can see
and hear what’s going on more clearly.
Note that you can also step through the score one note or chord at a time to learn how to play par-
ticularly difficult passages. Click a note or chord in the staff you want to follow, then use the 1 and
0 buttons on the Fretboard or the computer keyboard to move back and forth; as you move
through the music, the Fretboard shows how to play each note or chord.
Performance
You’ll notice that G7 doesn’t just play back the notes in your score; it also accurately follows tempo
markings, dynamics (e.g. mf), articulations (e.g. >), special notations such as slides, bends, trills
and glissandos, and repeat structures such as D.C. al Coda. It does all of this with remarkable real-
ism, thanks to a unique set of features accessible from the Play > Performance dialog (shortcut
Shift-P):
* Espressivo™, the Italian word for ‘expressively’, adds phrasing and expression just like a human
performer would
* Rubato™ is the rhythmic counterpart to Espressivo, allowing G7 to subtly vary the tempo of
your score to add greater expression
* Rhythmic feel™ allows you to choose the ‘groove’ for your score, e.g. G7 can play back using
varying degrees of swing, or accent rhythms in pop, rock and reggae styles.
Live Playback
In real life, a musical performance rarely precisely matches what is notated in the score; there are
all manner of nuances of tempo, dynamic and flexibility that cannot easily be reproduced even by
smart features like Espressivo, Rubato and Rhythmic Feel. So if you provide G7 with an actual,
human performance – either from real-time recording using Flexi-time or by importing a MIDI file
– it will preserve it for you using Live Playback.
Live Playback allows G7 to create the cleanest, simplest notation possible, while still exactly recre-
ating your Flexi-time performance or the subtleties of a well-sequenced MIDI file during playback.
Ironically, it does this by storing exactly what you play, right down to the tiniest variations in
velocity (how loud a note is), duration (how long you played it for) and rhythmic offset (how
much it deviates from precisely where the beat is).
When Live Playback is switched on, G7 doesn’t use features like Espressivo, Rubato and Rhythmic
Feel. It also doesn’t respond to written directions in the score such as dynamics. It literally plays
back exactly what you played, or what the imported MIDI file sounded like to start with.
Live Playback is switched on by default. To switch it off or on again, simply choose Play > Live
Playback. Note that it’s not possible to add Live Playback data to notes entered via the Fretboard,
or using any of the other alphabetic or step-time input methods – Live Playback data is only cre-
ated by Flexi-time input or by importing a MIDI file.
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Playback
What G7 reads
Almost all of the notation in a score should play back correctly right away. G7 reads the following:
* Notes, chords, rests, accidentals, ties, grace notes
* Clefs, key signatures, time signatures
* Instrument names – these determine the sounds used, which you can change if you like using
the Mixer
* Standard articulations, e.g. accent, staccato, marcato, etc.
* Tremolos
* Text specifying dynamics such as pp, loud
* Metronome marks such as q = 108
* Repeats, including 1st and 2nd endings (1st-/2nd-time bars) and D.S./D.C. al Fine/Coda
* Lines such as slurs, trills, octave (8va) lines, pedaling, rit./accel., gliss. and hairpins
* Guitar notations such as bends and slides
* Noteheads used in drums and percussion
* Hidden objects, e.g. hidden metronome marks, notes or dynamics.
Note that some of these are ignored when Play > Live Playback is switched on, as it is by default –
see Live Playback above.
Mixer
You can use the Mixer window to adjust the sounds used by your score during playback. For more
information, see Mixer on page 139.
Zoom level during playback

By default, G7 hides the Keypad and Properties windows and zooms in to fit the entire width of
the system on the screen during playback. You can configure this behavior in the Play > Playback
Options dialog:
* To change the zoom level used during playback, either simply zoom in or out during playback
(G7 will remember whatever zoom level you choose the next time you start playback), or
choose a different zoom level from the list in the Playback Options dialog
* To stop G7 from using a different zoom level during playback, switch off Different zoom during
playback
* To stop G7 from hiding the Keypad and Properties windows during playback, switch on Show
Properties during playback.
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Tutorial

Let’s start our first score in G7 and get used to some of the basic editing and inputting operations of
the program.
New score wizard

When you click the New button on the toolbar (or in the Quick Start dialog), a helpful
wizard appears. (A wizard is a special kind of dialog that leads you through a multi-stage
process.) G7’s new score wizard has five pages, which are as follows:
* Choose the instruments from a list of pre-defined manuscript papers or create your own instru-
mentation, and choose the page size and orientation;
* Decide the appearance of the score, e.g. whether to use a traditional or handwritten music
design;
* Set the time signature and tempo of your score;
* Set the key signature of your score;
* Finally, give your score a title, enter the composer/songwriter name, and so on.
You move between the pages by clicking the Next and Previous buttons, but you can exit the wiz-
ard at any stage by clicking Finish to create a score with whatever settings you’ve already chosen
(and if you want to exit the wizard without creating a score at all, just click Cancel). You can eas-
ily change any of these settings later on without using the wizard, so don’t feel that you need to
know exactly what you’re going to write before you even get started.
The first page of the wizard looks like this:
The list on the left contains some predefined manuscript papers; if none of these are for exactly the
right instruments, you can start with the Blank manuscript paper and pick your own instruments,
or start with another manuscript paper and add or remove instruments fromit. In either case, you
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Tutorial
add or remove instruments by clicking the Add Instruments button. This shows the following dia-
log:
The available instruments are grouped in families. Choose the family in the left-hand list to see the
instruments in that family in the middle list; to add an instrument to your score, choose it from
the middle list, and click Add. The new instrument will then appear in the right-hand list, with a +
sign in front of it to show you that it is new. The right-hand list is in the order of the staves in the
score. When you add a new instrument to your score, you can change its position in the vertical
order of staves by clicking the Move Up and Move Down buttons (note, however, that you can
not change the order of a staff after it has been created, i.e. if it doesn’t have a + sign in front of its
name.)
Note that you can use up to 16 staves in your score (this means that you could have, say, eight
pianos, since each piano uses two staves).
To remove an instrument, select it in the right-hand list and click the Remove button.
Once you’re satisfied with your choice of instruments, click OK to close the Instruments dialog,
and click Next to move on to the next page of the wizard (you could also click Finish at this point
if you’re happy with your score now).
The second page of the wizard allows you to choose the overall appearance or ‘house style’ of your
score, and change the fonts it uses. Choose from the following house styles:
* Standard uses the traditional engraved Opus font, like in printed sheet music
* Handwritten makes your score look as if it were handwritten with an ink pen
* Keyboard is like Standard but with some extra settings specifically for keyboard music
* Lead sheet is like Standard but with some extra settings specifically for lead sheets, such as
‘winged’ repeats to make them more visible
* Keyboard handwritten and Lead sheet handwritten are like Keyboard and Lead sheet, but
with a handwritten look.
If in doubt, just leave it at Unchanged.
You can also change the text font used by your score: all text (such as title, composer, instrument
names, technique markings, tempo indications etc.) will use the font chosen here by default,
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Tutorial
although you can easily change it on a case-by-case basis later on using the Properties window.
Again, if in doubt leave the text font at Unchanged.
The third page of the wizard allows you to choose a time signature, set a pick-up (upbeat) bar, and
a tempo marking and/or metronome mark to set the speed of your score.
The fourth page allows you to set the key for your score (only relevant if you have notation
staves).
The fifth page allows you to enter some basic text, such as the title of the score, the name of the
composer/songwriter, the name of the lyricist, and some copyright information. This text is added
to the first page of your score.
Your first score

Let’s pay a little homage to a world-famous rock band and arrange the first few bars of U2’s With
Or Without You using G7.
* Click the New button on the toolbar or choose File > New
* Choose the Rock group template from the list on the first page, and click Next
* We don’t need to change any of the house style settings on the second page, so click Next again
* Choose a 4/4 time signature; we don’t need a pick-up (upbeat) bar, but we do want a metro-
nome mark, so switch on Add metronome mark and set it to q = 105. Click Next when you’ve
done all this.
* This song is in D major, so choose that key signature on the next page, and click Next
* On the final page of the wizard, enter With Or Without You as the title, and U2 as the com-
poser/songwriter, then click Finish.
You should now see something like this:
Now we need to actually input some music. Read on!
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Tab input
Tab input
You should now have your empty rock group score up on the screen, just waiting for inspiration
to strike. But before it does...
Ways of inputting notes

There are six main ways of inputting notes in G7:
* Mouse input using the on-screen Keypad and Fretboard windows
* Real-time recording from a MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar, known as Flexi-time™
* Step-time input from a MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar
* Alphabetic input, using just the computer’s keyboard
* Importing files from other programs, such as MIDI files or ASCII tab files
* Scanning printed sheet music using PhotoScore Lite.
Over the next few pages we’ll try out some of the above methods, beginning with mouse input.
Mouse input
Let’s start with the rhythm guitar part to With Or Without You, which goes roughly like this:
10 10 10 10
10 7 10 7 10 7 10 7

We’ll input this onto the top Electric Guitar tab staff in our new score using the mouse:
* Switch on the Fretboard window (if it’s not already visible) by choosing Window > Fretboard.
Make sure the Fretboard is in Notes mode (click the Notes button on the Fretboard window), as
we’ll be inputting notes rather than chords.
* Click the eighth note (quaver) button on the Keypad ( ), or hit 3 on your keyboard’s numeric
keypad. The mouse pointer goes blue – this tells us that it’s ‘loaded’ with a note and ready to be
clicked into the score.
* Click on the tenth fret of the top string on the fretboard; this creates a D on the top string of the
tab staff. (Notice how the caret automatically advances to the next rhythmic position in the bar;
if you wanted to build a chord using the Fretboard instead, you would have to switch it to
Chords mode by clicking the appropriate button.)
* Now we need two 16th notes (semiquavers), so click the appropriate button on the Keypad
( ), or hit 2 on your numeric keypad. Again, the mouse pointer goes blue.
* Click on the tenth fret on the second string down on the fretboard; this creates an A on the sec-
ond string of the top staff.
* Now click at the seventh fret from the left on the second string down from the top: G7 correctly
notates the note at fret seven.
(Incidentally, you can also input notes by clicking directly on the staff rather than on the Fret-
board display. As you move the mouse pointer over the staff, a gray ‘shadow note’ is drawn,
showing you where the note will be created when you click. When you click on a tab staff to
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Tutorial
Tab input
input a note, G7 creates an open string, then type the fret numbers you want using the numbers
along the top of the main keyboard, e.g. for the tenth fret, just type 10.)
* Now hit Esc to stop inputting; Esc clears the Keypad, and if you hit Esc again, any selection in
the score will also be cleared.
* This little three-note riff is repeated pretty much throughout the song, so now we can copy it.
Click the first note on the top string; it goes blue. Hold down Shift and click on the third note; all
three notes are surrounded by a single blue box, like this:
* Now hit the R key. This is the shortcut for Edit > Repeat, one of the quick ways of copying things
in G7. Each time you hit R, another copy of your three note riff is added after the last one. Hit R
three times to complete the first bar.
* Now you’ve got a bar full of the riff, you can select an entire bar’s worth and repeat that all in
one go – give it a try! We need at least eight bars of this riff, so make lots of copies by selecting
the whole bar (by clicking on a blank bit of the staff, so that the bar is surrounded by a single
blue box) and hitting R.
Flexi-time™ input
If you don’t have a MIDI keyboard or guitar, skip on to Tab input using the computer key-
board or step-time below.
Let’s input the bass guitar part in real time using G7’s Flexi-time input method. The bass line is
very simple, and goes something like this:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
* Select the fifth bar of the Bass Guitar tab staff (where the bass line starts), by clicking a blank
part of the bar, then click the Record button on the toolbar (or type Ctrl+Shift+F or xXF).
* Now get ready! You’ll hear one bar of clicks as an introduction, and then you’re recording.
* Play the bass line on your MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar, keeping it nice and even. Don’t try to
play the slide up from the G at the end of the bass line where it loops around – we can add that
later on using a line from the Create > Line dialog if we want to.
* You may notice that the music appears on the score about one bar later than you played it; this
is because G7 has to work out exactly what you played before it can notate it accurately. It’s
probably less confusing if you don’t look too closely at the screen as you input – just play in time
with the click.
* Record as many copies of the bass line as you want; you can use the R key (see above) to make
further copies later.
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Tab input
* When you’ve finished, hit Esc to stop recording.
If the recording was a complete disaster, click Undo on the toolbar (shortcut Ctrl+Z or XZ) to get
your score back to how it was before you made a fist of it, and try again.
Basic editing
Chances are that a few errors crept into your bass line as you were recording it, in which case you
may now have a few mistakes to correct:
* Play back the bass line on its own by selecting a bar in that staff (i.e. so that it’s surrounded by a
single blue box), then hit P. This will help you spot any wrong notes.
* When you find a wrong note, click on it to select it so that you can edit it. When a note is
selected, it changes color; in this case, it should turn blue, because it belongs to voice 1. (You can
use up to four polyphonic voices on the same staff; voice 1 is blue, voice 2 is green, voice 3 is
yellow, and voice 4 is purple.)
* Once the note is selected, to correct its pitch, you can:
% Play the right note on your MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar; or
% Type the correct fret number using the numbers on the main keyboard; or
% Use the 3/2 keys to move it up and down if it’s on a notation staff.
* If the length of the note is wrong, you can correct it by selecting it and then choosing the correct
length on the Keypad (using the mouse or numeric keypad).
* If extra notes have appeared that you want to get rid of, just select them and hit Delete.
Tab input using the computer keyboard or step-time

Our arrangement is already almost recognizable, but to complete the sound we need those first
few high notes played on the lead guitar:
14 14 14 14
14 14 15 17 17 17 17

Let’s input this into the lower of the two Electric Guitar staves using keyboard tab input, or step-
time input (if you have a MIDI keyboard or guitar).
* Select the second bar so that it’s surrounded by a single blue box
* Hit N (the shortcut for Notes > Input Notes), and the caret appears on the staff at the beginning
of the bar:
If it’s not on the top string, move it up there with the 3 key.
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Tab input
* Hit 6 on the numeric keypad to select a whole note (semibreve) on the Keypad, then type 14
using the number keys on the main keyboard, or play an F# on your MIDI device.
* Hit space to advance to the start of the next bar (which has no notes in it), then hit space again
to move into the fourth bar
* Hit 5 followed by . (period) on the numeric keypad to choose a dotted half note (dotted minim),
then type 14 on the main keyboard, or play another F# on your MIDI device, to input the note
* Hit 1 twice to advance to the start of the next bar
* Hit 6 on the numeric keypad to choose a whole note, then type 14 on the main keyboard (or
play on your MIDI device) to input the note
* Hit Enter on the numeric keypad to add a tie, which means that the note continues to sound in
the next bar without being restruck (although since our tab staff doesn’t use rhythms, we can’t
see the tie)
* Hit R to repeat this note in the next bar. In tab staves that don’t indicate rhythm, tied notes are
often represented by being bracketed, e.g. (14). To bracket this note, hit * on the numeric key-
pad ( ).
* Hit Enter again to add a tie to the bracketed note, then hit R to repeat this note in the next bar.
* Hit R to repeat the note one further time, and now hit 5 on the numeric keypad to edit this
newly-repeated note and turn it into a half note (minim).
* Hit 1 to move onto the second half of the bar; the caret reappears. Now type 15 on the main
keyboard to input the next note.
* Hit 1 again to move into the next bar.
* Hit 6 on the numeric keypad to choose a whole note (semibreve), then type 17 on the main
keyboard to input the note.
* Hit Enter to add a tie, then hit R to repeat the note in the next bar.
* Hit * to bracket the note, then Enter to add a tie, and hit R again. Repeat this step, so you end up
with three bracketed notes.
That’s it for the opening of this song up to the entry of Bono’s vocals – but there are a few further
finishing touches we can add.
Finishing touches
For one thing, the sound used by the rhythm guitar is
not quite right. Choose Window > Mixer (shortcut
Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM) to show the Mixer, click the but-
ton at the bottom of the appropriate fader (it should be
labeled Rhyth, short for Rhythm Guitar), then using the
Sound menu on the right-hand side, choose Acoustic
guitar (nylon). Play back the score again – that’s much
more like it.
The other missing ingredient is a drum track. Thank-
fully, G7 will write you a drum pattern in various styles
with just a couple of clicks. Choose Notes > Add Drum Pattern, and the dialog above appears.
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Tab input
Choose Rock, alternative: straight 8ths (120-140 bpm) from the Style drop-down, switch off all
the checkboxes on the dialog, then click OK. Within a few seconds, a drum pattern is written into
your score.
Now hit P to play the whole score back and admire your handiwork!
Advanced guitar markings

All of the special tab markings – including bends, slides, pre-bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato,
harmonics, and more – are easy to create in G7. See Advanced guitar markings on page 65 for
more details.
Selections and passages

We’ve already mentioned selecting notes, bars and other objects, so let’s quickly examine the dif-
ferent kinds of selections you can make, and the different ways to make them:
* Single selection: a single selected object, made by (say) clicking on a note or using the Tab or 0/1/
3/2 keys to move around the score; you can tell an object is selected because it will change
color when clicked on
* Multiple selection: more than one selected object, made by (say) clicking on one note, then hold-
ing down Ctrl or X and clicking on another note. Be aware that a multiple selection doesn’t
have to consist of objects next to each other – you could make a multiple selection containing,
say, a note on one page and a bend line on another page.
* Passage selection: a selection surrounded by a single blue box, made by (say) clicking on a blank
part of a bar, which you can extend by holding down Shift and clicking on another bar, either in
the same or a different staff. Note that a passage selection always consists of continuous music
(unlike a multiple selection).
* System selection: like a passage selection, but selects all instruments in the score at once and is sur-
rounded by a double blue box. You can make a system selection by (say) Ctrl+clicking or X-
clicking on a blank part of a bar; you can then extend it in the same way as a passage selection.
So what can you do with selections? Here are a few of the most useful things:
* Copy: the quickest way is using Alt+click or z-click, but you can also use the standard Ctrl+C or
XC and Ctrl+V or XV shortcuts like in other programs
* Repeat: type R (or choose Edit > Repeat) to repeat the current selection after itself, a very quick
way of e.g. setting up a riff or drum pattern that repeats lots of times
* Transpose: type Shift-T (or choose Notes > Transpose) to transpose to another key, or use 3/2 to
transpose up and down a step at a time (hold down Ctrl or X to move in octaves)
* Delete: just hit Delete! Note that deleting a system selection deletes the bars themselves, not just
the music in them.
Adding and deleting bars

G7 automatically creates bars as necessary during note input, but if you want to add more bars to
your score, simply choose Create > Bar at End (shortcut Ctrl+B or XB). You can also add a bar in
the middle of the score by choosing Create > Bar (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+B or xXB), which either
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Tab input
creates a bar next to the selected note or other object, or, if nothing is selected, allows you to click
where you want the new bar to be created.
To clear the contents of a bar without deleting the bar itself (e.g. to remove all the notes in it, or to
consolidate a bunch of rests into a single bar rest) click on a blank part of the bar so that it is sur-
rounded by a single blue box, then hit the Delete key on the keyboard.
If you used Flexi-time to input the bass line to our little song, you will have ended up with quite a
few empty bars at the end of the score. G7 creates these bars when you record using Flexi-time to
ensure that you never run out of room in your score while recording, but when you’ve finished
recording you probably want to get rid of them.
To delete a bar altogether, make a system selection using Ctrl+click or X-click (so that it is sur-
rounded by a double blue box), then hit Delete. You can select multiple bars to delete them by
Ctrl+clicking or X-clicking one bar, then use Shift-click to extend the selection, and hit Delete to
remove all the selected bars.
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Notation input
Notation input
So far we’ve used mouse input, Flexi-time input and alphabetic input to create a simple arrange-
ment using tab staves. There’s a lot more to G7 than this, however: you can input notes on a nota-
tion staff and have it instantly converted to tab; you can add special guitar markings and instantly
convert them between notation and tab; you can create other markings such as lines and text as
you input notes; you can create music in multiple voices, with up to four different rhythms on
each staff; and more besides.
But before we try something a little more advanced...
Mouse input
We’ve already input notes onto tab staves with the mouse, but it’s worth mentioning that you can
also use the mouse to input onto notation staves. Click the length of the note you want to input
on the Keypad, then point at the place on the staff where you want to create the note; a helpful
gray ‘shadow note’ will show you where the note goes.
You can input notes in the middle of a bar simply by pointing there and clicking, even if the bar is
empty. As you move the pointer over the bar, the note will snap to suitable rhythmic positions; by
default, it will snap to quarter note (crotchet) positions, but you can change this if you want to by
adjusting the Snap Positions setting in the Notes > Note Input Options dialog.
Flexi-time input
Using Flexi-time to input music onto notation staves is just the same as inputting onto tab staves:
select a bar in the staff you want to play into, then click the Record button on the toolbar. For fur-
ther details about Flexi-time, see Flexi-time™ on page 90.
Step-time input
Step-time input means using your MIDI keyboard or guitar to input notes or chords one at a time,
choosing the rhythm with the Keypad. To start step-time input, select the bar in which you want
to start inputting, choose the note value of the first note you want to input on the Keypad, then
simply play the note or chord on your MIDI instrument. Carry on inputting more notes/chords in
the same way – you only need to choose a note value or articulation again if they change.
Because you choose the note values using the Keypad, step-time input is quite similar to alpha-
betic input, which we’re about to try...
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Notation input
Notation input on the computer keyboard
We’re going to input this little fragment of classical guitar music using notation input on the com-
puter keyboard:

Andante largo 6  
    
        
             
             
 
   
    

* Using the new score wizard (see Starting a new score on page 39), create a new score based
on the Classical Guitar manuscript paper; use a 2/4 time signature with a pick-up (upbeat) bar
of one quarter note (crotchet), and add an E major key signature.
* Select the first bar so that it’s surrounded with a blue box, and type N (this is the shortcut for
Notes > Input Notes, remember?)
* The caret appears; type 3 on the numeric keypad to choose an eighth note (quaver) on the Key-
pad
* Type G; a G sharp is created at the start of the first bar, but it’s in the wrong octave. No problem
– type Ctrl+3 or X3 to transpose it up an octave.
* Now type 3 on the main keyboard; this adds a note a third above the first note
* Hit R to repeat this chord
* Now switch to the second keypad layout (the quickest way of doing this is by hitting F9), and
type . (period) on the numeric keypad to choose the double rhythm dot
* Type G followed by 3 on the main keyboard to add the next chord
* Now hit F8 to switch back to the first keypad layout, then 1 on the numeric keypad to select a
64th note (demisemiquaver)
* Type F followed by 3 on the main keyboard to add the next chord
* Type 3 on the numeric keypad, then type E 3 D 3 on the main keyboard to input the next two
chords
* Type E followed by Shift-6 (using the numbers on the main keyboard); this creates a note a sixth
below the selected note
* Hit space; this creates a rest of the selected duration on the numeric keypad
* Type A, followed by Ctrl+3 or X3 to transpose it into the right octave, then C B Shift-5 to add
the next few notes
* Hit 1 on the numeric keypad, then E, then Ctrl+3 or X3, followed by Ctrl+6 or X6; this tells G7
that you want to create a sextuplet, and a tuplet bracket and number appears below the first
note of the sextuplet
* Type the other notes of the sextuplet: D C B A G. Notice how the tuplet bracket automatically
disappears, because tuplet brackets are normally omitted when all the notes in a tuplet are
beamed together.
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Notation input
* Type 2 on the keypad, then A, then 1 on the keypad, then space, then F9 followed by * on the
keypad (which tells G7 you want to add a staccato to the next note), then B
* Type * on the keypad again to switch off the staccato, then F8 to switch back to the first keypad
layout
* Repeat the last two steps to create the same figure again.
In the above procedure you’ve performed all of the most crucial note input functions at least once:
you’ve built up chords using the number keys on the main keyboard (with Shift to add notes
below the selected note rather than above); you’ve created a tuplet; you’ve added accidentals and
articulations from the keypad before hitting the letter name to create the note; you’ve switched
between the different keypad layouts; and you’ve added slurs and grace notes. In short, you’re
well on your way to having G7’s alphabetic input method right under your fingers!
Adding a second voice

The next task is to create the second voice. Here’s how:
* Select the chord at the beginning of the first full bar
* Hit N to make the caret appear; now click the button labeled with a 2 at the bottom of the on-
screen Keypad window, or type Alt+2 or z2; the caret turns green, which tells you that you’re
ready to input in voice 2
* Hit 2 on the numeric keypad to choose a sixteenth note (semiquaver), then space followed by E
* Transpose the E down with Ctrl+2 or X2, then type G B E G B B, then Ctrl+2 or X2.
That should be enough to get you started. See if you can input the rest of the voice 2 music on
your own. Don’t forget that if you make a mistake, you can hit Ctrl+Z or XZ to undo the last thing
you did.
Notes out of range

If you transpose a note far enough up or down, it will turn red to show that it’s outside the play-
able range for the given instrument. Note, however, that all guitar notation staves are assumed to
have the same range as a standard guitar tuning (EADGBe), so if you are writing for an alternative
tuning which lowers the pitch of the bottom string (e.g. dropped D tuning), you will find that the
lowest notes turn red. Don’t worry, however: notes out of range only show as red in the score, not
when you print.
Adding lines
Dotted around the example above are various lines, notably string indicator lines, and a strum or
arpeggio line. To create these, select the note where you want to add the line, then choose
Create > Line (shortcut L). Most of the guitar-specific lines are to be found in the Staff lines list on
the left of the dialog – scroll down to find them.
Try creating a couple of the string indicator lines as shown in the example above: choose it from
the dialog, then hit space to advance the end of the bracket a note at a time; Shift-space retracts
it again (or you can, of course, drag it with the mouse). To create a string indicator without a
bracket, use the Create > Special Symbol (shortcut Z for ‘zymbol’) dialog; the circled numbers are
on the Guitar row of the dialog.
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Notation input
Try this: grab one of the notes above one of the string indicator lines, and drag it rightwards; notice
how the string indicator line moves along with the notes.
(This is due to a handy feature called attachment, which means that things like lines, text and other
symbols ‘remember’ which note they belong to, and move along with them when the score refor-
mats. You can see a dotted gray line joining the string indicator line to the note or chord it’s
attached to – this, you’ll be surprised to hear, is known as the attachment line.)
Adding text
We may as well add the tempo marking at the start of our little example. Select the first note of
music and choose Create > Text > Tempo (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T or zXT). A flashing cursor appears
in the right place above the staff. Now right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) to see a useful
context menu containing suitable tempo terms – this is known as a word menu, and every kind of
text you add to your score (from chord symbols to fingering) has a suitable word menu containing
a list of appropriate terms. To choose something from the word menu, simply click it, and it’s auto-
matically added to the score.
You can also, of course, simply type the words you want using your keyboard. When you’ve fin-
ished inputting your text, hit Esc.
A quick summary
Let’s sum up the basic principles of alphabetic input on notation staves:
* Choose where you want to start inputting notes (e.g. select a bar or a rest in the staff in ques-
tion), then hit N to make the caret appear
* When the caret is visible, any changes you make on the Keypad will affect the next note you cre-
ate
* When the caret is not visible, any changes you make on the Keypad will affect the currently
selected note
* Set up all the properties of the note by choosing the options on the Keypad; at the least you
must specify the length of the note, but you can also optionally specify articulations and acci-
dentals. The note isn’t actually created until you either hit a letter key (A–G) or play a note on
your MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar
* To enter a rest, choose the length of the rest on the Keypad, and hit space
* To build up a chord, add notes above by typing the numbers 2–9 on the main keyboard, or hold
down Shift to add a note of that interval below. You can also type Shift+A–G to add a note of
that name above the current note.
* You can switch between keypad layouts using the F8–F12 keys
* When a button on the keypad is switched on (e.g. an articulation or note value), it stays
switched on until you switch it off, so if you only want to create, say, an accent on one note,
remember to switch the accent button off before you create the next note
* After inputting a note you can change its octave (using Ctrl+3/2 or X3/2), or make it into the
first note of a tuplet (by typing Ctrl+2–9 or X2–9), or add a tie (by hitting Enter on the numeric
keypad)
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Notation input
* Add indications such as slurs and text as you go along: e.g. type S after creating a note to add a
slur, which will automatically be joined to the next note you create, or type Ctrl+T or XT to add
some technique text for playing instructions such as ‘palm mute’; when you’ve finished adding
text, hit Esc to stop editing it, and carry on inputting notes.
* To start another voice in the same staff, select the note where you want the new voice to start,
hit N to make the caret appear, then click the appropriate button at the bottom of the on-screen
Keypad, or type Alt+2–4 or z2–4 on the keyboard to select the desired voice; the caret changes
color to show which voice you’re working in.
It may all seem faintly bewildering at first, but with a little practice this kind of note input becomes
second nature and very quick: you should be able to keep your right hand hovering over the
numeric keypad, and your left hand on the computer keyboard.
Converting notation to tab

Having input the little excerpt above, let’s get on to the fun stuff – namely, instantly converting
standard notation into tab.
* First, create a new tab staff in your score: choose Create > Instruments (shortcut letter I), and
from the Classical Guitar family, add a new Standard tuning [tab] instrument to your score,
and click OK
* G7 creates the staff underneath the existing notation stave
* Now triple-click a blank part of the notation staff; a single blue box should enclose the entire
staff
* Hold down Alt or z and then click at the start of the first bar in the tab staff; this is known as
Alt+clicking or z-clicking, and is the quickest way of copying in G7
* Instantly, G7 converts the notation into tab, working out a suitable fingering. This is the result:
 
 
7 7 7 5 4 2 0 5
0 0
9 7 12 11 9 7 5 4 2
5 7 5
0 7
9 9 9 7 5 0
4 2 5 0 0

1 1 2 1
2 2
2 2
0 4 0


2 7 7 7 5 4 2 0 12 3 11 9 7
0 5 4 2 5 4 7 5 2 22 0
4 0
9 0
9 9 7 5 0 4 2 5 9
0 4

1 1 1 3 2 2 1
9 7 2
2 3 4 2
0 4 0
* Now for the really smart bit. When G7 worked out the fingering for this little example, it tried
wherever possible to use fingerings between the nut and the seventh fret. How did it know to do
this? The Notes > Guitar Tab Fingering Options dialog determines the preferred range of frets
that G7 should use.
Let’s change the fingering options and then convert the music from notation to tab again and
see what a difference it makes.
* In the Notes > Guitar Tab Fingering Options dialog, switch off the Use open strings option,
and set the Lowest fret to 5 and the Highest fret to 12. Click OK to confirm the changes.
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Notation input
* Now let’s refinger our tab staff. Triple-click a blank part of the tab staff this time to select it, and
choose Notes > Reset Tab Fingering, which recalculates the fingering based on the new settings.
This is the result:
7 7 7 5 5 9 7 12 11 9 7 5 5

7 5

7 7 7
9 9 9 7 9 7 5 5 5 5 9 7 5 7 9 9
  
9 8 6 8
6 9 6 7 6 9 9 9 9
7 7
0 4 7 7 0
7 5

12 11 9 7 5 5 7 5

9 7 9 7 5 8 9 9 7 9 7 77 5

9 8 6 9 9 8
9 7 6 9 6 6 8 9 7 7 6
7
0 4 7 8 9 7 0
The ability to automatically refinger your music is very powerful, and G7 uses the setting in the
Notes > Note Input Options dialog in a number of situations, including:
* When you copy music from a notation staff to a tab staff
* When you transpose music on a tab staff
* When you input music onto a tab staff using a MIDI keyboard or guitar via step-time or Flexi-
time
* When you import a MIDI file onto tab staves.
The on-screen Fretboard also uses this setting to work out how to show a suitable fingering when
it is displaying music on a notation staff (obviously when you use the Fretboard with a tab staff, it
always shows the actual fingering specified by the notes on the tab staff).
Converting tab to notation

You can also convert tab to notation in much the same way. Simply select the tab you want to turn
into notation, and Alt+click or z-click in the notation staff: G7 automatically converts the tab into
notation for you.
Changing the tuning of a tab staff

Another powerful feature of G7 is the ability to change the tuning used by a guitar tab staff. For
example, you could change a staff that uses a standard guitar tuning to use a modal G tuning
instead.
To change the tuning used by a staff in your score, select any bar in that staff (so that it’s sur-
rounded by a single blue box), then open the Properties window (by choosing Window > Proper-
ties) and choose the new tuning from the drop-down list. The list is in alphabetical order, so all of
the tunings for guitars are called things like Guitar tab (dropped D tuning) and Guitar tab
(modal G tuning).
For further details, see Tunings and Staff Types on page 175.
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Working with lyrics and chords

G7 makes working with chords and lyrics easy. You can automatically create chord symbols based
on the music you input, quickly add chord diagrams, and even generate simple accompaniments
based on the chord diagrams and chord symbols in your score. Adding lyrics is as simple as typing
them in.
Let’s find out how easy it is to do all of the above by writing a simple lead sheet and building it up
into a complete arrangement.
Start a new score

Create a new score based on the Lead sheet manuscript paper using a 4/4 time signature – see
Starting a new score on page 39 for help if you get stuck. Using whichever note input method
you feel most comfortable with – see Tab input on page 42 and Notation input on page 48 –
input the notes of this little Scottish folk tune, O my love is like a red, red rose:
G7 C C/E F C/E Dm F6
   
    

  
 
    
O my love is like a red, red rose that’s new - ly sprung in
G G7/F C/E C Am Em Dm7 G7 C

             
    
June; O my love is like a me - lo - dy that’s sweet - ly sung in tune.
Once you’ve created the melody as above, you can add the lyrics, then the chords. So let’s do it!
Typing lyrics
The simplest way of adding lyrics is just by typing them in. The basic procedure is as follows:
* Input the notes for which you want to write lyrics
* Select the note where you want the lyrics to start and choose Create > Text > Lyrics (shortcut
Ctrl+L or XL)
* Start typing lyrics
* Hit space at the end of each word
* Hit – (hyphen) at the end of each syllable within a word
* If a syllable lasts for two or more notes, hit space or – once for each note
* If a word is followed by a comma, period or other punctuation, type it before hitting space.
With this in mind, try inputting the following lyrics. Select the first note so that it turns blue, then
type Ctrl+L or XL; you’ll see a flashing cursor appear. Then type the following:
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O my love is like a red, red rose that’s new-ly sprung in June;
O my love is like a me-lo-dy that’s sweet-ly sung in tune.
Note that for the word ‘my’ on the second line, you should hit space twice, so that ‘my’ spans the
two eighth notes (quavers) at the end of the bar.
Multiple verses of lyrics

It’s easy to add extra verses of lyrics in G7: just choose the appropriate option from the Create >
Text submenu. For example, to create a second verse of lyrics, choose Create > Text > Lyrics verse
2. G7 automatically positions the second line of lyrics underneath the first, and you can have up to
five verses under the same staff.
To type a verse number at the start of a verse, type the number (e.g. “1.”) followed by Ctrl+space
or z-space, which inserts a space without advancing to the next note.
Blocks of lyrics
Extra verses of a song can be written as blocks of words at the end of the score. These aren’t the
same as normal lyrics because they don’t align with notes.
To type a block of lyrics, choose Create > Text > Other System Text > Block lyrics and click where
you want to put them. Simply type the lyrics, and hit Return (on the main keyboard) at the end of
each line.
Importing lyrics from other programs

You can also copy and paste lyrics between other programs (such as word processors) and G7,
from one part of a score to another part of the same score in G7, or from one score to a different
one.
To copy text from another program successfully, the text you are copying must have a hyphen
between syllables of a word, as shown in our example above.
To copy lyrics into G7:
* Select the text you want to copy:
% If you are copying within G7, select the lyrics you want to copy (the quickest way is to select
the bars to which the lyrics you want to copy are attached, then choose Edit > Filter > Lyrics –
see Filters on page 89 for more details), then choose Edit > Copy (shortcut Ctrl+C or XC)
% If you are copying from another program, select the text you want to copy and in that pro-
gram’s menus choose Edit > Copy (shortcut normally Ctrl+C or XC) to copy it to the clipboard
* Select the note where you want to start pasting lyrics, then choose Create > Text > Lyrics (short-
cut Ctrl+L or XL); a flashing caret appears
* To paste a syllable, type Ctrl+V or XV, which pastes text up to the next space or hyphen (i.e. one
note’s worth)
* You can then hit space or – (hyphen) to extend the word or syllable over more than one note
* When you want to input the next word or syllable, type Ctrl+V or XV again
* If you make a mistake, you can choose Edit > Undo (shortcut Ctrl+Z or XZ), which will remove
the last pasted word or syllable from the score and put it back on the clipboard so that you can
paste it again.
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Note that if the text you had copied had extra hyphens or spaces between words or syllables, or
had syllables lasting more than one note, this is ignored when pasting. This is useful if, say, you’re
copying lyrics from one staff to another in G7 and the rhythms are different.
Exporting lyrics
To save the lyrics (including any block lyrics) from your score as a text file which you can then edit
in a word processor or other program, choose File > Save Lyrics. This creates a text file of the same
name as your score with the word lyrics at the end in the same folder as the score itself.
G7 removes hyphens when saving lyrics, and inserts line breaks at sensible places (e.g. at punctu-
ation such as commas, semicolons, colons and periods). It also includes the title, composer and
copyright information if you’ve entered it in the score.
Adding guitar chord diagrams

G7 As is often the case in the guitar world, chord diagrams go by many names: you may have
heard them called chord boxes, chord shapes, fretboard diagrams, guitar frames, or a dozen
other names.
G7’s chord diagram capabilities are quite sophisticated, so we’ll cover them more fully in the
Chord diagrams topic in the Reference section later in the User Guide, but for now, let’s jump
right in and create some:
* The first thing to do is tell G7 where you want the chord diagram to go; so select the first note of
the melody so that it turns blue
* Now choose Create > Chord Diagram (shortcut Shift-K). The following dialog appears:
* Our first chord, appropriately enough, is a G7, so choose G from the Key list, 7 from the Type list,
and leave the Bass note set to G
* In the preview window, a few chord diagrams will be shown. Switch on the Chord names
option to add a text chord symbol above the chord diagram itself.
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* The Show Chords From section at the bottom of the dialog determines which chord diagrams
G7 should show you as possibilities:
% Chord shapes from score makes G7 show any chord diagram you’ve already added to your
score that matches the key, type and bass note options currently chosen.
% Default chord shapes is a built-in set of chord diagrams. There are typically three diagrams
for each chord type, chosen for their playability; the first is normally at or close to the nut,
the second is around the fifth fret, and the third is around the ninth fret, offering a variety of
voicings and playing positions. Note that the default library of chords only contains chords for
the standard 6-string guitar tuning.
% Automatically generated shapes makes G7 generate all of the reasonable ways of fingering
a particular shape at every possible position on the fretboard. This is useful if the shape you
want isn’t included in the default library, or if you want to add diagrams for a non-standard
tuning.
% Chord shapes library allows you to show the chord diagrams you have added to any libraries
you may have created. For more details, see Chord diagrams on page 74.
* Choose whichever of the shapes you prefer, and click OK. The chord diagram is added to the
score.
* Hit Tab followed by 1 twice to select the C at the beginning of the next bar (or use the mouse if
you prefer), then type Shift-K to bring up the dialog again.
* This time, choose a suitable chord diagram for the chord of C, and click OK to add it to the score.
* Hit Tab, then 1 twice to select the D halfway through the bar, and then type Shift-K.
* You need to create a C/E chord (a C major chord in first inversion), so just change the Bass list
to E, choose an appropriate shape, then click OK.
* Refer back to the music example on page 54 to see which chords to add for the rest of the mel-
ody.
Note that you can manipulate chord diagrams just like all other objects: you can delete them, drag
them around, copy them (with R or Alt+click or z-click), and so on. You can cycle between differ-
ent fingerings for the same chord by selecting a chord diagram and choosing Edit > Alternative
Chord Diagram (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+K or xXK). If you double-click a chord diagram, the dialog
will re-open, allowing you to edit the shape, or even change it to a completely different chord.
Adding text chord symbols

Although we don’t need them in this particular score, there are two ways of adding text chord
symbols (i.e. ones without chord diagrams) to your score, either automatically or one by one.
In order to be able to add chord symbols automatically, your music needs to include chords of two
or more notes (preferably three or more), although they don’t have to be on the same staff – they
just need to sound simultaneously. So you could select, say, your keyboard part and your guitar
part, and ask G7 to add chord symbols based on the harmonies in both parts, by choosing Notes >
Make Chord Symbols from Notes. You don’t need to worry too much about the options that
appear – normally you can just click OK to add the chord symbols to your score.
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The other way of adding chord symbols is to type them yourself. This works a bit like typing in lyr-
ics (see Typing lyrics above):
* Input the notes first, then select the first note above which you want a chord symbol to appear
* Choose Create > Text > Chord Symbol (shortcut Ctrl+K or XK for ‘kord’)
* You can either type the chord symbol as ordinary text, or right-click (Windows) or Control-click
(Mac) to choose from the word menu of standard chord symbol bits, such as Bb and m7
* Hit space to advance to the next note or beat.
If you want to write a space within a chord symbol, type Ctrl+space or z-space (as an ordinary
space would advance to the next note or beat instead).
If you want to type the chord yourself, the word menu lists keyboard shortcuts for all the bits of
chord symbol. For example, to add a flat sign, type a lowercase b; to add a sharp sign, type #; to
add superscript numbers, just type 1–9; and so on.
Here are some other useful keyboard shortcuts:
* Diminished symbol (º) Ctrl+O or XO
* Half-diminished (flat 5th) symbol (Ø) Ctrl+Shift+O or xXO
* Augmented symbol (&) Shift-7
* Major alteration (^) for e.g. major 7ths Shift-6
* % for chords with added 6ths and 9ths Shift-5
Other symbols on the word menu include N.C. for ‘no chord’, ' to specify an added alteration,
; to specify that a particular note should be omitted, and so on.
Playing back chord symbols and chord diagrams

If you want to check that the chords you’ve entered in your score are the right ones, or if you
want to build up an accompaniment quickly, you can use the Make Notes from Chord Symbols
feature, which creates a new instrument in your score and fills it with appropriate chords in a vari-
ety of styles.
So let’s add a simple accompaniment to our little folk song:
* Make sure nothing in your score is selected by clicking on a blank bit of paper, or by hitting Esc
* Choose Notes > Make Notes from Chord Symbols. The following dialog appears:
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* The options are simple, but let’s quickly go through them anyway:
% You can choose between three different instruments to add: Piano, which adds two staves to
your score and splits the chords across the two staves; Guitar (notation), which adds a single
notation staff to your score; and Guitar (tab), which adds a tab staff using standard 6-string
guitar tuning (although you can change this later if you want).
% The Chord style menu lets you control how the chords are realized: Chord every chord sym-
bol creates a new chord every time the chord changes; Chord every beat creates a new
chord in every beat (regardless of how often the chord changes); 8th note Alberti creates an
Alberti-style pattern using eighth notes (quavers); 16th note Alberti creates the same kind of
pattern using 16th notes (semiquavers); 8th note arpeggios creates rising arpeggio patterns
in 8th notes, and 16th note arpeggios creates rising arpeggios using 16th notes.
The results you would get for each of the six options on a guitar notation staff are shown
below:
F C/E F C/E F C/E
   
     
     
 
red, red rose that’s red, red rose that’s red, red rose that’s
 
     
       
       
Chord every chord symbol Chord every beat 8th note Alberti
F C/E F C/E F C/E
   
     
     
 
red, red rose that’s red, red rose that’s red, red rose that’s
     
            
         
16th note Alberti 8th note arpeggios 16th note arpeggios
* For now, choose Chord every chord symbol from the Chord style menu, and click OK
* A progress bar appears for a moment as the chords are written into your score
* You may find that G7 has created the new instrument overlapping your chord diagrams. To
move the staves further apart, triple-click on a bar in your melody staff so that it is surrounded
by a blue box throughout the entire score, then simply drag it downwards. This increases the
distance between the two staves throughout the score in a single operation.
You can use this feature more than once to build up different layers of accompaniment – for exam-
ple, you might want to add a piano playing block chords, and a guitar playing in fingerpicked style.
To do this, just choose Notes > Make Notes from Chord Symbols again, and G7 will create a new
instrument each time you run the plug-in.
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Beware that using the Make Notes from Chord Symbols feature is not undoable. However, if you
don’t like the results, simply triple-click a bar in the newly-added staff so that it is surrounded with
a blue box throughout the score, and hit Delete to remove it altogether.
You can also add a simple drum accompaniment to your score: choose Notes > Add Drum Pattern
and have a go. We’ll discuss this particular feature in more detail in Drums and percussion on
page 81.
Transposing
One of the most useful functions of G7 is the ability to transpose all or part of a score by any inter-
val, and thus into any key. G7 does this intelligently: it can change key signature, transpose chord
diagrams and chord symbols, and even refingers tab intelligently for the new key.
Let’s try this out on our little folk song:
* Make sure nothing is selected by clicking on a blank part of the paper, or hit Esc
* Choose Notes > Transpose (shortcut Shift-T). A message box appears, asking if you want the
operation to apply to the whole score; click Yes.
* The following dialog appears:
Let’s transpose our song up a whole step (tone) from C major to D major. Since Up and Major/
Perfect are already selected, all we have to do is set the right-hand drop-down to 2nd (a major
second – or a whole step – is the interval between C and D), and click OK.
* Instantly, the music is transposed into the new key.
You can transpose any part of a score, but note that G7 will only change the key signature if you
transpose the entire score in a single operation.
Don’t forget that you can also transpose a selected passage on a notation staff simply using the 3/
2 keys, which move the music up and down in steps; hold down Ctrl or X to transpose by octaves.
If you want to transpose a tab staff, use the Notes > Transpose dialog, because the behaviour of
the arrow keys on tab staves is different – it changes the strings used rather than the pitch of the
note itself.
Printing
If you’re happy with your finished score, you can print it simply by choosing File > Print (shortcut
Ctrl+P or XP). For more details on printing, see Printing on page 143.
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Sharing your music
Aside from printing it out, G7 allows you to share your music in a variety of ways. You can publish
it on the Internet (see Internet publishing on page 106), save a MIDI file (see MIDI files on
page 121), save a graphics file (see Graphics files on page 97), or save an ASCII tab file (see
ASCII tab files on page 70).
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Special tab markings such as bends, pre-bends, slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs, and so on, can all
be produced easily in G7. The most common ones are listed below.
You can create these in either tab or notation staves, and they automatically change design in the
correct way when copied between tab and notation staves.
Some of the tab markings involve hidden notes on the tab staff, which can be viewed and edited
when View > Hidden Objects (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+H or zXH) is switched on.
Bend
   Bends are produced by fretting a string and then pushing the string sideways to
 bend the note after playing it. Bends are normally either a half-step (semitone) or
full
a whole step (tone) up or down, but it’s possible to bend microtonal intervals too if
you want.
5
 On notation staves, a bend is drawn as an angled line between two notes, a bit like
a crooked slur. On tab staves, it is drawn as an arrow which curves upwards if the
second note is higher than the first, or downwards if the second note is lower than
the first; additionally, for upward bends the second note is not notated on the tab staff, the interval
for the bend instead being specified above the curved arrow, in whole steps (tones). A whole step
bend is usually written as ‘full’ rather than ‘1’ (although you can change this in the Format >
Others > Tab dialog by switching off the Use full on tab bends option).
To create a bend, select the first note and type J (which looks a little like a bend on a tab staff); the
bend line will automatically be positioned between it and the next note (or will snap to the next
note when you create it).
Type space to extend the bend to the next note, or Shift-space to retract it; on notation staves,
you can choose Edit > Flip (shortcut X) to move the bend from above to below the note or vice
versa. You can also adjust the position of either end of the bend line using the mouse or arrow
keys.
Bend intervals
To change the bend interval on a notation staff, simply change the pitch of the second note. On a
tab staff, make sure View > Hidden Objects (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+H or zXH) is switched on, then
select the hidden second note and change its pitch (either by playing a note on your MIDI instru-
ment, or by typing the fret number on the main keyboard).
To create a slight or microtonal bend, create a bend on a note and type Shift-space to retract the
right-hand end so that it attaches to the same note as the left-hand end. A slight bend is drawn as
a curved line on a notation staff, and as a ‘¼’ (quarter-tone) bend on a tab staff.
If you prefer bends on a tab staff to be written without an arrowhead, switch off Use arrows in
guitar bends in the Format > Others > Tab dialog.
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Bend and release
A bend and release is a bend upwards followed by a release back to the original
note. To notate this, simply create an upward bend followed by a downward one.
When written on a tab staff, the final note is usually bracketed (because it isn’t
actually played); to bracket the note, select it and choose the bracket button ( )
on the first keypad layout (shortcut F8).
Grace note bends and pre-bends

Both these kinds of bends are created in the same way: from the second key-
pad layout (shortcut F9), create the grace note ( , shortcut 8) or pre-bend
note ( , shortcut 9); hit J to create a bend; then create the second note.
On a tab staff, a pre-bend is represented by a vertical arrow.
Pre-bend and release

A pre-bend and release is created in much the same way as grace-note bends and pre-
bends, as above; create a pre-bend note followed by a grace note, create a bend, then
create a full-size note, and create another bend between the grace note and the full-
size note. Remember to bracket the final note on the tab staff (see Bend and release
above).
Unison bend
A unison bend is when you strike two notes simultaneously, and bend the lower
note up to the pitch of the higher. On a notation staff, the unison bend is written in
a similar way to a pre-bend (see above), with two noteheads for the upper note.
On the tab staff, you will need to add the higher of the two initial notes as text;
choose Create > Text > Other Staff Text > Small text and type the number.
Slide
A slide is achieved by striking the first note than then sliding the same finger up
or down to the second note, which is struck if the slide is a ‘shift slide’, and not
struck if the slide is a ‘legato slide’.
On both notation staves and tab staves, shift slides are written as a straight line
(as shown on the left). Legato slides are written as a line together with a slur. If
the second note of the slide is higher, the line points upwards; if the second note
is lower, the line points downwards.
To create a slide, input the first note of the slide and click the slide button ( , shortcut –) on the
first keypad layout (shortcut F8), then input the second note. You can also input the slide after
creating both notes – just select the first of the two notes and click the slide button. To make a
legato slide, just add a slur in the normal way (select the first note and hit S).
You can adjust the position of slides by selecting either end and moving the handle with the
mouse or the arrow keys.
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Where there are several notes in a chord with slides, G7 assumes that they are all sliding in the
same direction. Should this not be the case, you should use straight lines from the Create > Line
dialog (shortcut L) to create the slides going in the opposite direction.
Vibrato bar dive and return

The pitch of the note or chord is dropped a specified number of whole steps
(tones), then returned to the original pitch.
On a notation staff, a bar dive and return is written with two bend lines (see
Bend above) and the ‘w/bar’ line from the Create > Line dialog (shortcut L).
On a tab staff, delete (or don’t input) the middle note and bracket the last
note. Use two separate straight lines from the Create > Line dialog for the V
(because bends would appear as arrows). Type the number below the tab staff at the point of the V
using Create > Text > Other Staff Text > Small text.
Vibrato bar scoop

A vibrato bar scoop is played by depressing the bar just before striking the
note, then quickly releasing it.
To write this, use the symbol from the Guitar row of the Create > Special
Symbol dialog (shortcut Z). On a notation staff, you should also add a ‘w/
bar’ line from the Create > Line dialog (shortcut L); to extend the line right-
wards, hit space.
Vibrato bar dip

A vibrato bar dip is played by striking the note, then dropping a specified number
of whole steps (tones), then releasing back to the original pitch.
To notate this, use the V symbol from the Guitar row of the Create > Special
Symbol dialog, typing the numbers above using Create > Text > Other staff text >
Small text, then, on a notation staff, add a ‘w/bar’ line from the Create > Line
dialog.
Other notations
Other tab notations are easily created as follows:
* Hammer-on and pull-off: use a slur – b Lines
* Tapping: use a slur, with a + articulation on the first note if appropriate; for left-hand tapping,
use the symbol on the ...techniques row of the Create > Special Symbol dialog
* Vibrato and wide vibrato: suitable lines are provided near the bottom of the list in the Create >
Line dialog – b Lines
* Trill: use a trill line – b Lines
* Strum: use a strum/arpeggio wiggly line – b Lines
* Tremolo picking: use a tremolo from the third keypad layout (shortcut F10)
* Shake: use a shake symbol from the Create > Special Symbol dialog
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* Harmonics: on notation staves, use a diamond notehead, and on tab staves, write ‘Harm.’, ‘H.H.’
(for a harp harmonic), or ‘P.H.’ (for a pinched harmonic) above the note in Small text (Create >
Text > Other staff text > Small text)
* Slap: write ‘T’ above the note in Small text
* Pop: write ‘P’ above the note in Small text
* X notehead: select a note and choose the X notehead from the Properties window
* Pick scrape: use an angled wiggly line from the Create > Line dialog and write ‘P.S.’ above the tab
staff with Small text; on a notation staff, use a X notehead (see above)
* Muffled strings: use cross noteheads
* Rake: on a notation staff, create grace notes with X noteheads (see above); on a tab staff, either
copy the music from a notation staff (in which case the noteheads are automatically copied as
crosses) or change the noteheads after creating the notes, and then add a suitable ‘Rake’ line
from the Create > Line dialog.
The Create > Line dialog (shortcut L) contains lines for most of the common guitar techniques,
such as ‘w/bar’, ‘P.M.’ (for palm muting), and so on. Should you need to create additional lines for
guitar techniques, b Lines.
Rhythm guitar
G7 D A useful musical shorthand is to use slash notation accompa-
nied by chord diagrams for rhythm guitar staves in your score,
 as shown on the left.
           
To create this notation:
* Create a guitar notation staff in your score
* Input the rhythm that should be played using notes on the middle line of the staff (i.e. the pitch
of B), and add chord diagrams as required
* Select the staff throughout the score by triple-clicking it
* Change the noteheads to rhythm slashes by typing Shift+Alt+4 or xz4 (or choose notehead
style 4 from the menu in the Properties window – choose Window > Properties or type
Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP to show it if it’s not already visible)
* Finally, change the staff type to No lines (rhythm guitar) using the drop-down list in the Prop-
erties window.
Fill boxes
In some scores you sometimes need to show alternative versions of particular bars – for example, if
the score is a transcription of a recording, and one of the guitarists did something different the sec-
ond time through a chorus. These alternative bars, usually called ‘fill boxes’, are normally shown
at the bottom of a page, surrounded by a box, and usually indented at both the left and right sides.
To create a fill box in G7:
* Input the whole score except for the fill box, so you have a good idea of the layout
* On the page where you need the fill box to appear, insert a system break at the end of the sys-
tem that will be the last ‘real’ system of music on the page
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* Insert an extra bar after the system break, and insert a page break at the end of this new bar
* This bar is now stretched across the whole width of the page. To indent it from both sides:
% Click the initial barline at the left-hand side of the system and drag it rightwards
% Click just to the right of the right-hand side of the system, vertically level with the middle
staff line; a small blue handle will appear. Drag this handle leftwards to indent the bar from
the right.
* To surround the bar with a box, hit Esc so nothing’s selected, choose Create > Line (shortcut L)
and choose the box from the Staff Lines list on the left of the dialog, then click OK
* Drag over the bar to create the box
* To prevent the fill box from playing back, create a Tempo text object at the end of the last ‘real’
bar on that page containing the words ‘jump to name’ (where name can be any word you like),
and create another Tempo text object at the start of the bar following the fill box, containing the
words ‘marker name’ (where name is the same word you used before). This tells G7 to jump to
the marker with the specified name when it encounters that instruction, without playing the fill
box itself.
Capos
Capos are small moveable bars placed on the neck of the guitar to raise the pitch of all the open
strings uniformly. Typically, capos are indicated by some text at the start of the score, e.g. Capo on
3rd fret.
To write this text, simply use Tempo text – see Text on page 166 for more details.
Note that G7 does not interpret capos in playback; in other words, open strings always play the
open string pitch defined in the tuning (see Tunings and Staff Types on page 175), not the pitch
that results from the presence of the capo at a particular fret.
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ASCII tab files
ASCII tab files

ASCII tab is a popular format for sharing guitar tab on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of
songs are available in ASCII tab format for downloading, and G7 allows you not only to open
these files, but also to save them so that you can share your own songs on the Internet and by
email.
What does an ASCII tab file look like?

Because ASCII tab files are written by hundreds of different people, and usually by hand, there is a
good deal of variation in the information that they can contain. Some files simply show the chords
used by a particular song, while others may attempt to convey every technique used in the origi-
nal song, including slides, bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs, harmonics, and so on. However, all
ASCII tab files use the same basic syntax: hyphens represent each string of the staff, numbers rep-
resent the fret numbers, and vertical bars (or ‘pipes’ as they’re sometimes known) represent bar-
lines. For example, a single bar of ASCII tab might look something like this:
P
e |--0----------0---x-0-------|
B |--0--2/3-----1---x-1--3-2--|
G |--0-----1/2--2---x-2-------|
D |--2----------0-------------|
A |--2----------0-------------|
E |--0------------------------|
Importing ASCII tab files

ASCII tab files normally have the file extension .tab (although they may simply have the normal
text file extension, .txt, or they may be specifically for bass guitar, in which case they may have the
extension .btab).
To open a tab file in G7, choose File > Open (shortcut Ctrl+O or XO), select the tab file you want
to open, and click Open. A dialog with some simple options will appear:
* Always import rhythms means that G7 will always try to determine rhythm in the tab file, even
if it isn’t sure that any rhythms are actually indicated.
* Only import rhythms when they are indicated means that G7 will only try to determine the
rhythm if it thinks rhythms are indicated somehow.
* Never import rhythms means that G7 will ignore the rhythm of the tab file and simply import
every note or chord as an eighth note (quaver), whether or not it thinks rhythms are indicated
in the file.
By default, G7 is set to Only import rhythms when they are indicated. If in doubt, use this
option.
G7 also tries to locate chord symbols and text labels (e.g. showing where verses and choruses
begin) in the tab file, but it doesn’t import lyrics (since it’s not usually obvious where they belong)
or techniques such as bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs and so on (since there’s no agreement
about how these should be notated in ASCII tab files anyway).
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ASCII tab files
When you import an ASCII tab file, what you will normally get is a score that contains all the right
notes and chords, but not the right rhythms. This is because most tab files don’t include rhythms,
and even when they do, there is little consistency in how rhythms are indicated. This means that
ASCII tab files are very useful for looking at in conjunction with the Fretboard window in order to
get the chord shapes under your fingers, but if you play them back, more often than not you won’t
be able to recognize the original song!
Think of ASCII tab files as a useful step towards being able to play a particular song – somebody
else has taken the time to work out what the chords and fingerings are, and now you can sit down
in front of G7 with your guitar and step through it with the 1 and 0 keys to see how to play it in
the Fretboard window, and hear how each chord sounds.
Note that ASCII tab files may often have a lot of extra, unnecessary text at the top (e.g. comments
about the person who created the transcription). G7 will normally ignore this text, but if you
encounter unexpected results, try removing the extra text at the top of the file using a text editing
program (such as Notepad on Windows, SimpleText on Mac OS 9, or TextEdit on Mac OS X), and
try importing it again.
Saving ASCII tab files

You can also use G7 to create ASCII tab files of your own songs. To do this, simply choose File >
Save As, and from the Files of type drop-down list, choose ASCII Tab, and click Save. G7 will
then immediately pop up the resulting tab file in a text editor so you can see how it looks. (If this
annoys you, switch off Preview ASCII tab file after saving it in the File > Preferences dialog, or in
the G7 menu on Mac OS X.)
ASCII tab files saved from G7 include rhythms (shown with letters above each note or chord, e.g.
E for eighth note, S for sixteenth note, etc.), repeat structures (such as start and end repeat bar-
lines, 1st- and 2nd-ending lines, etc.), chord symbols, and so on.
Note that if your score contains a mixture of tab and notation staves, only the tab staves will be
saved (and if you have, say, two tab staves in your score, they will both be saved).
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Beams
Beams
Beams are the thick lines used to join short notes into groups. G7 beams notes together into
groups for you automatically, though you may sometimes want to adjust beaming yourself.
Beam groups
Exactly how notes should be beamed together is determined by the time signature you are work-
ing in. For example, in 4/4, eighth notes (quavers) are normally beamed in groups of four; in 6/8,
eighth notes are normally beamed in groups of three; and so on.
Editing beams
If you don’t like the way that G7 beams a particular passage of music, you can edit the beaming by
hand from the third keypad layout (shortcut F10). Simply select the note(s) you want to adjust,
then choose the appropriate button:
Breaks the beam from the previous note
Joins to the previous and next notes
Ends the current beam (i.e. breaks the beam from the next note)
Separates the note from those on either side
Joins to the previous note with just a single (‘primary’) beam. Used for dividing a group of,
say, 6 or more notes into sub-groups.
Beam angles
Occasionally you may want to adjust a beam’s angle or position, particularly when preparing nota-
tion using two or more voices, as is common in classical guitar music.
To move a beam, zoom in close on it so you can see what you’re doing, and simply drag either end
up or down with the mouse. Alternatively, select either end, then move it by typing 3 or 2. X3/
2 or Ctrl+3/2 moves the beam by whole spaces. You can also make quick adjustments to the
angle of a beam by selecting the beam itself and dragging up and down; this moves the left-hand
end of the beam.
Reversing beams
To move a beam from above a group of notes to below it – that is, to flip the stem-directions of all
the notes along the beam – select any note in the group (just one note will do) and flip it by choos-
ing Edit > Flip (shortcut X).
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Breaks
Breaks
System breaks are points in the music where you force a system to end, such as at the end of a sec-
tion. Page breaks force the page to end at a particular point. System and page breaks are like typ-
ing a new line or a new page in a word processor – and in fact, the keyboard shortcut for a system
break is Return (on the main keyboard), just to emphasize the analogy.
Because G7 takes care of layout automatically, you should only force system and page breaks in
special circumstances, such as those listed below.
For general advice on the layout of your score, b Layout and formatting.
Where to put page breaks

It’s a good idea to force page breaks at the end of a song if you’re writing several songs in the same
score. However, do not routinely put page breaks at the end of every page, as this will be likely to
impair the formatting if you change the music in any way. If in doubt, don’t use a page break.
Where to put system breaks

It’s a good idea to force system breaks at the end of sections of music (e.g. at a repeat barline). As
with page breaks, do not routinely put system breaks at the end of normal systems as this will
cause formatting problems if you change the music. If in doubt, don’t use a system break.
Adding a system or page break

* Select the barline at which you want to add a break, or at which a break already exists
* Choose Format > System Break (shortcut Return, on the main keyboard) or Format > Page
Break (shortcut Ctrl+Return or X-Return).
Removing a system or page break

To remove a break, simply select the barline where the break occurs, and choose the break again
to switch it off, i.e. to remove a system break, choose Format > System Break (shortcut Return, on
the main keyboard), and to remove a page break, choose Format > Page Break (shortcut
Ctrl+Return or X-Return).
Viewing breaks
G7 shows you where breaks occur in your music via little blue symbols that appear above the
appropriate barlines, like this:
Page break System break
These symbols only ever appear on the screen – they won’t be printed when you print your score.
If you don’t want to see them on your screen, switch off View > Breaks.
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Chord diagrams
Chord diagrams
Chord diagrams illustrate how to play a particular chord by showing which fingers need to be on
which fret on each string. They are usually accompanied by text chord symbols, which G7 can
include for you.
Adding chord diagrams

To create a chord diagram above the selected note, choose Create > Chord Diagram (shortcut
Shift-K) to get this dialog:
* The Pick a Chord options at the top of the dialog are as follows:
% Tuning allows you to choose the tuning of the strings to be used; set this option to the tuning
of the guitar you are writing chord diagrams for.
% Max. stretch n frets determines the maximum distance between the lowest and highest frets
that can be fingered for automatically generated chord diagrams. See Maximum stretch
below for more details.
% Key is the basic key of the chord you want to use
% Type is the kind of chord, e.g. major, minor, augmented, diminished, etc.
% Bass is the bass note of the chord. By default, it’s set to the same pitch as Key, but you can
change it if you are writing, say, a G chord with a B as the bottom note.
* The Pick a Fingering options in the middle of the dialog are as follows:
% The large white rectangle shows you the available chords based on the settings chosen in the
dialog
% The Chord names checkbox allows you to specify whether a text chord symbol should be
included above the chord diagram. Generally you would have this option switched on.
% Clicking Edit or New allows you to edit the selected chord diagram or create a new one. See
Editing and creating chord diagrams below for more details.
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Chord diagrams
* The Show Chords From options at the bottom of the dialog can be switched on in any combina-
tion:
% Chord shapes from score tells G7 to display any chord diagrams already used in the score
itself that match the options currently chosen in the dialog.
% Default chord shapes is the default option. The default library is a built-in selection of chord
diagrams for the standard 6-string guitar tuning only chosen for their ease of playing; generally,
three different fingerings are chosen for each chord type: one at (or close to) the nut, one at
around the fifth fret, and one at around the ninth fret.
% Automatically generated shapes tells G7 to automatically calculate all the possible finger-
ings for a given chord. Note that the shapes generated will be governed by the Max. stretch
setting at the top of the dialog (see below). If you are using a special guitar tuning, switching
on this option will provide you with a wide selection of playable shapes for a particular chord,
which you can then add to a library.
% The Chord shape library options determines whether G7 should display chords from a cus-
tom chord diagram library. See Chord diagram libraries below for more details.
When you click OK, a chord diagram with the chosen options will be created next to the selected
note. If you didn’t have a note selected before you opened the dialog, the mouse pointer will
change color to denote that it’s ‘loaded’ with a new guitar frame – just click on the page where you
want the new diagram to go.
Editing and creating chord diagrams

If you want to edit a chord diagram shown in the Chord Dia-
gram dialog, select it with the mouse and click the Edit button.
If you want to create a new chord diagram from scratch, click
the New button. In both cases, you’ll see the dialog shown on
the left.
* To place a dot on a string, simply click where you want the
dot to appear
* To specify that the string should be open or unplayed, click
above the top line of the frame to toggle between the O and X
symbols
* To draw a barré, click and drag across the strings you want to be barréd
* To set the fret number at the top right of the diagram, click the arrows to the right of the win-
dow.
When you are happy with the chord diagram, click OK to return to the main Chord Diagram dia-
log.
You are recommended to save your edited or new diagram into a chord diagram library, which
happens automatically when you click OK (if you have a suitable library chosen in the drop-down
next to the Add to library checkbox). If you don’t save your diagram into a library, then if you
(say) close and re-open the Chord Diagram dialog, or change any of the options (e.g. choosing a
different tuning), your edited chord diagram will be lost!
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Chord diagrams
Chord diagram libraries
Libraries make working with chord diagrams very simple. For example, if you always use a specific
set of fingerings for your chords (e.g. jazz voicings, or very simple fingerings for your guitar stu-
dents), you can set up a library containing just those chords. This makes it much quicker to find
the diagrams you want, and once you’ve set up a library, you can use it in every song you write.
You can even send your library to a friend, or add libraries that others have created.
To create a library, choose Add chord library... from the drop-down menu in the main Create >
Chord Diagram dialog or the Edit Chord Diagram dialog. You will be prompted to type in a name
– make it something memorable like Jazz chords or Easy voicings – then click OK.
To add a chord to your library, simply select it in the white rectangle in the middle of the dialog,
and click Add. (If no library is chosen next to the Chord shape library option at the bottom of the
dialog, you’ll be prompted to choose or create one.)
To remove a chord from your library, make sure Chord shape library is switched on (it’s probably
a good idea to switch off the other two options so only the chords in your library are shown), then
choose the chord you want to remove and click Delete.
If you want to share your chord diagram library with somebody, or want to install a new chord
library sent to you by another user, libraries are stored in the Chord Shapes folder inside the
Resources folder in your main G7 program folder. Chord library files have the extension .scl.
Maximum stretch
For the automatically generated chord shapes, you can specify the maximum distance that your
fingers can stretch by setting the Max. stretch option to the desired number of frets. The default is
3.
Copying, editing and deleting chord diagrams

Chord diagrams can of course be copied, moved and deleted in the usual ways. Once created in
your score, you can edit a chord diagram simply by double-clicking it.
You can also cycle through different fingerings for a selected chord without going back into the
dialog: simply click the diagram once so that it is selected, then choose Edit > Alternative Chord
Diagram (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+K or xXK) repeatedly to cycle through different fingerings.
Format options
The Format > Others > Chord Diagrams dialog contains numerous self-explanatory options con-
trolling the design of chord diagrams.
Making chord diagrams play back

Chord diagrams themselves don’t play back, but once you’ve added them to your score, you can
use Notes > Make Notes from Chord Symbols to generate a simple accompaniment from them –
see Playing back chord symbols and chord diagrams on page 58 for more information.
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Clefs
Clefs
The clefs at the start of every system are drawn automatically by G7. It puts in the standard clefs
for you when you create instruments. You only need to think about clefs if you want to change
them.
Creating clef changes

* If you want the clef to change mid-bar, input the music for the bar where the clef change is to
go, so you can create it between the right notes
* Select the note which is just before where you want the clef to be created and choose Create >
Clef (shortcut Q for ‘qlef’), and click the clef you want from the list provided.
* Click OK and the clef is created in your score. All the music after the clef will shift up or down to
ensure that it sounds the same as before.
You can also input a clef change with the mouse. Make sure that nothing is selected in your score
(hit Esc), choose the clef you want from the Create > Clef dialog, then point where you want the
clef to go and click. For instance, to change the clef of an entire instrument, put the clef you’ve
chosen on top of the existing clef at the very start of the score.
Moving clefs
If you drag a clef change around, you’ll see that G7 automatically shifts the music up or down as
the clef passes over it to keep the notes sounding the same.
Try this out – create a clef change somewhere, then drag it left and right along the staff, or up and
down onto other staves, and watch the music instantly leap around. When you have nothing bet-
ter to do, this can provide hours of harmless (if rather limited) enjoyment.
Deleting clefs
Clef changes can be removed with Delete. If the clef you want to delete changes at the start of a
system, delete the clef change which appears at the end of the previous system.
Hiding clefs at the start of a system

If you want a clef to appear on the first system but not on subsequent systems – for example, if
you’re working on a lead sheet – simply create a clef at the start and switch off Draw on subse-
quent systems; don’t try and delete the clef at the beginning of each system!
Hiding cautionary clef changes

If a score contains several songs, you may want to change clef at the start of one section without a
cautionary clef appearing at the end of the previous section. To do this, select the cautionary clef,
and choose Edit > Hide or Show > Hide (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+H or xXH).
For more information about hiding objects, b Hiding objects.
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Colored objects
Colored objects
G7 allows you to color most objects in your scores. This is very useful for producing more eye-
catching scores – for example, you might want to color all the tempo directions a particular color
to make them stand out for the performers – and also has educational applications; you could use
different colors to differentiate between different fingerings or chord diagrams, or color each pitch
on a notation staff differently to help students learn to read music.
How to color an object

Changing the color of an object is simple:
* Select the object (or objects) you want to color
* Choose Edit > Color (shortcut Ctrl+J or XJ)
* A standard color picker dialog appears: choose the color you want and click OK.
To color another object the same color as the last color you applied, select the object and choose
Edit > Reapply Color (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+J or xXJ)
You can color objects individually, or a whole bunch of selected objects at once. For example, to
change the color of all the notes in a bar, select the bar so that it’s surrounded by a single blue box,
then choose Edit > Color. You can also use filters (b Filters) to select, say, all the lyrics in your
song and color them all at once.
Which objects can be colored?

With a few exceptions, you can change the color of anything you can select, including notes, lines
(such as slurs, string indications, trills, etc.), text (such as fingering, tempo indications, technique
indications, dynamics), chord diagrams, symbols, and more.
Which objects cannot be colored?

* Instrument names to the left of the system
* Bar numbers
* Initial clefs at the start of systems (although you can color clef changes if you want)
* Initial key signatures at the start of systems (although you can color key signature changes)
* Initial time signatures at the start of systems (although you can color time signature changes)
* Note names denoting the tuning of tab staves at the start of systems
* Normal barlines (although you can color special barlines, such as repeat, double and final bar-
lines)
* Staff lines
* Individual notes in chords (if you color one note of a chord, all the notes in the chord will be
colored the same); you also cannot color stems, flags and beams separately from their notes.
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Display settings
Display settings
It’s worth spending a few moments setting G7’s display to suit your preferences and to make sure
it runs as quickly and smoothly as possible on your computer.
Screen resolution
G7 requires a minimum screen resolution of 800 x 600 pixels, and we recommend a screen resolu-
tion of 1024 x 768 pixels or higher where possible. To change your screen resolution:
* On Windows:
% Minimize any open programs, then right-click on the desktop, and choose Properties from
the context menu
% Click the Settings tab
% Drag the Screen Resolution slider right to increase the screen resolution, and click Apply to
try out your changes. If your computer is more than a couple of years old, you may need to
reduce the Color Quality value in order to display higher resolutions – but see Color depth
below.
* On Mac OS X:
% From the Apple menu, launch System Preferences, and double-click the Displays icon
% Choose a new screen resolution from the available list; your Mac is automatically set to use
the new resolution.
* On Mac OS 9:
% From the Apple menu, choose Control Panels > Monitors & Sound
% Choose a new screen resolution from the available list; your Mac is automatically set to use
the new resolution.
Depending on your computer’s graphics card, higher resolutions may cause screen redraw to slow
down a bit; if you find this to be the case, try reducing the number of colors used in your display,
as this reduces the work that your graphics card has to do.
Color depth
On Mac, G7 should look good at any color depth, from 256 colors right up to millions of colors.
You should only have to change the number of colors used by your display if you find redraw par-
ticularly slow at a certain color depth.
On Windows, however, we recommend that you set your display to a color depth of at least 16-bit
color. This is because some of the buttons on the Keypad may display incorrectly on displays using
256 (or fewer) colors.
To change the color depth used by your display, follow the same procedure described in Screen
resolution above.
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Display settings
Textures
Within G7, notice that both the virtual paper and desk use high-
quality textures to make them easier on the eye. You can easily
change the texture used for either or both by choosing View >
Textures.
If screen redraw seems particularly slow, try switching on the
Alternative texture drawing option in this dialog, then quit and
restart G7, which works better on some computers. (This option
is not available on Mac OS X when smoothing is switched on.)
If screen redraw is still slow, you might find that switching textures off (by setting the options to
Use color, not texture) makes dragging the paper around quicker and smoother.
You can even add your own textures to G7 if you like – just drop some suitable picture files (BMP
files on Windows, PICT files on Mac) into the Textures folder inside your G7 program folder and
they’ll then be available in the View > Textures dialog.
There are some fun textures to choose between – try Tiger skin for your desktop, or Paper, cof-
fee-stained for your paper if you’ve been up all night writing riffs! Note, however, that these two
textures in particular are especially large, and if you are using Mac OS X, they may cause display
problems with some graphics cards. If you encounter any display problems, try using other tex-
tures instead.
Smoothing
You can also make the display of the score appear smoother by choosing View > Smoothing (this
option is not available on Mac OS 9). Try dragging the slider to the right to improve the drawing of
objects on the screen using a technique called anti-aliasing.
On Windows, the further to the right you drag the smoothing slider, the slower screen drawing
will become, so you should experiment to find the best setting for your particular computer.
On Mac OS X, however, provided you have an AGP graphics card, you should find that switching
on smoothing actually speeds up the redraw of the screen considerably, so we recommend you set
the slider to one of the higher settings.
Translucent windows (Windows XP/2000 only)

On Windows XP and 2000, you can switch on the Window > Translucent Windows option, which
makes the Navigator, Keypad, Fretboard, Mixer and Properties windows translucent so that you
can see your music through them.
This usually also speeds up screen redraw, so if you run Windows XP or 2000, we recommend that
you switch this option on.
Multiple monitors
You can run G7 across multiple monitors, which is very useful as you can, say, have a different
score open on each monitor, or even view two pages of the same score across both displays.
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Drums and percussion

G7 supports drum set (drum kit) plus a wide selection of other unpitched percussion instruments
– from bongos to woodblocks.
G7 can add drum patterns to your scores in a variety of styles automatically, and you can also eas-
ily create drum notation yourself.
Creating a drum set

To create a drum set staff in G7, choose Create > Instruments
(shortcut I), and select either Drums, Drum Set or Drum Kit
from the Percussion/Drums family.
In drum set notation, G7 automatically plays particular sounds when particular noteheads appear
on particular lines or spaces in the staff. For instance, a cross notehead on the top line should pro-
duce a ride cymbal sound.
To change the notehead used by a particular note, select the note or notes whose notehead design
you want to change, then choose the appropriate notehead from the Properties window; see
Properties on page 146 for more details.
It’s also usually necessary to use multiple voices when creating drum notation, e.g. kick and snare
are usually written with stems down in voice 2, while hi-hats and cymbals are normally written
with stems up in voice 1. For more details about how to use voices, see Voices on page 179.
Adding automatic drum patterns

To add an automatic drum part to your score, simply choose Notes > Add Drum Pattern. (You
don’t need to create a drum staff first.) The following dialog will appear:
* Choose a Style from the drop-down list. The styles available in the list – which include blues,
rock, pop, jazz, Latin and country – are appropriate for the time signature, so you’ll never be
offered a waltz drum pattern in 4/4, or a blues shuffle in 3/4! The patterns all indicate a recom-
mended tempo at which they sound best, so it’s a good idea to choose a pattern that is intended
for the same kind of tempo as your score.
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* Add metronome mark creates a metronome mark at the start of the score (or selected passage
if you are working on part of a score), setting the playback tempo to the recommended tempo
for the chosen drum pattern
* Start with intro bar determines whether you want G7 to start with an introductory fill, leading
into the regular pattern
* Fill/break bar every n bars allows you to choose whether G7 should include a fill or break bar,
and how often it should do so
* End with outro bar specifies whether G7 should end the pattern with either one or two con-
cluding bars (depending on the pattern).
When you have set the options appropriately, click OK. A progress bar appears for a few moments
while G7 creates the drum pattern, and then you’re ready to play it back. If you decide that you
want to change the pattern, you can simply choose Notes > Add Drum Pattern again; G7 will
automatically delete the existing drum pattern and replace it with the new one.
Beware that if your score uses a variety of time signatures, when you choose Notes > Add Drum
Pattern a message will appear asking you to select a passage in a single time signature, then try
again.
Note that you cannot use Edit > Undo to remove a drum pattern, so we recommend that you save
your score before using this function. If you want to remove an added drum pattern completely,
simply triple-click the drum staff so that it is selected throughout the score, then hit Delete.
Drum mapping
G7’s default drum set is based on the recommendations of the Percussive Arts Society (in Norman
Weinberg’s book, Guide To Standardized Drumset Notation), as follows:
You can modify which noteheads and staff positions produce which formats from the Format >
Others > Tunings and Staff Types dialog:
* From the Category list, choose Percussion
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* Click 5 lines (drum set) (or any other staff type listed) followed by Edit. You will see this dialog:
The graphical representation of the staff shows the drum mapping – note that you can set differ-
ent noteheads to produce different sounds on the same line or space.
* To remove an existing notehead, select it (by clicking it) and click Delete
* To change a notehead, select the notehead you want to change, and use the Notehead menu to
choose the desired design
* To change the sound used by the selected notehead, choose the desired sound from the drop-
down Sound list. If your device is General MIDI compatible (and you are using the General
MIDI sound set), this list consists of all the instruments in Standard Set 1.
* If the Sound list doesn’t include the sound you’re looking for, e.g. if your MIDI device has extra
drum sounds, you can also specify the sound by switching on Use MIDI pitch and choosing the
correct pitch.
* To add a new notehead to the drum mapping, choose the notehead and sound you want from
the Notehead and Sound lists, then click New. The mouse pointer changes color; now click on
the staff to place the new notehead.
* If you create drum set notation using step-time or Flexi-time input, you should check that the
setting for each notehead in the Input using pitch menus corresponds with the key you press
on your MIDI keyboard to produce the same sound (see MIDI input below).
* When you add a new notehead to the drum map, the Input using pitch settings default to the
pitch as if notated on a treble clef staff. If a notehead is already present on the line or space, G7
adds a sharp to the pitch.
MIDI playback
Unpitched percussion sounds, such as those used by drum notation, work in a special way with
MIDI. The way you choose unpitched sounds varies slightly on different MIDI devices, but on
General MIDI devices, setting any staff to MIDI channel 10 makes it use unpitched percussion.
Instead of using program numbers to determine the sound of unpitched percussion, MIDI treats
the entire battery of unpitched percussion as if they’re laid out along a keyboard, with different
keys playing different instruments. This layout is called a ‘drum set’ (or sometimes a ‘percussion
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map’) because you can play the keys on a MIDI keyboard like hitting different drums. The whole
drum set is treated as one mega-instrument.
MIDI input
When inputting drum set notation using step-time or Flexi-time input, G7 automatically maps the
pitch of the notes you play on your MIDI keyboard onto the appropriate pitch, and also chooses
the correct notehead. If you play a pitch for which there is more than one notehead mapped in the
staff type, G7 will choose the first notehead listed in the drum map.
You can choose whether to use the pitch mappings determined by the staff type itself (i.e. the
Input using pitch option defined in the drum mapping – see above), or the pitches used by your
particular MIDI device (i.e. your keyboard or sound module). By default, G7 expects you to play
the pitches set in the staff type; to change this, choose Notes > Note Input Options, and change
the Percussion Staves setting.
In practice, what this means is that if you set the Percussion Staves option to The MIDI device’s
drum map, you will hear the correct sound as you input it, and G7 will automatically translate
the pitch you play into the drum set staff.
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Files
Files
This section explains saving scores in G7 format, moving files between Mac and PC, joining scores
together, and sending files to other people via email or the Internet.
File size
G7 files typically occupy around 16K plus 1–2K per page (excluding any imported graphics). This
means you can fit hundreds of thousands of pages on your hard disk, and even large scores can fit
on a single floppy disk or be sent by email. So even if you’re working on a concept album lasting
eight or nine hours, disk space is unlikely ever to present a problem when using G7.
Saving
Saving works just like in any other program, using File > Save As and File > Save (shortcut Ctrl+S
or XS). When you get round to saving, a convenient place to save is the Scores folder which G7
has helpfully created for you. On Windows, the Scores folder is inside your My Documents
folder; on Mac, the Scores folder is inside your G7 program folder.
You can change which folder is chosen as the default for saving scores from the File > Preferences
dialog (in the G7 menu on Mac OS X).
When you next open the score after saving, it will open at the page where you were working
when you saved it.
Auto-save
G7 can automatically save your score at timed intervals so that, should your computer crash, the
most work you can lose is a few minutes’ worth. Rather than saving your actual file, G7 makes a
copy of your score and saves it into a folder called AutoSave within the Backup Scores folder (see
below).
The next time you start the program, it checks the AutoSave folder, and if it finds any scores in
that folder, you will be asked if you want to restore them.
(When you close G7 normally, it deletes all the files in the AutoSave folder – so it’s essential that
you don’t save any files in there yourself!)
Backups
Each time you save, the score (with a version number added to the name) is also saved in Backup
Scores in your Scores folder. If you ever accidentally delete or mess up a score, look in this
backup folder to get the latest version you saved, or earlier versions too. This folder stores the last
40 scores you saved; older copies are progressively deleted to stop your disk from filling up, so
don’t use this folder to store your own backups!
Sharing files with other users

You may want to send music you have written in G7 to other people. If the person to whom you
want to send your music also has G7 or even just the free G7 demo (which they can download
from www.g7info.com), then simply send them the file by email (see below), or on floppy disk,
Zip disk or CD-R.
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Files
If the person you’re sending to doesn’t have G7, there are a number of other means of sharing files
with them:
* Publish the music on G7music.net or on your own web site – b Internet publishing
* Save the music as a graphics file from G7 and send it to them – b Graphics files
* Save the music as a MIDI file or ASCII tab file and send it to them – b MIDI files and b ASCII
tab files
* Save the music as a Scorch web page and attach both files to an email (see below).
Sending files by email is very simple, but the exact procedure differs according to the email client
you use:
* Outlook Express: start a new message, then click the Attach button (with a paperclip icon), find
the file and click Attach to attach it to the message. Then send it as normal.
* Netscape Messenger: start a new message, then click the Attach button and choose File from the
drop down list. Find the file you want to attach, and double-click its name to attach it to the
message, which you can then send as normal.
* Eudora: start a new message, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on the message body,
and choose Attach file. Find the file you want to attach, and double-click its name to attach it to
the message, which you can then send as normal.
If you don’t use any of the above programs, consult the documentation for your particular email
client for details on sending file attachments.
If you are sending a G7 file as a Scorch web page to somebody via email:
* remember to attach both the .sib and .htm files to your message
* tell the recipient that they will need to have Scorch installed on their computer; tell them to
save both files to a folder on their computer (e.g. the Desktop), and then to double-click the
saved .htm file to view the score in their web browser
File formats
G7 for Mac and G7 for Windows use exactly the same file format. You can move a G7 score
between Mac and Windows without any conversion at all – see below.
G7 can also open files saved from all existing versions of Sibelius for Mac and Windows (at the
time of writing, the latest version of Sibelius is 2.11), with some limitations:
* Only Sibelius files with 16 or fewer staves in can be opened in G7
* G7 does not have all of the instruments included in Sibelius. When opening Sibelius files that
contain instruments G7 does not support, these instruments will be renamed as Solo, but they
will still play back correctly.
* Certain publishing features of Sibelius are not supported in G7 (such as hiding empty staves, cue
notes, and so on), so the appearance of the file in G7 may not exactly match its original appear-
ance in Sibelius.
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Files
Sharing files with Sibelius 2 users
If you know anybody who uses G7’s “big brother” Sibelius 2, you can save from G7 in the Sibelius
2 file format so that you can share music with them. To save a Sibelius 2 file, choose File > Save As,
and select Sibelius 2 (.sib) from the Save as type drop-down menu.
Note that some information will inevitably be lost when saving your G7 file in a format suitable for
opening in Sibelius 2. For example, colored objects will all revert to black when opened in Sibelius
2, and some tab notations are not supported by Sibelius 2. Note also that the conversion process is
one-way: once a Sibelius 2 user has opened and saved your file in Sibelius 2, if you used any fea-
tures in your score that Sibelius 2 doesn’t understand, they will not be retained if the Sibelius user
later sends the file back to you.
Score Info
The File > Score Info dialog can be used to enter catalog information about your score, such as its
title, composer, arranger, copyright, and so on, which is automatically used when you save a score
as a web page (b Internet publishing). The File tab of the dialog shows you useful details about
your score, such as the date it was created, when it was last saved, how many pages, staves and
bars it contains, and so on. Note that this tab only appears after you have saved your score at least
once.
Opening Mac files on Windows

If you are trying to open a G7 file created on the Mac given to you on a floppy or Zip disk, make
sure the disk is formatted for Windows – although the Mac can read Windows disks, Windows
cannot read Mac disks.
To open the file in G7 for Windows, you will have to add the file extension .sib. These three letters
tell Windows this is a G7 file.
You can do this by right-clicking on the file icon (in My Computer or Windows Explorer) and
selecting Rename. Change the extension, and then hit Return (on the main keyboard). You may
be prompted that changing file types can render them unusable, because Windows assumes that
you don’t know what you’re doing. If asked whether you are sure you wish to proceed, click Yes.
Alternatively, you can add the correct file extension .sib earlier on, when saving the file on the
Mac.
Once you have renamed the file, you can open it in the usual way by double-clicking.
Opening Windows files on Mac

Mac OS 9 can read Windows disks as long as you have the File Exchange control panel installed.
This should be running by default, but if it isn’t, re-enable it from the Extensions Manager (in
Control Panels under the Apple menu).
To open a file created using G7 for Windows, simply choose File > Open and double-click the
name of the file (which will have a .sib extension) in the dialog.
Note that you cannot open Windows files in the other way – by double-clicking them in the Finder
– unless you use the supplied utility called Set as Sibelius file which is installed in the folder
called Extras within your G7 folder. You could drag this utility onto your desktop where it’s easier
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Files
to find. To allow a Windows .sib file to be opened by double-clicking, simply drag the G7 file (or a
group of files) onto Set as Sibelius file.
To open a Windows PhotoScore file on Mac, drag one or more files onto Set as PhotoScore file in
the folder called Extras within your G7 folder, then open it from PhotoScore Lite or PhotoScore
Professional in the usual way.
To open a Windows MIDI file on Mac, drag one or more files onto Set as MIDI file in the Extras
folder within your G7 folder, then open it from G7 in the normal way.
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Filters
Filters
Filters allow you to select particular kinds of objects in your score very quickly so that you can per-
form particular operations on them – for example, you could filter all the chord diagrams in a pas-
sage and then copy them elsewhere in the song; or you could filter all the lyrics in the song and
delete them altogether.
The Edit > Filter submenu contains three kinds of filters: object filters (for selecting particular types
of objects), voice filters (for selecting all the notes in a particular voice), and note filters (for selecting
particular notes in chords).
Using filters
To use a filter, select the passage in which you want to select your chosen objects or notes, then
choose the option from the Edit > Filter submenu. If you want your filter operation to apply to the
entire score, make sure nothing is selected before you make your choice – you will then be asked
if you want the operation to apply to the whole score.
Object filters
The filters at the top of the Edit > Filter submenu allow you to select particular types of objects.
They’re mostly self-explanatory, but it is worth pointing out the following:
* Dynamics selects both Expression text (e.g. mf, mp etc.) and hairpins
* Lyrics selects all lyrics, regardless of which verse they belong to (e.g. it selects text in the Lyrics
verse 2 text style as well as the Lyrics text style)
Voice filters
The Voice 1, 2, 3 and 4 filters not only select all the notes in the chosen voice, but all other objects
that belong to that voice (e.g. slurs and other lines, Expression text, and so on).
Note that if an object belongs to all voices it will also be selected when you use one of these filters.
Note filters
The note filters are useful for selecting particular notes from a passage of chords, either to delete
them or to copy them to another staff without taking the rest of the notes with them. For exam-
ple, if you wanted to grab just the top note from a passage of chords to copy into another staff so
that you could add lyrics, you would select the source passage, then choose Edit > Filter > Top
Notes or Single Notes (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+1 or zX1). This will leave just the top notes (or the
only notes in places where no chords are present) selected so you can copy them to another staff.
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Flexi-time™
Flexi-time™
Flexi-time is G7’s unique intelligent real-time MIDI input system.
Real-time input
Real-time input on other computer programs is when the program tries to work out both the pitch
and the rhythm of music played on a MIDI instrument (e.g. keyboard or guitar), and turn it into
clean notation.
The big problem is rhythm: people never play rhythms quite as notated because of unconscious
variation in speed. A standard improvement is produced by quantization: this is where you tell a
program to round all note values to whatever unit you specify. The trouble is that this only
improves the situation for relatively simple music – and if you speed up or slow down as you play,
the computer will get out of time with you in any case and produce garbage.
With Flexi-time, however, G7 detects if you’re changing speed slightly and compensates accord-
ingly. It quantizes automatically – there’s no need to specify a quantization unit – and uses a smart
algorithm which varies the quantization according to context. For instance, when you play short
notes, G7 will quantize with a shorter unit than when you play long notes.
Before you begin

Make sure your MIDI devices are hooked up correctly – see MIDI devices on page 118 for advice
on how to set up your gear.
Recording with Flexi-time

* Put the correct time signature in first, so that the metronome click indicates beats correctly
* Click a bar, note or rest from which to start recording, or:
% If you’re just recording from the start of a score for one instrument, you don’t need to select
anything first as it’s obvious where you’re recording from
% If you want to record into both staves of a keyboard, Ctrl+click or X-click the top staff
* Click the record button on the toolbar or choose Notes > Flexi-time (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+F or
xXF)
* G7 will start clicking a metronome to count you in. It gives you one full bar of clicks (by default)
– wait for this before you start playing!
* You can adjust the recording speed by dragging the tempo slider; the tempo readout on the tool-
bar changes as you drag the slider. (If you want to record more slowly, start recording, adjust the
tempo slider to the desired speed, then hit Esc and start recording again – G7 will remember the
tempo you set.)
* Start playing your MIDI keyboard or guitar, following the click (at least approximately). As you
play, the music you’re playing will appear on the screen.
If you speed up or slow down, the metronome speeds up or slows down to follow you, as long as
you’re not too violent with the tempo.
* When you’ve finished recording, hit Esc.
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Flexi-time™
If you want to erase the music you recorded and play it in again, select the old music as a passage
and Delete it.
If you add more music with Flexi-time on a different staff or staves, G7 plays back the existing
music as you record (called ‘overdubbing’).
If you want to add more music to the same staff/staves as the existing music, just record in exactly
the same way as before – G7 will add the new notes to the existing ones to make chords. If you
want to add another melody to the same staff, you can record into one of the other voices – see
Flexi-time options below.
Click settings
The settings for the metronome click you hear during Flexi-time recording are controlled via the
Mixer window (choose Window > Mixer). By default, the click marks the first beat of the bar with
a high woodblock sound, and then subsequent beats with a low click.
For more information on these settings, see Click track in Mixer on page 139.
Hints
* Listen to G7’s countdown beats, and start in time with them! If you start too soon, or at a differ-
ent tempo from the countdown, G7 will not understand what you’re up to.
* If you have difficulty recording two staves of keyboard music at once, try recording them one at
a time.
* Play smoothly.
* If you are playing on a MIDI guitar, try to play as cleanly as possible and avoid damping strings
that you’re not actively playing – MIDI pick-ups are very sensitive, and you may find that
unwanted very short notes appear if you damp strings by mistake.
* If you want music to be notated with staccatos, make sure the Staccato option is switched on in
Notes > Flexi-Time Options. If this option is switched off then playing staccato will produce
short note values with rests.
* People are often sloppy about placing notes simultaneously when playing a chord. If there’s a
significant gap between putting down notes of a chord, G7 will notate what you played literally.
Similarly, if you spread chords significantly, G7 will write out what you played rhythmically
rather than adding a vertical wiggly line.
* G7 can pick up changes of tempo extremely quickly – one beat faster than a human can, in fact!
However, if you make too violent a change of tempo G7 won’t understand what you mean. So
avoid making deliberate tempo changes during recording.
If G7’s beat gets out with you as you’re playing, stop and go back to the point where it got out. If
you just blunder on regardless, G7 may well get back in time again, but correcting the rhythm
will take far longer than just playing it again.
Live Playback
When you record in real-time, Flexi-time records every nuance of your performance – the exact
velocity, duration and rhythmic offset of each note – so that it can reproduce it exactly when play-
ing back. See Live Playback on page 37 for more details.
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Flexi-time™
Recording other MIDI data
When recording via Flexi-time, G7 records MIDI controller data along with the notes. For exam-
ple, if you use a keyboard sustain pedal when inputting via Flexi-time, G7 will notate the appro-
priate MIDI messages and automatically hide them in the score. Other MIDI controller data that
can be recorded include pitch bend, modulation, volume, etc.
MIDI controller messages are only visible if you have View > Hidden Objects switched on, and
look something like ~C7,127.
If you would prefer these MIDI messages not to be recorded when using Flexi-time input, switch
off the options in the Notation tab of the Notes > Flexi-time Options dialog (shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+O or xXO). For further details about these options, b MIDI files.
Flexi-time options
To get the various Flexi-time options, choose Notes > Flexi-time Options (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+O or
xXO), which displays this tabbed dialog:
On the Flexi-time tab are the following options:

* Flexibility of tempo: controls how G7 follows your speed. If you’re used to playing to a click, set
this to None (non rubato), and G7 will keep a fixed tempo. The higher you set the flexibility,
the more G7 is inclined to follow your tempo. If you find G7 seems to be changing tempo oddly,
it’s finding you hard to follow, so reduce the flexibility or set it to None (non rubato).
* Introduction ... bars: determines how many bars introduction will be played when you start
recording
* Record up to ... bars: if there aren’t many bars left in the score for you to record into, this auto-
matically adds enough bars when you start recording
* The Click button takes you directly to the dialog that determines the behavior of the metronome
click during recording – see Click settings above.
* Voices options:
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% Record into one voice allows you to specify a single specific voice to use for your Flexi-time
recording
% Record into multiple voices is an alternative to specifying a specific voice: when switched
on, G7 will automatically split the music into multiple voices, producing clearer notation.
This is the recommended setting.
* Replace and Overdub control what G7 does if you record over a passage that already contains
music: if set to Replace, G7 will clear the existing music before notating the new music you
play; if set to Overdub, G7 will add the new music you record to the existing music.
On the Notation tab are these options:
* Note Values options:
% Adjust rhythms makes G7 clean up what you’re playing. Leave this on!
% Minimum note value: this sets the shortest note value G7 will write. (Note that this is not a
quantization unit – G7 quantizes using a complex algorithm that varies with context.)
% Notate: these are options to notate staccato and tenuto; if you are confident of playing the
articulation exactly as you want it to be notated, switch these on. If you find lots of spurious
staccato or tenuto articulations in your score after inputting with Flexi-time, switch them off.
* Keyboard Staves: when inputting onto two staves, the split point determines which notes go
into each staff (notes on or above the split point go into the top staff, and notes below go into
the bottom staff). If you choose Automatic, G7 will guess where your hands are on the key-
board at any time and assign notes to staves accordingly. Alternatively, you can specify your
own Fixed split point. (Note that in G7, middle C is reckoned as C4 – which may be different
from how it is described in other music programs.)
* Tuplets: for each of the tuplets listed, you can set G7 to detect None/Simple/Moderate/Com-
plex ones. A ‘simple’ triplet (say) means one with three equal notes. For tuplets such as a quar-
ter note (crotchet) followed by a eighth note (quaver), use Moderate, and for tuplets with rests
or dotted rhythms, use Complex.
* MIDI Messages options:
% Keep program/bank messages imports all program and bank changes using G7’s MIDI mes-
sage text format, other than program changes at the start which are put in the Mixer window.
These messages are automatically hidden in the score.
% Keep controller messages similarly imports all controller messages (such as pitch bend, sus-
tain pedal, channel volume, etc.) and automatically hides them in the score.
% Keep other messages similarly imports any other MIDI messages found in the score.
Recommended options
Our recommended Flexi-time options are the default values, as follows: Adjust rhythms on, Mini-
mum note value sixteenth-note (semiquaver), Use multiple voices switched on, Flexibility of
tempo set to Low, Staccato and Tenuto on. For tuplets, set 3 to Simple or Moderate, maybe 6 as
well, and the others normally to None unless you’re into playing things like septuplets.
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Getting started in the music business

If you’ve got to the stage where you have written down some of your own songs in G7, you might
have started wondering about taking your next step to obtain a recording contract or music pub-
lishing deal. Perhaps you have even recorded some of your songs to a fairly polished state at home.
You, or your friends, are convinced that you have a glittering future in the music industry. Well,
you’ve already started! But where do you go from here?
Recording contract or publishing deal?

First off, you need to decide where you want to get, as there are many options. Do you want to
sign a recording contract for your band with a big record company to make CDs and promote
them? Or are your songs the most important thing for you, and you want to sell them to a pub-
lishing company who will then arrange to have them recorded and sung by other artists, possibly
with little control coming from you? Now is the time to ask yourself all the searching questions
about what really matters to you, and exactly where you’re heading, because otherwise you’ll
never know when you’ve arrived!
Then the most difficult task is to attract the attention of the people that matter. You will have
heard about ‘demo’ tapes and CDs, which show off your work, but don’t be tempted to start send-
ing them off right away. Most record and music publishing companies are inundated with dozens
of tapes on a weekly basis – the majority of which get nowhere and end up filed in the trash.
Record companies usually only sign singers or musicians who are likely to achieve long-term chart
success. It is therefore important that you obtain lots of performing experience before you even
approach record or music publishing companies with your songs.
Performing experience
Once you have assembled a group of reliable musicians, use every opportunity to perform as often
as you can. You could entertain people at parties or community events of all kinds, which will give
you invaluable experience of performing, as well as feedback from the audience. You could also
approach local bars, clubs or pubs to see if they have events or showcases for new talent, such as
Singers’ Nights.
Building a reputation as a performer will also give you the opportunity to make contacts in the
music industry. Record and publishing companies employ ‘A&R’ (Artists and Repertoire) staff,
whose main job is to find new talent. They often visit musical venues, usually at the recommenda-
tion of a manager, producer or agent, looking for acts that will have the right effect on an audi-
ence.
Producing a demo
At the same time you must apply yourself to preparing a demo CD or tape of the highest quality.
Don’t be tempted to record this at home unless you’re sure you can make a really professional job
of it – instead try to negotiate a good rate at a local commercial or community-based recording stu-
dio. You only need to include about three or four tracks, and start your finished demo with your
best song. Try to demonstrate your musical diversity by varying the tempos and styles, and don’t
forget to copyright your music before sending it anywhere!
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You may want to consider employing the services of an experienced agent at some point, although
this can be very difficult until you have established something of a name for yourself as a perform-
ing artist. A successful agent will have many contacts in the business to help you get even better
known.
Once your demo is recorded, an accompanying eye-catching press pack will help attract attention.
This could include good quality photos of the band, contact details, short biographies, and public-
ity information such as posters and flyers.
Sending out your demo

You will then need to obtain a list of companies to approach with your demo pack. Various direc-
tories can be found in reference libraries, and you can find endless lists of music publishers from a
search on the Internet. Ensure that you approach companies with a proven interest in your style
of music, or you will be wasting everyone’s time.
You will need to label your demo inside and outside the CD or cassette case, with your name,
address, e-mail and telephone number. Always find the name of the right A&R person to approach
who is likely to be interested in your sort of music, and address the CD or cassette to them person-
ally. If you are able, it is even better to take your tape in personally, or alternatively send it using
some form of guaranteed delivery post. You could follow up your visit with a phone call in a cou-
ple of weeks to see if anyone has listened to the tape yet, although be prepared that you might not
get through!
You will need to be patient and persistent – only a tiny minority of tapes and CDs received lead to
any kind of recording or publishing contract. Even if you are one of the lucky ones to obtain a
deal, the chances of chart success and fame are still very small. You need a combination of talent,
dedication, and lots and lots of luck.
Before signing any sort of contract, you must obtain legal advice from a music industry lawyer.
Never agree to part with any money yourself, as no reputable company would ever ask you to do
this.
Good luck!
Using the Internet

If you want to go it alone and reach an audience without getting a recording contract or publish-
ing deal, a great alternative is to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the Internet.
With G7 you’re off to a great start, as you can securely publish your songs online at G7music.net,
where you get your own personalized web page, and where you can upload your songs in both G7
and MP3 format. See Internet publishing on page 106 for more details.
Alternatively, you could look into working with independent A&R companies, such as TAXI (at
www.taxi.com), or self-publish recordings of your music online at sites like www.earbuzz.com or
www.mp3.com.
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For further reading
If you want to find out more about getting your big break in the recording industry, try these
books:
* How to Succeed in the Music Business by Allan Dann and John Underwood, published by Omnibus
Press, ISBN 0711994331
* Six Steps to Songwriting Success by Jason Blume, Billboard Books, 1999, ISBN 0823084221
* Learn Songwriting by N Hooper & Caroline Hooper, Usborne Publishing Ltd, 1999, ISBN
0746030460
* How to Make It in the Music Business (Virgin Careers Guides) by Sian Pattenden, Virgin Books, 2000,
ISBN 0753504219
* Songwriter’s Market, edited by Ian Bessler, Writers Digest Books, 2002, ISBN 1582971234.
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Graphics files
Graphics files
This topic explains how you can add graphics to your scores by importing bitmap images in TIFF
format into G7, and how you can turn your score into a graphics file (e.g. an EPS file) for publish-
ing or to add music extracts to a document.
If you want to turn a graphics file (e.g. a scanned image) into a score, b Scanning.
Importing a graphic
To import a graphics file, ensure nothing is selected in your score (click on a blank part of the
paper or hit Esc), then choose Create > Graphic. Find the graphic you want to import, then click
Open; the mouse pointer will then change color to show that it is ‘loaded’ with an object, so click
in the score to place the graphic.
We’ve provided a lot of useful ready-made graphics files – e.g. pictures of instruments, colored
rings (to put round things), etc. – in the Graphics files folder inside your Scores folder which you
can use if you can’t be bothered to create your own.
Imported graphics often look best on the screen with the paper texture set to plain white, so that
the white background around non-rectangular shapes blends in. However graphics will print fine
whatever the screen texture is.
Copying, editing and deleting graphics

Once the graphic appears in your score, you can manipulate it in much the same way as any other
object in your score:
* copy it with Alt+click or z-click
* move it by clicking on the graphic so that it is shaded blue, then drag it with the mouse or use
the arrow keys (with Ctrl or X for larger steps)
* scale it, while keeping its proportions, by clicking on the small handle at the bottom right-hand
corner, so that it is surrounded by a blue box, then drag the mouse or use 3/2 (with Ctrl or X
for larger steps)
* scale it, while altering its proportions, by holding Ctrl or X before clicking on the bottom right-
hand corner of the graphic (where the handle appears); release Ctrl or X, then drag the mouse
or use 3/2 (with Ctrl or X for larger steps)
* delete it with Delete.
File size
Note that importing a graphic into your score will increase its file size considerably. To keep the file
size as small as possible, G7 compresses the TIFF file when it imports it, and if you use the same
graphic multiple times in your score, you can and should just copy it instead of importing it again.
File formats
G7 can import graphics files in TIFF format, at any color depth (in other words, it can be black and
white, grayscale, or full color using any number of colors).
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If your graphic is not in TIFF format, you can convert it into a TIFF file using a graphics program
such as Graphic Converter for Mac (available for download from www.lemkesoft.com), Imaging
for Windows (included on many PCs in the Start > Programs > Accessories menu) or Paint Shop
Pro for Windows (available for download from www.jasc.com).
Saving graphics files

G7 can export (save) a passage or page of music as a picture in various standard graphics file for-
mats. This means you can include music in other documents, e.g. articles, worksheets, essays,
music books, cover designs and posters.
Because most of us prefer not to think about technicalities, G7 takes the strain out of saving graph-
ics files – you generally don’t even need to know which kind of graphics file you need to produce;
just which program you want to use it in.
G7 allows you to save the whole score, a single page, or one or more systems just as easily:
* If you want to save one or more systems, first select the desired systems as a passage, then
choose File > Save as Graphics
* If you want to save one or more whole pages, or the whole score, just choose File > Save as
Graphics.
The Save as Graphics dialog has the following options:

* Program/Format: lists the programs G7 directly supports, together with the various graphics file
formats that it can save, so if your chosen program isn’t listed, you can choose the most appro-
priate format for your software
* Pages: you can choose to save all the pages of your score, the selected systems only, or a range
of pages in much the same way as choosing which pages to print in the Print dialog, e.g. you can
type 1,3,10-23.
* Filename: determines the name of the file given to the exported graphics file; if you save multi-
ple pages, the name entered here forms the basis of the name of each file (which will be fol-
lowed by the page number of the score)
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* Save to folder: allows you to choose where the graphics file(s) will be saved; click Browse and
choose the desired folder
* Create subfolder: if you choose to save a range of pages or the whole score and you switch this
on, G7 will create a folder to put all the graphics files in, by default taking its name from the
Filename specified above and appending the name of the format; so if you specify a filename of,
say, Album 1st track and export EPS files, the folder will be called Album 1st track EPS
(although you can change this if you like)
* Scale: this option (only available when exporting EMF or BMP files) determines the resolution
of the resulting graphics file(s). A bitmap saved at 100% will look as ‘blocky’ as music does
when viewed at 100% zoom factor in G7. 200% is reasonably smooth, but occupies more mem-
ory. 400% is the recommended scale factor for EMF files on Windows.
* Dots per inch: this option is only available when exporting BMP files and allows you to specify
the resolution of the file; the higher the dpi specified here, the better quality the resulting file,
but the more memory it takes up. A value of between 300 and 600 dpi should be sufficient.
* Adjust size to improve staves: we recommend you leave this option switched on; it makes
small adjustments to the dimensions of the exported graphics file(s) to ensure that the distance
between staff lines is absolutely regular.
* Use smallest bounding box: defines the dimensions of the resulting graphics file(s). If this
option is switched off, the file will use the page dimensions of the score (including the margins)
as the bounding box. With the option switched on, the file will be cropped to the smallest size
possible, i.e. just to the edges of the music.
* Monochrome: this option also only applies to BMP files. We recommend that you switch this
option on unless the page(s) you are exporting specifically uses colored objects, as monochrome
BMP files are substantially smaller in file size than full color ones.
* Include View menu options: this option specifies whether the current options from the View
menu (such as hidden objects and breaks) should be included visibly in the graphics file(s). By
default this option is switched off.
* Include colored objects: this option specifies whether any objects (such as notes, lines, text,
etc.) you have colored using Edit > Color should remain in those colors in the graphics file(s); if
this is switched off, they will be included in black.
* EPS Graphics: these options are for exporting EPS files:
% Include TIFF preview: allows you to include a compressed monochrome TIFF preview in the
EPS file, which will enable most graphics programs to show you a low-resolution preview of
the EPS file before printing
% Embed fonts: with this option switched on, G7 will embed all the fonts used in the docu-
ment in the EPS file. Although embedding fonts increases the size of each EPS file you create,
it ensures that the publisher or printer who wants to use your EPS files can print them cor-
rectly without requiring separate copies of the fonts themselves. It is recommended that you
switch on this option, unless you have a good reason not to.
* Substitute: these options do the same as for printing (b Printing), namely fix bugs in certain
printer drivers which can make lines and braces draw incorrectly
When you’ve chosen your options, click OK to save the graphics file(s).
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Graphics formats
Graphics file formats fall into two kinds: vector graphics and bitmap graphics.
Vector graphics are scalable – in other words, you can make them larger or smaller without any
degradation in quality – and the files also tend to use less memory than bitmap graphics.
Bitmap graphics are made up of little squares (called ‘pixels’), so are lower quality than vector
graphics, but are supported by a wider variety of programs.
The specific formats available in G7 are as follows:
* Vector: EPS (Mac and Windows), EMF (Windows), PICT (Mac)
* Bitmap: BMP (Windows).
Each of these formats is detailed below. You can also create PDF files from G7 – see Creating PDF
files below.
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files

Most publishers and printers prefer to receive music in EPS format for publication, and G7 allows
you to export your music directly as an EPS file.
Note that EPS files will not print on non-PostScript printers from most programs. Printing an EPS
file to a non-PostScript printer may result either in a blank page, a message informing you that
you cannot print EPS files on a non-PostScript printer, or a low-resolution printout of the TIFF
preview image embedded in the EPS file.
We recommend that you embed fonts in your EPS files, but if you choose not to, you are licensed
by G7 to supply the Opus and Inkpen2 fonts to your publisher or printer in order to print your EPS
files, but you must ensure that you have permission to distribute fonts from other companies.
If you import EPS files into Adobe Illustrator version 9.0 or later, we recommend that you switch
off Type > Smart Punctuation in Illustrator first, as this changes certain font characters, causing
some of the Opus and Inkpen2 symbols to disappear.
If you import EPS files into Adobe PageMaker, you may see a message when you print the docu-
ment containing the EPS file warning you that the fonts in the EPS file could not be found. Pro-
vided your EPS file has fonts embedded, this doesn’t matter, and the document will still print
correctly despite this warning.
Some graphics programs on the Mac (e.g. Corel Draw 8) may give errors when opening EPS files
from G7; if you get an error message, try saving the EPS file from G7 again with the TIFF preview
option switched off.
EMF files (Windows only)

EMF (Enhanced MetaFile) format is fairly standard on Windows programs, but is not generally
supported on the Mac.
EMF files can be imported into programs such as Microsoft Word (version 97 or later), and are also
editable – up to a point – in vector drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw.
From the File > Save as Graphics dialog you can change the scale factor at which EMF files should
be saved. By default, the scale factor is 400%. Due to the inherent inaccuracies in the EMF file
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format, using a lower scale factor may introduce graphical problems, such as beams tapering,
when you import the file into your word processor or graphics program.
PICT files (Mac only)

PICT is a vector graphics format similar to EMF, and the resulting image is editable in structured
drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator. PICT files can also be imported into programs such as
Microsoft Word.
Like EMF (see above), the PICT file format has some limitations, such as inaccuracies in the precise
positioning of e.g. stems to noteheads. PICT files work best if you save them out at a Scale of
100% (which is G7’s default), not Actual size, then scale them in the program that is receiving
them.
Because of the problems inherent in the PICT format, we strongly recommend EPS files in prefer-
ence to PICT files.
BMP files (Windows only)

Don’t save a bitmap (.bmp) file unless you’re sure you mean it, as bitmap files produce lower print
quality than EMF or EPS format, and use more disk space and memory.
The color depth of the saved bitmap file will be the same as the color depth of your current display
settings – so you can help to keep the file sizes smaller by setting your display to use, say, 256 col-
ors before saving bitmap files.
Inserting graphics files into Microsoft Word

To place a graphics file generated by G7 into a Word document:
* Position the caret in your Word document where you want the picture to go
* Choose Insert > Picture > From File
* Find the graphics file you have saved from G7, and click Insert
* This places a miniature view of the whole page of music into your document
* Usually you’ll want a cropped version of part of the page, shown rather larger. First of all, click
the crop tool which is just after halfway along the Picture toolbar.
* Then drag the edges of the picture inwards until they roughly enclose the part of the page you
want to show
* Click the crop tool again to switch it off
* Now, increase the size of the music by dragging any corner of the box. Do not drag an edge, oth-
erwise the music will stretch and become distorted. (Type Ctrl+Z or XZ to undo if you do this by
accident.)
* When you’re happy with the size of the music, you may want to select the crop tool again in
order to adjust the cropping
* Beware if you edit the graphics in the imported file from within Word – its graphics editor does
not handle music graphics well and might produce unexpected results. Use a proper graphics
program instead.
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Creating PDF files
Portable Document Format (PDF) files allow documents generated by programs such as word pro-
cessors and desktop publishers to be published electronically, preserving their original appearance,
for viewing and printing on any computer.
Mac OS X directly supports the creation of PDF files in all applications, so you don’t need any addi-
tional software. To create a PDF of your G7 score on Mac OS X, simply click the Save as PDF but-
ton in G7’s File > Print dialog.
G7 supports the creation of PDF files, provided you have a suitable PDF creator installed on your
computer. The official PDF creator is Adobe Acrobat, which is a commercial product available from
www.adobe.com for both Mac and Windows, but there are other options:
* For Windows, two cheaper commercial alternatives are pdfFactory, available from www.fine-
print.com, and PDF995, available from www.pdf995.com
* For Mac OS 9, an alternative package is Jaws PDF Creator, available from www.hallogram.com
* A cost-free alternative is to use Ghostscript, which is a PostScript interpreter capable of creating
PDF files. It is available for both Windows and Mac from www.ghostscript.com and is updated
frequently, although it can be difficult to set up at first.
PDF files are generated by software which installs and behaves like a printer driver. This means
that creating a PDF is as simple as printing a file from G7, choosing the appropriate ‘printer’ as you
do so. For further instructions, consult the documentation that accompanies your PDF creation
software.
To view PDF files, you need to have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer.
You are invited to install the Acrobat Reader when you install G7, since it is required for the Gui-
tar Guide feature, so it is probably already installed; if not, you can install it from your G7 CD-
ROM.
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Guitar Guide
Guitar Guide
The Guitar Guide contains complete information about guitars, playing techniques and
musical styles, with audio examples, music and useful illustrations. To launch the Guitar
Guide, simply click the Guide button on the toolbar, which will open the Guide in a new
window.
Getting around the Guitar Guide

The Guitar Guide has a standard toolbar which is used to navigate its contents:
Click the buttons next to Guitars, Styles and Techniques to move between the three main sec-
tions of the Guide:
* Guitars describes many of the different kinds of commonly-used guitars, including illustrations
and audio samples that demonstrate the very varied sounds produced by the different types.
* Styles includes around 40 music examples in a wide variety of styles, from jazz to heavy rock
and back again, with audio samples and tab/notation which you can follow or use in your own
songs.
* Techniques shows you how to write down and perform guitar techniques such as bends, slides,
pull-offs, hammer-ons and harmonics, all with useful illustrations and audio samples.
Within each of the main three sections, the larger panel to the right allows you to navigate
between the different pages of material. Simply click one of the black buttons to go directly to that
page. When the button right button says e.g. << Guitar types, click it to go back to the page you
came from.
The Print button prints the current page (you can only print one page at a time).
Audio playback
Wherever you see the play button, a real recording of the guitar, playing technique
or musical style is available. Simply click the play button to start playback, and click
the stop button to stop it again.
Sending music examples to G7

All of the music examples shown in the Styles section of the Guide can be opened in G7 so
you can edit them, play them back, and perhaps use them as the basis for your own song-
writing. Just click the file icon (where present) and the file will be opened in G7 immediately.
All of the examples in the Guitar Guide include both notation and tab when opened in G7 (even
though some of the examples only show tab in the Guide itself in order to save space).
The first time you click the icon to open the example in G7, you will see a message telling you that
this type of file is set to be launched by the PDF. Switch on Do not show this message again and
click OK.
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Quitting the Guitar Guide
To quit the Guitar Guide, simply click the close box in the window’s title bar.
Opening the audio examples in QuickTime player

If you want to listen to particular audio examples in more detail by fast forwarding/rewinding/
pausing them, you will need to open them directly in QuickTime Player. To do this:
* Minimize or hide G7 if it’s running
* Using My Computer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac) navigate to the G7 program folder.
% On Windows, it’s C:\Program Files\Sibelius Software\G7 by default
% On Mac, it’s Applications:G7 by default
* Double-click the Resources folder inside the G7 folder, then double-click the Data folder, and
finally double-click the Audio folder
* You’ll now see a list of all the audio files used in the Guitar Guide. To listen to one, simply dou-
ble-click it, and it will automatically be opened in QuickTime Player.
Guitar Guide and Preview (Mac OS X only)

In Mac OS X, the Guitar Guide will try to open in the built-in Preview application for technical
reasons, and won’t work.
To ensure that the Guide opens in Acrobat Reader, locate the G7 Guide.pdf file inside the
Resources folder in your G7 program folder. Select it and type XI to see its properties; in the win-
dow that appears you can choose the particular program with which this file should be opened –
you must choose Acrobat Reader.
Check that this has worked by clicking the Guide button on G7’s toolbar.
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Hiding objects
Hiding objects
It can be useful for certain objects to be present but hidden in your scores, for example if you want
some notes to play back but not print. G7 allows you to hide more or less any object.
Hiding an object
To hide an object in your score, select it and choose one of the options in Edit > Hide or Show,
which are (unsurprisingly) Hide (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+H or xXH) and Show (shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+S or xXS).
When you hide an object, its color will lighten and look a little ghostly to let you know that it is
hidden. Once you deselect the object, it will disappear, although you can choose to see all hidden
objects in your score – see Viewing hidden objects below.
Viewing hidden objects

To be able to see hidden objects in your score, switch on View > Hidden Objects (shortcut
Ctrl+Alt+H or zXH); this option is switched off by default. When this option is switched on, hid-
den objects appear in light gray in your score (but they do not print – see Playing and printing
hidden objects below). Hidden objects can then also be selected and edited in exactly the same
way as unhidden ones.
When View > Hidden Objects is switched off, hidden objects in your score are completely invisible
and cannot be selected or edited individually.
Note also that if you delete a rest it is hidden, so that it will appear in light gray if View > Hidden
Objects (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+H or zXH) is switched on.
Playing and printing hidden objects

By default, hidden objects don’t print and do play back, regardless of whether View > Hidden
Objects is switched on or off.
If you want to print hidden objects, e.g. to help with proof-reading, switch on View > Hidden
Objects and then print your score, making sure to switch on Print View menu options in the
File > Print dialog (b Printing).
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Internet publishing
Internet publishing
The Internet is the ideal way to reach a worldwide audience for your music. G7 comes with the
Sibelius Scorch plug-in, which lets anyone view, play back, transpose, and print G7 scores on the
Internet.
You can either publish your music on your own web site, or publish it directly at the click of a but-
ton on our web site G7music.net, where you can even sell your music.
Scorch
Sibelius Scorch is the amazing free web browser plug-in that allows anyone to view, play back,
change key and instruments, and print scores directly from the Internet, whether or not they have
G7.
People browsing your site will be prompted to download Scorch automatically, and in just a couple
of minutes they’ll be able to see and hear the music. Scorch is used on hundreds of web sites,
including major publishers such as www.sheetmusicdirect.com (rock/pop songs) and
www.boosey.com (classical/educational music).
Scorch works with most web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera, on both
Windows and Mac.
The Scorch toolbar

Playback controls and tempo slider (Windows only).
Click Play to start playback, or click anywhere on the score Change key* Print the
to start playback from that point. score*
Turn pages Choose which sound device Change top Save the score Scorch information
you use for playback instrument* to disk* and updates
* option not available in all scores
Recommended settings
To make your score look and sound as good as possible when other people look at your music, you
should standardize it before you publish.
Limit the fonts used for text in the score to common ones, such as Times, Times New Roman, Arial
and Helvetica (although Scorch will substitute the nearest equivalent fonts if the person viewing
your web page doesn’t have the fonts you have used).
Set your score to play back using the General MIDI sound set (via the Play > Devices dialog –
b MIDI devices), since most computers use this. You should also bear in mind that a score
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which sounds good on your own soundcard or MIDI devices may not sound good on different
computers with different setups.
When preparing your scores for publishing on G7music.net, where they can be printed, use por-
trait format and preferably a standard page size (e.g. Letter, Tabloid, A4 or A3). Scorch will scale
the music to fit on the printer’s page size.
Publishing on G7music.net
You can publish your songs and riffs to a worldwide audience on our self-publishing web site
G7music.net.
It’s entirely free to publish scores, plus you can make money from it – if you want to sell your
music (rather than provide it for free) you’ll be paid a generous 50% of the price!
To get started, open the G7 file you would like to publish online, and click the Publish button on
the G7 toolbar (or choose File > Publish on G7music.net).
* If you haven’t saved the file recently, you will be prompted to do so first; save it, then click Pub-
lish again
* Your computer will then connect to the Internet (if it’s not already connected) and your web
browser will go to G7music.net.
* Follow the instructions on the site to publish your score.
Note that G7music.net will only publish music to which you hold the sole music copyright, i.e.
original compositions or arrangements of out-of-copyright music. You are not permitted to publish
transcriptions or arrangements of copyright music, verbatim transcriptions or editions of out-of-
copyright music, or scores containing copyright lyrics that are used without permission. For fur-
ther details about the copyright restrictions on scores you can publish, please visit
www.G7music.net.
If you experience any problems or have any queries about self-publishing on G7music.net, please
email info@G7music.net.
Publishing on your own web site

If you would prefer to publish your music on your own web site, G7 makes this just as easy:
* First, choose File > Score Info, click the Composer/Title tab, and enter some information about
your score – the web page you are about to generate assumes you’ve filled in the Title and Com-
poser fields so that it can include them in the web page
* Choose File > Save As
* Set Save as type to Scorch web page, and enter a filename.
* If you haven’t entered anything in the File > Score Info dialog, you will be warned, for example,
that the Title and Composer fields are blank
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* You are asked to choose a template web page to insert the score into. You can also adjust the
width and height of the score as it will appear within the web page. If you don’t feel ambitious,
just leave the default settings and click OK.
Setting a larger Width makes the page and hence the music bigger; there’s no need to enter a
Height value if you want the page to be the same shape, which is advisable. (The Keep aspect
ratio option ensures that the page is the right shape when viewed in Scorch. Leave this option
switched on.)
Allow printing and saving, as the name suggests, allows you to choose whether visitors to your
web site can print and save your music, or simply play it back – see Printing from Scorch
below.
* G7 then saves two files in the chosen location: an HTML file (with the file extension .htm), and
a G7 score (with the extension .sib).
You’re now ready to upload these two files to your web site. Depending on how your web site is
hosted, you may need to use an FTP client or upload them via your web browser.
You must include both the actual G7 score file and the web page in the same folder on your web site
– the HTML in the web page refers to the G7 file.
Printing from Scorch

If you switch on the Allow printing and saving option when saving your score as a Scorch web
page, visitors to your site will be allowed to print your score to their computer’s printer, and also
save the score as a G7 file to their hard disk so that they can open it in G7 themselves.
This makes it easy to share your music with others: if visitors to your site have G7 themselves,
they can download the music to their computer and check the fingerings using the Fretboard win-
dow.
Note that the Allow printing and saving option does not have some of the benefits of publishing
your music on G7music.net:
* You are not permitted to put Scorch to commercial use on your own web site without a special
license from us – i.e. you may not charge money for allowing visitors to your site to print and
save your music.
* Music on your own web site is not securely encrypted.
Beware that even if you don’t allow printing and saving, your scores are still downloaded to the
visitor’s computer in unencrypted form. Whenever you view something in your web browser –
whether it is text, an image, or even a G7 score using the Scorch plug-in – it has been downloaded
to the temporary Internet files folder on your computer’s hard disk. This means that anybody who
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views your music on your personal web page will potentially be able to edit the original file (if
they have G7).
In other words, if you publish your music on your own web site, you will be doing so in an inse-
cure way. However, if you publish your music on G7music.net, your music is secure.
If you want to publish securely on your own web site, contact Sibelius Software about licensing
Sibelius Internet Edition, a special version of G7’s sister product Sibelius for commercial Internet
publishing.
Legal notice
It is illegal to place copyright music on the Internet without permission from the copyright owner.
This is usually the case even if you have made your own arrangement of a copyright piece of
music.
G7’s Internet publishing facility is licensed to you for non-commercial use only. (See the G7
license agreement for details.)
You are not allowed to distribute Scorch, e.g. to put it on your own website – people visiting your
site must follow the link supplied in order to download Scorch. Licensing conditions for the plug-
in are shown when you install it.
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Key signatures
Key signatures
The key signatures which appear at the start of notation staves are automatic. They are adjusted to
suit the current clef, and omitted from those instruments which don’t usually have them (e.g.
most percussion). The only key signatures you have to input are the one at the start plus any key
changes which occur in the music.
Creating key signatures

Type K (or choose Create > Key Signature) and click the key
signature you want. Switch between major and minor keys
using the radio buttons to the left of the dialog.
To create a key signature at the beginning of your score, make
sure nothing is selected, then choose Create > Key Signature,
choose the key signature and click at the start of the score.
You can also use this method to create a key change with the
mouse anywhere in the score.
Note that where the key signature is created depends on
whether you have selected anything in your score: if you
select, say, a note or rest and then create a key signature, G7
automatically places it after the selected object.
Moving and deleting key signature changes

You can move key changes with the mouse or arrow keys.
To delete the key signature at the start of a score, create a C major or A minor key signature and
put it on top of the existing one.
To delete a key signature elsewhere (i.e. a key change), select the key change and hit Delete. To
delete a change of key signature which happens at the start of a system, select the cautionary key
change at the end of the previous system.
Cautionary key signatures

If your score contains more than one song or riff and one of them starts in a new key, you’ll want
to omit the cautionary key signature that would otherwise appear at the end of the preceding sys-
tem. It’s easiest to do this when you create the new key signature: just switch on Hide in the
Create > Key Signature dialog.
To hide the cautionary key signature after creating it, select it and choose Edit > Hide or Show >
Hide (shortcut xXH or Ctrl+Shift+H). For more information about hiding objects, b Hiding
objects.
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Layout and formatting

‘Layout’ means how music looks on the page. ‘Formatting’ is the process of creating a good layout.
G7 automatically formats music to produce an instant, excellent layout.
In most other music notation programs, formatting is largely left up to the user, which can waste
hours of time. But G7 also lets you adjust the layout at any stage, and because it only takes a frac-
tion of a second to reformat the entire score, there’s no need to plan layout in advance.
The three main weapons in your formatting armory are to adjust the page and staff size, the verti-
cal spacing, and the horizontal spacing.
Page and staff size

Changing the staff, margin and/or page sizes in the Format > Page and Staff Size dialog is one way
to increase or reduce the number of pages in a score, or to free up some space between the staves.
Adjusting the staff size (the distance between the top and bottom staff lines of a 5-line staff) is gen-
erally the most effective. You will find that a tiny adjustment often has a dramatic effect on the
amount of music that can fit on a page, without affecting the legibility of the notes.
For detailed instructions on these options, see Page and staff size on page 142.
Vertical spacing
Changing the vertical spacing means, in effect, moving the staves. The various options open to you
are:
* Dragging staves up and down to change the gap between them
* Dragging systems up and down, by dragging the top staff of the system
* Creating a page break; this is an easy way to reduce the number of staves on a page. The
remaining staves will be spaced out proportionally without you having to drag them –
b Breaks.
To drag a staff, first select which staff or staves you want to work with:
* Click (or double-click) on a blank part of a bar to select that bar
* Triple-click on a blank part of a bar to select a staff throughout the score
The two ways of moving staves are:

* Normal move – select a staff or staves and drag with the mouse (shortcut Alt+3/2 or z3/2, with
Ctrl or X for larger steps): changes the distance between the selected staff/staves and the staff
above (or the top page margin if the top staff is selected) and retains the spacing between all
other staves. Sibelius may have to squash up other staves to allow room if the page is full.
* Independent move – select a staff or staves and use Shift-drag (shortcut xz3/2 or Shift+Alt+3/
2, with Ctrl or X for larger steps): moves only the selected staff/staves, leaving all other staves in
the same place on the page. Although you can use this to move staves almost on top of one
another, you cannot move one staff beyond another staff in either direction and, so doing,
change the order of the staves in your score.
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Horizontal spacing
Changing horizontal spacing means changing the distance between notes, rests and barlines. You
can drag individual notes, rests and barlines left or right with the mouse. You can also decrease or
increase the spacing either for a selected passage or a single note by typing Shift+Alt+0/1 or
xz0/1 (hold down Ctrl or X to change the spacing in larger steps).
If the horizontal spacing gets very distorted, you can reset it to the default settings by choosing the
affected passage and choosing Format > Reset Note Spacing (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N or xXN).
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Lines
Lines
The Create > Line dialog (shortcut L) contains special lines used in music such as trills, slurs, hair-
pins, string indicators and so on for entry in your score.
You can also edit existing lines and design new ones – see Editing lines below.
Creating lines
All lines are created in the same way:
* Lines are either created where the selected note/rest is, or can be placed with the mouse:
% If you want the line to be automatically positioned, either select the note/rest where you
want the line to start, or select a passage of notes over which you want the line to last
(enclosing both the start and end points of the line)
% If you want to place the line with the mouse, first make sure nothing is selected – hit Esc
* Choose Create > Line (shortcut L). The dialog is split into two halves: staff lines (which apply only
to a single staff) on the left, and system lines (which apply to all staves) on the right
* Select the line you want to create and click OK. The line will either be placed automatically in
the score, or the mouse pointer will change color to show that it is ‘loaded’ with a line – click in
the score to create it.
* To extend the line rightwards a note at a time, hit space; to retract the line leftwards again, type
Shift-space. You can also drag either end of a line with the mouse. Note that system lines can-
not be extended and retracted using the keyboard.
* When either end of a line is selected (shown by a small blue box), you can also make small
adjustments to its position using the arrow keys (with Ctrl or X for larger steps).
Slurs
To create a slur, either:
* select a note (or grace note) and type S. This draws a slur to the next note; or
* select the passage of notes (on a single staff) you want to be slurred and type S, which draws a
slur over all the selected notes.
You can then extend the slur to the following note by hitting space (by analogy with creating lyr-
ics), or contract it back again with Shift-space. These keys move the right-hand end because it is
selected. Look for the small blue ‘handle’ – slurs have handles when selected; if just one end of the
slur is selected, only that end gets a handle. space/Shift-space can be used to move either end of
a slur or other line, as can dragging with the mouse, or nudging with the arrow keys.
To select either end of the line using just the keyboard, type Alt+0/1 or z0/1, which cycles
through four points: from left to right, the left end of the slur, both ends of the slur (to adjust the
vertical position of the entire slur), the mid-point of the slur (to adjust its curvature), and the right
end of the slur.
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Lines
Hairpins
Hairpins (the wedge-shaped signs for getting louder or softer) are created quickly
by selecting the first note, then typing H for a crescendo or Shift-H for a diminu-
endo. As with slurs and other lines, you can rapidly move either end of a hairpin
right/left between notes using space / Shift-space.
Accel. and rit.

Various kinds of accel. and rit. lines are available in the right-hand half of the Create > Line dialog.
Trills
To create a trill, select it from the Create > Line dialog, then click and drag in your score to extend
the trill line rightwards from the tr symbol. If you want a trill without a wiggly line, use a symbol
from the Create > Symbol (shortcut Z) dialog.
By default, trills play back with an interval of one half-step (semitone), which may not sound
right. To change this interval, select the trill in your score, and change the Interval option in the
Properties window (choose Window > Properties or type Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP to show the win-
dow if it’s not visible).
Keyboard pedaling
In addition to a standard pedal line, the Create > Line dialog includes various other lines to allow
you to write the ‘notch’ repedaling notation.
Pedaling plays back. To make it apply to both keyboard staves, you should ensure that both staves
use the same MIDI channel in the Window > Mixer dialog (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM).
1st, 2nd and 3rd endings (1st/2nd/3rd-time bars)

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd endings (1st/2nd/3rd-time bars) within the System Line pane of the Create >
Line dialog appear at the top of the system and apply to all instruments.
Additionally, a ‘1.2.’ ending line is also included. You can create arbitrary nth-ending lines simply
by creating a new line based on an existing one and changing the text at the start of the line – see
Editing lines below.
Octave (8va) lines

These lines are predominantly used to avoid multiple leger lines on a staff. While frequently used
in keyboard music, these lines seldom occur in music for other instruments. 8va and 15va (for one
and two octaves upwards, respectively) and 8vb and 15vb (for one and two octaves downwards,
respectively) are included in the left-hand half of the Create > Line dialog.
Strum/arpeggio lines
In guitar and keyboard music, it’s common to see a vertical wiggly line denoting that the notes of
the adjacent chord should be strummed or spread from bottom to top (or in the direction implied
by an arrowhead on the line).
A variety of strum/arpeggio lines is available from the Create > Line dialog.
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Lines
String indicators
Up- and down-pointing string indicator lines, used to show which string particular notes should be
played on, are available at the bottom of the left-hand list of the Create > Line dialog.
Lines over two or more systems

To input a line which splits across two or more systems, such as this slur:
do not input two separate lines! Instead, simply input one line as normal, select the note and type
S at point 1, and then hit space until the slur extends to point 2. Even when creating lines with
the mouse, you don’t need to drag horizontally along the upper staff – just go straight to point 2
without passing GO and G7 will take care of the rest.
Editing lines
G7 lets you edit the design of lines and create your own new ones.
To edit a line, choose Format > Other > Lines. Once you’ve selected a line from the list, you can
Edit it, Delete it (if it’s one you’ve defined yourself), or click New to create a new line based on it.
When creating a new line, base it on one with similar playback and positioning characteristics; for
instance, to create a line which you want to play back like a trill, base it on a trill.
Clicking Edit brings up a dialog where you can change the line’s characteristics:
In all its generality, a line consists of five bits:

* An optional start – either a symbol (such as ‘Ped’) or item of text (such as ‘1. 2.’), plus an
optional arrowhead or a short line at right angles called a ‘hook’ such as on a 1st ending (1st-
time bar), or an arrowhead
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Lines
* The actual line itself – this can be continuous, dotted, dashed or wiggly, of various possible
widths, and can be horizontal or diagonal
* Some optional text running along the line, e.g. gliss.
* An optional continuation symbol – this is what appears at the start of the system when a line
continues on from an earlier system, such as (8) for an 8va line
* An optional end bit – like the start, this can be a symbol, a hook or an arrowhead.
It’s reasonably self-explanatory how you modify these five bits from the dialog, but let’s spell it out
anyway:
* Line options control the appearance of the line itself:
% Style: specifies whether the line is continuous, dotted, dashed or wiggly
% Dash: the length of the dashes for dashed lines
% Gap: the size of the gap between dashes/dots in dashed/dotted lines
% Horizontal: forces the line to be horizontal (e.g. a trill)
% Smooth on screen: anti-aliases (smoothes) the line as it appears on the screen, but doesn’t
affect how it prints (G7 always prints smoothly!) – you should leave this option switched on
% Right of symbols/text: puts the left-hand end of the line after the start bit.
* Start options define whether the line begins with a cap, symbol or text object:
% None/Symbol/Text: it’s obvious what these do. Clicking the Text radio button brings up a
dialog from which you can choose the text that should appear, the text style to use, and the
position of the text relative to the line.
% To position the text so the line appears mid-way up, change the x spaces up parameter; using
the Small Text style, a value of 0.5 spaces is ideal.
% spaces right/up: used to adjust the position of the symbol, text or hook
% Cap allows you to choose a hook (and define its offset from the line) or an arrowhead from a
defined list.
* Continuation options determine what the line does if it continues over a system or page break:
% Symbol: allows you to start the continuation with a symbol
% spaces right/up: used to adjust the position of the optional symbol
% The Text button sets any text running along the line.
* End options are similar to the Start options, except that you can’t end a line with text.
The preview shows the line as it would appear when split over two systems, so you can see the
continuation bit as well as the start, middle and end.
As an example of using this dialog, to change the symbol at the beginning of a standard 8va line (as
in the screenshot above) to, say, just 8, click Select in the Start section of the Edit Line dialog to
choose a new symbol. You can change the Continuation symbols in the same way.
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Lute tablature
Lute tablature
G7 supports a wide range of lute tablature styles, and several different tunings. By default, all the
lute tablature is in the French/English style, but Italian and Spanish styles are also available.
Different styles of lute tablature

The notational conventions of the three supported styles of lute tablature are as follows:
* French/English: the lowest string of the lute is the bottom line in the tab staff, and letters between
the courses are used to represent the notes.
* Spanish: the lowest string of the lute is the bottom line of the tab staff, and numbers on the
strings (rather like modern guitar tab) are used to represent the notes.
* Italian: identical to the Spanish style, except that the lowest string of the lute is the top line of the
staff, not the bottom one.
German lute tablature (which uses letters to represent notes, but does not include staff lines at all)
is not supported by G7.
Changing between different styles and tunings

When you create a lute tablature staff in G7, it will use the French/English style by default. To
change this to another style:
* Select a bar in the staff you want to change, so that it’s surrounded by a single blue box
* Show the Properties window if it’s not already visible, by choosing Window > Properties (short-
cut Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP)
* Choose one of the alternative staff types from the drop-down list, e.g. Lute tablature (tenor G
tuning, Spanish style)
* All of the existing music in the staff is automatically changed to use this style of tablature.
Similarly, lutes are always created with the tenor G tuning by default; if you want to change your
staff to use (say) the tenor A tuning, follow the above procedure and choose the appropriate staff
type from the list.
Rhythms
When writing rhythms above lute tablature staves, note values of eighth notes and shorter are
often left unbeamed. G7 automatically beams these notes together, but you can quickly separate
them again by selecting the passage in which you want to separate them (e.g. you could triple-
click the lute staff to select it throughout the score), then hit F10 to choose the third keypad lay-
out, and hit 7 on the numeric keypad. See Editing beams on page 72 for more details.
Diapasons
Diapasons are extra strings not notated on the staff itself. In Italian style lute tablature, diapasons
are written above the staff, in between the top line of the staff and the bottom of the stems that
show the rhythm of the music; use Technique text (shortcut Ctrl+T or XT) to write these numbers.
In French style lute tablature, the diapasons are written directly underneath the staff; use Figured
bass text (choose Create > Text > Other staff text > Figured bass) to write them in your score.
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MIDI devices
b MIDI setup for Mac, MIDI setup for Windows.
This section details how to set up playback in G7. Overall playback for the whole program is con-
trolled from the Play > Devices dialog, and the Window > Mixer dialog (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+M or
zXM) controls the sounds and devices used in a particular score.
If you have external MIDI devices such as keyboards, guitar synths, sound modules and so on, you
should connect these before you set up playback in G7 – b MIDI setup for Mac and MIDI
setup for Windows.
If you’re not familiar with MIDI terminology, read MIDI for beginners before reading this topic.
Setting up for playback

The Play > Devices dialog lets you tell G7 what equipment you’re using.
The Playback devices section lists all the MIDI devices recognized by G7, whether or not G7
should use it for playback, and what type of sounds it can use. Even if you have not set up any
external devices, there may well be two or more things listed as playback devices – such as Quick-
Time Music (Mac only) or a number of different related devices (e.g. A: SB Live! MIDI Synth, B:
SB Live! MIDI Synth and Microsoft GS Wavetable SW synth), and any of them may be used for
playback.
On Windows, external MIDI devices are normally named after the port, and so include the words
‘MIDI Out’ or ‘MPU-401’ – b MIDI setup for Windows.
On Mac, external MIDI devices will not appear in this list until you have set them up – b MIDI
setup for Mac.
Click Test on each item in the playback devices list to see how it sounds. You may get no sound if
the device is not properly connected, e.g. if your speakers are not connected to your soundcard or
are not switched on.
If you only have a single MIDI device (e.g. an internal soundcard), you should only set the Use
column to Yes for one listed device – choose the one whose sound you like the best. Switch any
unused devices to No.
If you have external MIDI devices connected to your computer, you may want to set more than
one playback device to Yes in the Use column. For example, some MIDI devices support 32 chan-
nels, which are usually represented as two separate MIDI devices (called e.g. MIDI out A and MIDI
out B). In this case, you could set Use to Yes for both these devices, and then choose which
instruments play back via which device via the Device drop-down menu in the Mixer window.
Sound sets
The Sound set column tells G7 what sounds are available on each of the listed playback devices;
by default, it is set to General MIDI. Internal soundcards (and QuickTime Music) generally will
only have General MIDI sounds available, so there’s no need to change this setting.
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Many external MIDI devices support a wide range of additional sounds, which are only accessible
if you know the bank and program numbers for each sound. You can type these numbers individ-
ually for each staff in the Mixer window if you want, but if an appropriate sound set is available
for your device, it will save a lot of time if you use it.
Various sound sets are installed by default with G7; if your device isn’t listed in the Sound set col-
umn of the Play > Devices dialog, a sound set file may be available from the online Help Center –
choose Help > Help Center.
Due to the complexity of the sound set format, it’s not possible for you to edit or create sound set
files yourself.
Note for Classic Mac OS users: if you use OMS or FreeMIDI to connect your external MIDI devices, a
sound set is automatically generated, so you don’t need to worry about the Sound set column in
the Play > Devices dialog.
Mac-specific options
There are two Mac-specific options on the Play > Devices dialog, as follows:
* Current MIDI system shows you the active MIDI system; click Change to choose a new one.
When you click Change, the options available will depend on what software is installed on your
computer. Classic Mac OS may list QuickTime only, OMS, or FreeMIDI; Mac OS X will only list
Mac OS X MIDI and QuickTime only.
Note that you may only choose one MIDI system to be used by G7, even if you have more than
one available. You may be prompted to close down G7 and start it again after changing your
MIDI system.
* Show other music programs as devices (Classic Mac OS only) allows G7 to send its output to
other music programs, effectively like playing into another program via MIDI input. This should
be switched off by default – only switch it on if you want to send G7’s playback to another pro-
gram rather than to your playback device.
Windows-specific options
There is one Windows-specific option on the Play > Devices dialog: Play in Background lets you
choose whether G7 can play while you’re using other music programs. Some soundcards can
make Windows crash when switching between different music programs; if you find this happens,
go into the Play in Background dialog, set G7 owns MIDI devices to Always, and click OK.
If playback doesn’t work

By default, G7 assumes that your playback device is General MIDI compatible, which almost all
soundcards and many keyboards and sound modules are these days. If you don’t know, the easiest
way to check is to play back a score containing different instruments by clicking the Play button on
the toolbar. If this doesn’t work, it may be that:
* You get no sound at all. This means your soundcard or MIDI device isn’t working or isn’t
plugged in properly, or that your computer can play back through several devices and it’s set to
the wrong one.
* You get different sounds but they’re the wrong instruments:
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% If the right sounds came out, your device probably obeys the General MIDI standard and
your life is going to be all laughter and sunshine from now on.
% If the wrong sounds came out, you’ll have to adjust the sound set used for that device.
% If your device isn’t compatible with any of the supplied sound sets, you’ll have to tell G7
which program numbers (sounds) to use in the Mixer window – see Mixer on page 139 for
more details.
Setting up for MIDI input

The lower half of the Play > Devices dialog is concerned with MIDI input; the white box at the bot-
tom lists any MIDI input devices you have – e.g. MIDI keyboards or MIDI guitars. In the unlikely
event that you have two or more, you can click the one you want to use.
Try playing notes on your keyboard or guitar while the Play > Devices dialog is open. If everything
is working as it should, the little black indicator should light up green as you play. If the indicator
doesn’t light up, check your MIDI connections and ensure that you have the correct input device
selected (if more than one is present).
Switch on MIDI Thru if and only if your MIDI device has no built-in sounds – this will make G7
immediately reproduce notes you play on your keyboard or guitar through your soundcard or
other playback device.
Find New Devices re-checks your playback and playing-in devices in case a new device has unex-
pectedly attached itself to your computer. Note that clicking this button will set the Use column
for all the listed playback devices to Yes, so don’t forget to set the ones you don’t want to use to No
again afterwards.
External MIDI devices are connected to your computer through an adaptor of some kind; on Mac,
these tend to be external adaptors that plug into the modem, printer or USB port, while on PCs,
adaptors can be external, but it is more common to connect MIDI devices through a special cable
that plugs into the joystick port (gameport) of your soundcard.
Problems with MIDI input

If MIDI input doesn’t seem to work, check that MIDI OUT on the keyboard is connected to MIDI
IN on your computer, and vice versa – not MIDI OUT to MIDI OUT and MIDI IN to MIDI IN. If
your computer has dual MIDI inputs, try also connecting the keyboard to the other MIDI IN
socket.
For further information on setting up your computer for MIDI input, b MIDI setup for Mac and
MIDI setup for Windows.
Reset sounds
If you open a score which was created on an incompatible MIDI device, G7 recognizes this and
asks if you want to reset the sounds. If you click Yes, G7 resets the sounds in the score for you.
If you need to reset the sounds yourself (e.g. if you’ve adjusted the sounds in a score and want to
change them back to the defaults), open the Mixer window (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM), and
click Reset Sounds, which sets the instruments to use the appropriate default sounds for your
current MIDI equipment.
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MIDI files
If you don’t know much about MIDI, b MIDI for beginners, which explains what MIDI files
are.
This topic explains how to import MIDI files into G7, and also how to save MIDI files of your G7
scores.
Importing a MIDI file

Open a MIDI file just like a normal G7 file: simply choose File > Open (shortcut Ctrl+O or XO) or
click Open on the toolbar, locate the file (on Windows, MIDI files usually have the file extension
.mid), and click Open.
A dialog appears with importing options you can set (detailed below). Normally, you should just
click OK, and then wait a few seconds for the MIDI file to open.
* If G7 detects that the sounds in the MIDI file are incompatible with your preferred MIDI device,
it offers to reset the sounds. For instance, if you opened a Roland JV-1080 MIDI file when you
have a General MIDI soundcard, the sounds will probably not play correctly, so you should reset
them.
* Some MIDI files contain no program changes (even though they contain instrument names),
which means that the instruments have to be guessed. If so, G7 warns you that the instrument
names, sounds, clefs, and other details may be wrong. You should either adjust the instrument’s
clef etc. by hand, or (preferably) make or obtain a copy of the MIDI file which does contain the
necessary program change information, and import that MIDI file instead. Note that any instru-
ments in the MIDI file not included in G7’s Create > Instruments dialog (e.g. trumpets, flutes,
violins and so on) will be named ‘Solo’ after import, but they will retain the original sound and
thus the MIDI file will play back correctly.
G7 uses the same algorithm as Flexi-time to tidy up the rhythm as it imports it. If you find that the
imported MIDI file doesn’t look as good as you had hoped, try changing some of the import set-
tings – see Import options below.
Once the MIDI file is imported you can play back, edit, save and print it just as if you’d inputted
the music yourself.
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Import options
The following options are available in the tabbed Open MIDI File dialog, which appears when you
open a MIDI file:
The options on the MIDI File tab are as follows:

* MIDI file uses this sound set allows you to specify whether the program and bank numbers
use General MIDI or another sound set. This helps G7 guess what the instruments are. Normally
you can leave this option at General MIDI, or switch it off altogether if you simply want to
import the MIDI file ‘as is’.
* Only one staff per track is useful if you open a MIDI file which notates a piano (say) as two
separate piano tracks, one for the left hand and another for the right hand. Switch on this
option and each hand will be written as one staff, not two; you can then clean it up by creating
a new piano and copying the two hands into it. Finally, delete the original two pianos.
* Keep track order is switched off by default. With this option switched off, G7 will choose the
order of the instruments. Switch it on to keep the instruments in the same order as the tracks in
the MIDI file.
* Use tab notation for guitars specifies whether G7 should import any guitar tracks in the MIDI
file onto tab staves; if the option is switched off, guitars will be imported onto notation staves.
* Use multiple voices determines whether G7 should use multiple voices to produce cleaner
notation; normally this option should be switched on.
* Show metronome marks makes all metronome marks visible. If there are lots of changes of
tempo (e.g. rits. and accels.) then you may want to switch this option off, which will hide the
metronome marks in the score, making it look cleaner but still playing back the same.
* Play using this device allows you to choose the playback device with which to play back the
score (this is the same list as in the Play > Devices dialog, and defaults to your default playback
device).
For details of the options on the Notation tab, see Flexi-time™ on page 90.
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Recommended settings
Good settings to open typical MIDI files well are the default ones, as follows: Adjust rhythms on,
Minimum note value sixteenth note (semiquaver), Staccato and Tenuto on, Use multiple voices
on. If you are reading a MIDI file in which the rhythms are completely exact (e.g. if it’s already
quantized), switch Adjust rhythms off.
Note that if you set Minimum note value unrealistically long – e.g. eighth notes (quavers) when
the MIDI file contains long runs of sixteenth notes (semiquavers) – G7 obviously can’t render the
runs properly using eighth notes and may be forced to produce junk. (G7 will have to approximate
the runs of sixteenth notes using tuplets of eighth notes or by joining some pairs of sixteenth notes
together to form eighth note chords.)
The tuplet options are up to you:
* Simple means tuplets are notated only if they contain equal note values
* Moderate and Complex are for more irregular rhythms.
Remember that if a particular tuplet (say a triplet) is used in a MIDI file, you must set this option
to at least Simple, or it won’t be read! Beware however that if, say, you set all the tuplets to Com-
plex, G7 may discover elaborate tuplet rhythms where you weren’t expecting them, so be cau-
tious.
The precise combination of options you should choose in the Open MIDI file dialog will depend
on a number of different factors, for example:
* If you are importing a MIDI file to create notation, you should switch off the options in the
Notation section, and try a number of different Rhythm Options settings until you get the
cleanest result
* If you are importing a MIDI file for playback only, it doesn’t matter which options you have set
– just make sure that Play > Live Playback is switched on when playing it back. See Live Play-
back below for more details.
* If you are importing a file created by someone else on a different device (e.g. a MIDI file you
have downloaded from the Internet), you should set the sound set to match your own device
* If you are importing a file which you know uses the General MIDI sound set, make sure you
have chosen General MIDI under MIDI file uses this sound set.
Live Playback
When you import a MIDI file, G7 retains every nuance of the original sequence – the exact veloc-
ity, duration and rhythmic offset of each note – so that it can reproduce it exactly when playing
back. See Live Playback on page 37 for more details.
Cleaning up MIDI files

Because MIDI files don’t contain any notation- or tab-specific data, they can end up looking a little
messy after opening them in G7. Here are some hints for getting better results, both before and
after conversion:
* If the MIDI file uses non-standard program numbers (e.g. if it is set up to play on an unusual
MIDI device), G7 will not be able to identify the instruments correctly and they may appear
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with unexpected characteristics, such as with the wrong clefs or in the wrong order. Similarly, if
the MIDI file uses channel 10 for pitched instruments, these may be imported by G7 as percus-
sion instruments. This depends on whether or not the MIDI device you select when opening the
MIDI file expects to find percussion instruments only on channel 10. If this happens, import the
file again, changing the MIDI file uses this sound set setting.
* If the MIDI file is not fully or properly quantized, you may find that the rhythms are not notated
as cleanly as you might expect. If you have access to a sequencer, you could try re-quantizing
the file and opening it in G7 again.
* In some situations, you may find that importing MIDI files with the Use multiple voices option
switched off produces better results, e.g. in MIDI files where you know all the staves are played
by monophonic instruments.
When G7 imports unpitched percussion in a MIDI file, each drum sound is converted to the note-
head and staff position (i.e. which line or space) defined in the 5 lines (drum set) staff type. If a
drum sound is used where the notation isn’t defined in this staff type, G7 makes up a notation
using normal, cross and diamond noteheads in empty positions on the staff.
Saving a MIDI file

* Choose File > Save As, and set Save as type to MIDI
* Type in the File name you want to use – make it different from your original G7 file to avoid
confusion! Find a suitable place to save, then click Save.
When saving MIDI files, G7 includes sophisticated options such as Espressivo, Rubato and rhyth-
mic feel. So you can even use G7 as an ingenious ‘MIDI file improver’ – just open a MIDI file,
switch on some interesting playback settings and save an improved version as a MIDI file in a
moment!
Repeats
By default, MIDI files saved from G7 will include any repeats present in the original score. If, for
some reason, you would prefer repeats not to be included, switch off Play repeats in the Play >
Performance dialog before saving the MIDI file.
Converting MIDI to audio files

You might want to save your G7 files to audio CD so that they can be played back through any
audio CD player. This isn’t as simple as it sounds; to understand why, you need to know the differ-
ence between MIDI data and digital audio.
Digital audio (usually in .wav format) can be recorded to compact discs and played back through
any CD player. In order to turn your G7 files into digital audio, you need to convert the MIDI data
used by G7 to play back your score into digital audio.
There is a number of ways of doing this:
* iTunes, available in Mac OS 9.1 and later, and Mac OS X, allows ‘drag and drop’ creation of
audio CDs; simply save your score as a MIDI file from G7 and drag it into iTunes
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* On Windows, provided your soundcard supports full duplex operation (most do), you can set it
to record its own MIDI playback to a .wav file; see your soundcard’s documentation for full
details
* QuickTime Pro, available for both Mac and Windows as an upgrade to the free QuickTime soft-
ware from www.apple.com/quicktime, can convert MIDI data to digital audio and save a .wav
file to your hard disk, which you can then burn onto a CD
* Awave Studio, available for Windows from www.fmjsoft.com, can also convert MIDI to digital
audio.
Note that the final audio quality of your CD will depend on the quality of the sounds used by pro-
grams which convert MIDI to audio; as a general rule, the more expensive the program, the better
the quality of the MIDI sounds used.
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MIDI for beginners
MIDI for beginners

This section assumes that you know very little about anything at all. Read this section if you know
little or nothing about MIDI. Skip this section if you know quite a lot about MIDI.
For information on plugging your MIDI devices into your computer and setting it up, b MIDI
devices, MIDI setup for Mac and MIDI setup for Windows.
Basic question – what is MIDI?

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is the universal standard for connecting
electronic musical instruments together. MIDI keyboards, guitars, synthesizers, sound modules,
samplers and other electronic music gadgets can all be plugged into one another with MIDI cables,
and can also be plugged into your computer. Soundcards and software synthesizers (such as the
Mac’s built-in QuickTime Music) are also MIDI compatible, and as they’re already in your com-
puter you don’t need to attach cables at all in order to play music back.
MIDI is supposed to make your life easy, in the same way that plugging a printer into your com-
puter is now quite easy. Unfortunately, people using MIDI devices are still expected to have a
working knowledge of technicalities like MIDI channels, program numbers, banks and worse –
knowledge which in most cases can and should be hidden from everyone except the experts.
Program numbers and General MIDI

The sounds available from MIDI devices are referred to by numbers, typically in the range 0 to
127. The piano sound might be number 0, and the nylon-string guitar sound number 24. It would
be nice if these were called instrument numbers or sound numbers, but in practise they’re called
‘program numbers’ for obscure historical reasons. (They are sometimes called ‘program changes’,
‘patch numbers’ or ‘voice numbers’ instead, confusingly.)
Until recently program numbers weren’t standardized. Though program 0 happens to be a piano
sound on most devices, program 24 might be anything. Fortunately a standard list of 128 sounds
has emerged, called General MIDI (known as GM to its friends). These sounds start with piano as
program number 0, and pass through most of the instruments you can think of, with a very final
gunshot as program number 127. Virtually all soundcards and a lot of new MIDI devices follow
this standard, maybe with extra sounds too. Professional MIDI devices are less likely to be General
MIDI compatible.
More recently, the MIDI manufacturers have got together again and agreed some additions to the
General MIDI standard, resulting in General MIDI 2, or GM2 for short. GM2 adds an extra 128
sounds to the standard set, among other things. You can usually tell if your own MIDI device is
GM- or GM2-compatible if it includes the appropriate logo on its front panel.
Within G7, program numbers work like this: whenever you create an acoustic guitar staff, G7 nor-
mally sets it to program number 24, which is the General MIDI program number for a nylon-string
guitar. When you play back the score on any General MIDI-based devices, this produces the right
sound. It’s as simple as that.
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Moreover, if you connect a different MIDI playback device and tell G7 what type of device it is, G7
will alter the program number to produce that device’s most suitable guitar sound. G7 supports a
wide variety of devices.
Counting from 0
A pointless complication of MIDI is that some manuals list program numbers in the range 0-127
and others in the range 1-128. (This is because for obscure technical reasons, computer program-
mers count from 0, so when designing the internal workings of MIDI devices they tend to get car-
ried away and forget that normal people count from 1.)
The annoying consequence of this is that sometimes when setting up MIDI devices you find you
get the wrong sound and have to add or subtract 1 from a program number to correct the problem.
G7 almost always makes the adjustment for you, so try not to think about this.
Banks: variants of sounds

Some MIDI devices can play back hundreds of different sounds, even though program numbers
only go up to 127. This limitation is overcome by arranging the extra sounds in groups or ‘banks’
of program numbers. To access these, you specify the bank number as well as the program num-
ber.
A bank number consists of 2 values, though often MIDI devices only specify one of the values (the
other one being implicitly 0).
Channels
Channels are often the first thing you’re told about MIDI, but with G7 they are largely irrelevant.
Most MIDI devices can only play back up to 16 different sounds at once (that is, only 16 different
timbres), even though the maximum number of notes that can play at once might be 32 or more.
You can think of the MIDI device as containing 16 staves called ‘channels’ which can only play
one timbre at a time. G7, or whatever else is plugged into it, produces different timbres by saying
which channel each note or chord is playing on. Some other effects like the pan (stereo) position
and piano pedaling also apply to the channel, not to individual notes.
MIDI files
MIDI files are music files in a standard format – sometimes called the Standard MIDI File (SMF)
format, in fact. Almost all music programs and some keyboards can save (export) MIDI files and
open (import) them. Nowadays, you can even buy MIDI files of your favorite music on floppy disk
from your local music shop, or download thousands of them from the Internet.
You can use MIDI files as one way to transfer music between G7 and virtually any other music
program. However, MIDI files are designed for playing music back rather than notating and print-
ing it. Hence they don’t include lots of important information, such as slurs, guitar strings and tun-
ings, articulations and page layout.
These restrictions mean that MIDI files are not a terrific way of transferring tab or notation from
one computer program to another, though it’s the only widely-used standard.
Fortunately, however, G7 does a good job of turning MIDI files into tab/notation or vice versa in a
matter of seconds; b MIDI files. But don’t expect miracles: converting a score into MIDI and
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back again is rather like converting a complex text document to ASCII (plain text) format and
back again – the basic information is retained but various niceties are lost.
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MIDI setup for Windows

b MIDI devices, MIDI for beginners.
There are three steps to setting up your MIDI devices: connecting the hardware, installing the nec-
essary software, and then setting up MIDI in G7. This topic takes you through the first two steps;
for the final step, b MIDI devices.
Connecting MIDI devices to your computer

How your MIDI devices connect to your computer depends on a number of factors, including the
model of your computer, the model of your MIDI devices, and which other hardware you already
have connected, but in general there are two kinds of connection:
* you can connect an external MIDI device directly to the ‘gameport’ (or joystick port) on your
computer’s soundcard, or
* you can connect a separate MIDI interface to either a USB port or a serial port on the back of
your computer.
Most Windows computers are supplied with a soundcard, which can play back itself (using Gen-
eral MIDI) and can also connect your computer to external MIDI devices via the gameport.
Connecting MIDI devices via the gameport

In general, you won’t need to buy a separate MIDI interface for your computer, provided you have
a soundcard that supports ‘full duplex’ operation (check with the manufacturer), and you don’t
need to use more than 16 MIDI channels at once.
Using your soundcard’s gameport also has the advantage of not requiring any further driver soft-
ware – you can just plug in your MIDI device, and away you go.
The gameport is usually found next to the sockets used to connect speakers and microphones to
your computer. Typically it will be on the soundcard, which looks something like this:
The gameport is the rectangularish connector at the far left. To connect this to an external MIDI
device, you’ll need a ‘Y-shaped’ MIDI-to-gameport cable, which looks something like this:
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Note how the two MIDI plugs are labeled ‘In’ and ‘Out’. To connect this cable to, say, a MIDI key-
board, you should connect the plug labeled ‘In’ to the socket on the back of the keyboard marked
‘Out’, and the plug labeled ‘Out’ to the socket on the keyboard marked ‘In’.
That’s all there is to it. Provided you have the ‘In’ and ‘Out’ plugs in the right sockets on your
MIDI keyboard (or sound module), you can now finish setting things up – b MIDI devices.
Connecting MIDI devices via a MIDI interface

You might need a separate MIDI interface if:
* your soundcard doesn’t support ‘full duplex’ operation (e.g. if you find that G7 plays back
through your external MIDI device, but you’re unable to play music into G7 from your external
device); or if
* you want to play back using more than the standard 16 MIDI channels (e.g. if you have a key-
board or sound module that supports 32 channels).
A MIDI interface is a small box that sits between your computer and your external MIDI devices,
sending MIDI data back and forth. MIDI interfaces either connect to a serial port (also known as a
modem or ‘comms’ port, addressed by Windows as e.g. COM1: and COM2:) or to a USB port.
MIDI interfaces usually require additional driver software, which will be supplied by your device’s
manufacturer.
We’ll assume your MIDI interface connects via USB, and show
you some common MIDI setups. Note that connections between
MIDI devices all use standard MIDI cables, pictured on the right.
To plug in just a MIDI keyboard, connect its ‘Out’ socket to the MIDI interface’s ‘In’ socket. This
means that music played on the keyboard will go out of the keyboard, along the cable and in to the
computer.
To make the computer play back music into the keyboard (e.g. if the keyboard has sounds built
into it), also connect the MIDI interface’s ‘Out’ to the keyboard’s ‘In’.
If your keyboard has two ‘In’ or ‘Out’ sockets , it usually doesn’t matter which you use – they’re
just convenient duplicates of each other.
So connecting up a keyboard alone looks like this:
If you want to connect just, say, a sound module, rather than a keyboard, simply connect the MIDI
interface’s ‘Out’ to the sound module’s ‘In’.
Once you’ve connected your MIDI devices to your computer, you can set up input and playback in
G7 – b MIDI devices.
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MIDI setup for Mac

b MIDI devices, MIDI for beginners.
Because Mac OS 9 doesn’t have built-in support for MIDI devices, if you have external MIDI
devices (keyboards, sound modules, etc.), you need to install and configure extra software to tell
music programs like G7 what MIDI devices are connected to your Mac and what sounds they can
play.
On Classic Mac OS, there are three steps to setting up your MIDI devices: connecting the hard-
ware, installing the necessary software, and then setting up MIDI in G7. This section takes you
through the first two steps; for the final step, b MIDI devices.
If you’re using Mac OS X, you don’t need to install any additional software – so simply connect
your MIDI devices as described below, then b MIDI devices to find out how to set up MIDI in
G7.
Connecting MIDI devices to your Mac

How your MIDI devices connect to your computer depends on a number of factors, including the
model of your Mac, the model of your MIDI devices, and which other hardware you already have
connected; but in general there are two kinds of connection:
* If you have an iMac, a ‘blue-and-white’ G3 tower, a G4 tower, G4 cube or PowerBook G4, you
connect external devices via USB.
* If you have an older ‘beige’ PowerMac, or a PowerBook G3, you connect MIDI devices via the
modem or printer ports (also known as ‘serial ports’).
In both cases, you have the choice of connecting a MIDI device such as a sound module either
directly (to the USB or serial ports), or via a MIDI interface.
Connecting MIDI devices directly

Many sound modules and MIDI keyboards can be connected directly to your computer without
using a separate MIDI interface.
For example, a Roland SC-88 Pro can be connected to an older PowerMac’s modem or printer port
via a serial cable, but if you want to connect an SC-88 Pro to a new iMac or G4 with USB, you’ll
need to use an external MIDI interface. The newer Roland SC-8820 connects directly via USB or a
serial connection, so no MIDI interface is required when connecting it to any Mac.
The diagram below shows how to connect a sound module (shown) or MIDI keyboard to an iMac
directly.
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Note that there is normally a switch on the back of the sound module which determines which of
the connections it should send and receive data through, so ensure that this is set correctly (in the
above case, it should be set to USB). You may have to switch your sound module or keyboard off
and on again to make it take notice of changing this setting.
Check your module or keyboard’s manual for precise connection details. Note that direct connec-
tions often require additional driver software, which will be supplied by your device’s manufac-
turer.
Connecting MIDI devices via a MIDI interface

A MIDI interface is a small box that connects to your Mac via the USB port (or the serial port on
older PowerMacs), providing one or more MIDI inputs and outputs.
Connect a sound module to an iMac using a MIDI interface like this:
Note that the MIDI cable is connected from the ‘Out’ socket on the MIDI interface to the ‘In’
socket on the sound module.
To add a MIDI keyboard or other input device, you should connect your devices as shown below:
Note that the second MIDI cable goes from the ‘Out’ socket on the keyboard to the ‘In’ socket on
the MIDI interface.
MIDI interfaces usually require additional driver software, which will be supplied by your device’s
manufacturer.
Installing OMS or FreeMIDI (Classic Mac OS only)

A typical MIDI studio is complicated, with multiple MIDI devices attached to one or more MIDI
interfaces – for example, a sound module and MIDI keyboard connected to a MIDI interface
plugged into the printer, modem or USB ports on your computer.
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If you install FreeMIDI or the Open Music System (OMS) then this is made simple: your music
programs show a list of the devices (e.g. in G7’s Play > Devices dialog) and the sounds they can
play (in G7’s Play > Mixer dialog).
Please note that though both FreeMIDI and OMS are supplied with G7, they are licensed from
other companies, so we cannot provide full technical support on them. For more information
about them:
* FreeMIDI – licensed from Mark of the Unicorn, Inc. (www.motu.com)
* OMS – licensed from Opcode Systems, Inc. (www.opcode.com)
Deciding what to install

* If you don’t have any external MIDI devices, you don’t need to install OMS or FreeMIDI. G7 can
play reasonable quality sounds through your Mac’s speakers instead using QuickTime – see Set-
ting up QuickTime Music (page 133).
* If your MIDI devices are connected to an OMS-compatible MIDI interface, see Setting up OMS
(page 134).
* If your MIDI devices are connected to a FreeMIDI-compatible MIDI interface, see Setting up
FreeMIDI (page 134).
* If you are using FreeMIDI-compatible programs and OMS-compatible programs simultaneously,
see Setting up FreeMIDI in OMS compatibility mode (page 135).
* If you are using FreeMIDI-compatible programs and OMS-compatible programs but never
simultaneously, see Setting up FreeMIDI and OMS separately (page 137).
Setting up QuickTime Music

If you do not have any external devices, G7 will use QuickTime Music to play back your scores.
QuickTime Music is a built-in extension of the Mac operating system that synthesizes sound
through your Mac speakers, using the Roland Sound Canvas General MIDI sound set. It should be
installed by default, but if it isn’t listed as a device under the Devices dialog in G7, re-enable it
from the Extensions Manager (under Control Panels in the Apple menu).
If you don’t have QuickTime or need to update your copy (G7 requires version 4 or later), you can
install it from your G7 CD-ROM.
Compatible MIDI interfaces

MIDI interfaces that support FreeMIDI include: MOTU 1296, MOTU 24i, MOTU 308, MOTU 1224,
MOTU 2408, MTP AV USB, MIDI Express XT USB, Micro Express USB, FastLane USB.
MIDI interfaces that only support OMS include: Roland Super MPU64, Roland UM series, and
MIDIMan MIDISport 2x2 USB.
Using OMS and FreeMIDI in G7

* OMS and FreeMIDI recommend you switch off virtual memory when using them – choose the
Memory Control Panel from the Apple menu to toggle this. To make sure, G7 refuses to use
FreeMIDI if virtual memory is switched on.
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* If you have both OMS and FreeMIDI installed, G7 assumes by default that you want to use
FreeMIDI (because you can always use FreeMIDI compatibility mode to use OMS from
FreeMIDI).
* When using OMS or FreeMIDI a submenu called OMS or FreeMIDI appears in the Play menu.
The OMS menu contains options MIDI Setup, Studio Setup and Panic. The FreeMIDI menu
contains Interface Settings, Edit Configuration and Panic. Panic silences all the sounds, similar
to Play > All Notes Off. The other menu options take you to setup features in OMS and
FreeMIDI that are also available in those programs directly. Note that when using FreeMIDI in
OMS compatibility mode, the FreeMIDI options are shown.
Setting up OMS
* Install OMS by double-clicking the Install OMS icon and following the on-screen instructions
* Connect your OMS-compatible MIDI interface to the serial or USB port of your Mac and install
any necessary drivers (refer to the documentation that came with your MIDI interface for
details). Ensure that any MIDI/Thru switches are in the MIDI position, and that all MIDI devices
are switched on.
* Locate and open the OMS Setup program
* The Create a New Studio Setup dialog appears. Click OK.
* Click the checkboxes to select the port (modem and/or printer) to which your MIDI interface is
connected. USB MIDI interfaces will be detected regardless of these settings.
* Click Search. OMS will now search for MIDI interfaces connected to your computer.
* A list of the MIDI interfaces connected to your computer will be displayed. If this list is correct,
click OK. If MIDI interfaces that you have connected to your computer are not detected, refer to
OMS’s troubleshooting information.
* OMS will now attempt to detect devices (keyboards, modules, samplers, etc.) that are connected
to your MIDI interface. A list of devices or MIDI ports will appear. Click on the checkboxes next
to each of the devices or ports that you wish to use, then click OK.
* You will now be presented with a standard Mac OS Save dialog. Name your configuration,
choose a convenient place on your hard drive and click Save.
* Your studio configuration will now be displayed. Check that the on-screen MIDI connections are
the same as your studio’s physical connections. Device information (manufacturer, model,
name, properties, receive channel(s) and icon) can be edited by double-clicking on the device/
MIDI Interfaces icon. To connect devices, drag them to a MIDI interface, and click once on the
in/out arrows
* When you have completed the setup, choose File > Save
* Quit OMS Setup
* Run G7
* Set up the Play > Devices dialog as detailed in b MIDI devices.
Setting up FreeMIDI
* Install FreeMIDI by double-clicking the Install FreeMIDI icon and following the on-screen
instructions
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* Connect your FreeMIDI-compatible MIDI interface to the serial or USB port of your Mac
* Locate and open the FreeMIDI Setup program
* If you have OMS installed on your computer, you will be asked whether you wish to use OMS
or FreeMIDI. Choose FreeMIDI (this can be changed later from File > Preferences within
FreeMIDI Setup).
* The Welcome to FreeMIDI dialog appears. Click Continue.
* The FreeMIDI Preferences dialog appears. Ensure that only Allow other applications and
Always load at startup are switched on. Click OK to continue.
* The About Quick Setup dialog appears. Click Continue.
* You will now see the Quick Setup window. In the New Device section of the Quick Setup dia-
log specify the Manufacturer, Model, Studio Location (the name of the MIDI interface to
which the device is connected) and Cable (the port to which the device is connected to if the
specified MIDI interface has multiple ports). Click Add after specifying each device to add it to
the Current Configurations list.
* When you have specified the relevant information for each of your MIDI devices, click Done.
Make sure ‘Controller’ is selected in Properties if the device is to be used as an Input Device.
the same as your studio’s physical connections. Device / MIDI Interface information (name, ID,
manufacturer, model, transmit channel(s), receive channel(s), properties and icons) can be
edited by double-clicking on the device / MIDI Interfaces icon.
* Choose Save from the File menu. Name your configuration and save it in a convenient place on
your hard drive.
* Quit FreeMIDI Setup
* Run G7
Setting up FreeMIDI in OMS compatibility mode

instructions
* Connect your FreeMIDI or OMS compatible MIDI interface to the serial or USB port of your Mac
* Locate and open the OMS Setup program
FreeMIDI’s troubleshooting information.
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* OMS will now attempt to detect devices (keyboards, modules, samplers, etc.) that are connected
to each of the devices or ports that you wish to use. Click OK
choose a convenient place on your hard drive and click Save
name, properties, receive channel(s) and icon) can be edited by double clicking on the device /
in/out arrows
* When you have completed the setup, choose File > Save
* Quit OMS Setup
* Locate and open the FreeMIDI Setup program
* You will be asked whether you wish to use OMS or FreeMIDI. Choose OMS. To change this later
you will need to quit G7, locate and run the FreeMIDI Setup program, choose File > FreeMIDI
Preferences and switch on Use OMS when available. Quit FreeMIDI and run G7.
* A dialog will appear informing you that FreeMIDI is in OMS compatibility mode. Click OK to
continue. Your OMS Studio Setup will be displayed. Quit the FreeMIDI Setup program.
* Open G7.
Using FreeMIDI Patch lists in OMS when using FreeMIDI in OMS compatibility
mode
If you are using FreeMIDI in OMS compatibility mode, no sound names will be listed in G7’s Play >
Mixer dialog (shortcut M). For the correct patch names to be displayed, OMS must use FreeMIDI
‘patch lists’ (the equivalent of G7’s sound set files). To do this, Mark of the Unicorn recommends
the following:
* Quit FreeMIDI Setup and OMS Setup
* Locate the Factory Names folder found in the OMS Folder within your System folder
* Open the Factory Names folder, and remove the contents (you may want to back up the con-
tents of this folder, or simply delete them)
* Open the OMS Preferences folder (in the OMS Folder) and delete the file OMS Name Man-
ager Prefs
* Launch OMS Setup, delete visible OMS Devices, and reconfigure the OMS Setup following the
instructions in Setting up OMS (page 134)
* When adding devices in OMS, be sure to choose from the list of Manufacturers and Models. If
your device is not listed, assign a similar device, and modify its name to match your device (e.g.
change ‘JV-1080’ to ‘JV-2080’).
* After completing your OMS Setup, choose File > Save and Make Current
* Run FreeMIDI Setup
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* Open the File > FreeMIDI Preferences dialog, and choose Use OMS when available from the
Software Compatibility section. You may need to quit and launch FreeMIDI again so FreeMIDI
opens using OMS’s setup.
* The same OMS setup above will appear in FreeMIDI. More importantly, the FreeMIDI patch list
will remain intact.
* This trick only works when a FreeMIDI program is using the OMS setup. This method does not
publish patch lists directly into OMS to use with software like ProTools, Studio Vision, Cubase
and some other OMS compatible software.
Setting up FreeMIDI and OMS separately

instructions
* Connect your FreeMIDI- or OMS-compatible MIDI interface to the serial or USB port of your
Mac
* Locate and run the OMS Setup program
OMS’s troubleshooting information.
* OMS will now attempt to detect devices (keyboards, modules, samplers, etc) that are connected
to each of the devices or ports that you wish to use. Click OK.
choose a convenient place on your hard drive and click Save.
name, properties, receive channel(s) and icon) can be edited by double clicking on the device/
in/out arrows.
* When you have completed the setup, choose Save from the File menu
* Quit OMS Setup
* Locate and run the FreeMIDI Setup program
* You will be asked whether you wish to use OMS or FreeMIDI. Choose FreeMIDI (this can be
changed later from File > Preferences within FreeMIDI Setup).
* The Welcome to FreeMIDI dialog appears. Click Continue.
* The FreeMIDI Preferences dialog will appear. Ensure that only Allow other applications and
Always load at startup are checked. Click OK to continue.
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* The About Quick Setup dialog appears. Click Continue.
* You will now see the Quick Setup window. In the New Device section of the Quick Setup dia-
log specify the Manufacturer, Model, Studio Location (the name of the MIDI interface to
which the device is connected) and Cable (the port to which the device is connected to if the
specified MIDI interface has multiple ports). Click Add after specifying each device to add it to
the Current Configurations list.
* When you have specified the relevant information for each of your MIDI devices click Done.
Make sure ‘Controller’ is selected in Properties if the device is to be used as an Input Device.
the same as your studio’s physical connections. Device / MIDI Interface information (name, ID,
manufacturer, model, transmit channel(s), receive channel(s), properties and icons) can be
edited by double clicking on the device/MIDI Interfaces icon
* Choose File > Save. Name your configuration and save it in a convenient place on your hard
drive
* Quit FreeMIDI Setup
* Run G7
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Mixer
Mixer
The Mixer window allows you to change the sounds used by your score during playback. For fur-
ther information about playback, see Playback on page 36.
You can leave the Mixer window open while you work on your score and make changes to the
playback even as you listen. Choose Window > Mixer (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+M or zXM) to show or
hide the Mixer.
Using the Mixer

Let’s take a closer look at the options in the Mixer:
Solo and Mute control Fader changes the volume

whether the staff sounds of the staff in real time
Slider changes the

pan position of the
staff in real time
Instrument name; click MIDI channel Click the arrow to view Settings for the
this button to change the used by staff further staves; the double selected staff
settings for this staff arrow skips on five staves
The window is split into two sections. The left-hand side of the window contains mixer controls
for each staff; controls for up to eight staves are shown at once, and you can scroll through them
with the arrows to the left and right of the mixer controls, and jump five staves at a time with the
double arrow buttons. The right-hand side of the dialog shows extra settings for the staff selected
in the left-hand side of the Mixer.
Each staff in your score (plus an extra click track – see Click track below) has its own set of con-
trols, which work even when the staff is not selected:
* Volume fader: drag this up and down to alter the volume of the channel used by the staff. Like the
other settings, this works in real time, so you can change the volume of instruments while the
score is playing back and hear the difference instantly. Note that staves which share the same
MIDI channel will play at the same volume – when adjusting the volume fader for a staff, the
volume faders for any other staves which share the same MIDI channel move simultaneously.
* Pan slider: directly above the volume fader, this horizontal slider allows you to change the pan
(stereo) position of the staff.
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Mixer
* Mute: this button cycles through three levels of mute: muted, half-muted and unmuted. The
button changes color to show the current mute level: gray means unmuted, light blue means
half-muted, and mid-blue means totally muted. (The exception to this is the click track, which
can only be totally muted or unmuted.)
* Solo: clicking this button for a particular staff mutes all other staves (if they were not already
muted), so that only the selected staff plays back; clicking the button a second time returns the
staves to their previous state (which usually means un-muting them, so that all staves play back
again).
* The button below each set of faders labeled with the instrument name lights up blue when you
click it, and the controls on the right-hand side of the dialog are updated to show the settings for
that staff. By default, the Mixer will display as much as possible of the full instrument name
under each fader. If you prefer, short instrument names can be shown instead: click the Display
button in the Mixer and then switch on Use short names.
Having clicked on one of the buttons at the bottom of a fader, you can then change the options on
the right-hand side of the window, which are as follows:
* Staff: shows the full instrument name of the currently selected staff, so you can be sure you are
changing the right one
* Device: allows you to choose the playback device for the selected staff. The items on this list are
the playback devices listed in the Play > Devices dialog.
* Sound: this gives a description of the sound (bank/program number combination) produced by
the playback device you’re using. By default this will probably be similar to the name of the
staff. To change the sound used by a staff, click the current sound to get a list of sounds available
on your device. You can check the chosen sound by clicking Test.
* Bank High / Bank Low / Program: unless you use specialist MIDI playback equipment, you
won’t need to change these settings, which allow you to manually specify the bank and program
of any sound on your MIDI device. Bank High represents MIDI controller 0 (also known as the
MIDI bank select, MSB, or ‘coarse’ controller); Bank Low represents MIDI controller 32 (also
called LSB, or ‘fine’ controller); Program is the number (in the range 0–127) of the individual
sound within the selected bank that you want to play.
* Channel: sets the MIDI channel. G7 sets MIDI channels to sensible values automatically (giving
different staves different channels). You can see which MIDI channels are set for each staff on
the left-hand side of the Mixer. Note that on General MIDI-compatible devices, channel 10 is a
special channel used only for drums and unpitched percussion, so don’t use it for other instru-
ments.
* Distance: scales the overall reverb setting for each staff, so a staff set to a distance of 200% will
have twice as much reverb as other staves. This, coupled with the staff’s volume (set by the vol-
ume fader), gives an impression of distance: distant instruments are soft with lots of reverb,
nearby instruments are loud with little reverb. So set the staff’s distance to more or less than
100% if the instrument is further or nearer than the average distance of the ensemble. Values
between about 60% and 140% would be sensible. The overall reverb setting is controlled by the
Play > Performance dialog (shortcut Shift-P).
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Mixer
* Volume: a numerical representation of the volume fader on the left-hand side of the window;
changing either the fader position or the numerical control updates the other. Although volume
adjustments can achieve the same effect as Mute, we recommend you reserve Volume for mak-
ing fine adjustments to the volume level and Mute for basically switching instruments on and
off.
* Pan: a numerical representation of the pan slider for each staff on the left-hand side of the win-
dow; changing either updates the other. The pan (stereo) position of a staff is represented by a
Pan number from 0 (full left) to 127 (full right). Pan positions from (say) 30 to 90 give subtle
and realistic effects – more extreme values can sound crude, because you’d be unlikely to have
instruments literally on either side of you.
All of the changes you make in the Mixer window are fully undoable – just choose Edit > Undo
(shortcut XZ or Ctrl+Z) or click the toolbar button.
Click track
Some music programs accompany playback with a metronome click, for example so that you can
play along; if you want G7 to do this, click Click in the Mixer and switch on the Click when play-
ing option. The Click when recording option controls whether the click sounds while using Flexi-
time recording. You can also change the Click when playing settings using the Mute button on
the Mixer window itself.
You can choose the percussion sounds used by the click track on the first beat of the bar and sub-
sequent beats. The Subdivide beats option is useful in some time signatures such as 6/8, where it
will click lightly on every eighth note (quaver). Stress irregular beat groups accents beats in the
bar depending on the beat groups defined for irregular time signatures such as 7/8.
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Page and staff size
Page and staff size

The Format > Page and Staff Size dialog allows you to set up the page size and staff size of your
score. G7 will reformat your score instantly for the new settings, so you can try out different sizes
or shapes of paper, or different staff sizes, to see what looks best.
Since the staff size affects the amount of music that can fit on each page and the number of pages
in the score, you can use Format > Page and Staff Size to fit your score onto any number of pages
you want.
Changing the page settings

Choose Format > Page and Staff Size to see this dialog:
The preview shows how the first page will look with the settings you’ve chosen; click the arrows
to look through subsequent pages.
When you click OK, the score will be instantly reformatted using the new measurements. (If you
don’t like how it ends up, just choose Edit > Undo!)
Staff size
The staff size you specify is the distance from the center of the top staff line on a 5-line notation
staff to the center of the bottom staff line. Tab staves are a bit bigger than notation staves. Every-
thing in a score is scaled to be in proportion to the staff size – notes, clefs, text, etc.
You can either type in a staff size or click the little arrows to change it in small steps. Click and hold
the little arrows and watch the preview to see the effect of the staves growing and shrinking.
You should take care to set a staff size appropriate to the kind of music you are writing. In general,
if you set the staff size too small the performers will feel uncomfortable without necessarily know-
ing quite why.
A staff size of about 0.25–0.3” (6-8mm) should suit most scores you’ll write.
Page margins
Margins are automatically set in G7 to 0.59” (15mm) on all sides, and these cannot be altered.
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Printing
Printing
Setting the paper size
Before you print from G7, you should check that your printer driver is set to use the correct paper
size. On Mac, each program on your computer maintains its own default paper size, so you simply
need to ensure that the correct size is set in the File > Page Setup dialog.
On Windows, you can change the paper size via G7’s File > Print dialog, but this only affects docu-
ments printed from G7, and only until you exit the program. The next time you start up G7, its
paper size is reset to your printer driver’s default again. This means that you should ensure your
printer’s default settings are correct. To do this:
* In Windows 95, 98 and Me:
% Choose Start > Settings > Printers
% Right-click the default printer’s icon and choose Properties
% In the printer driver dialog, click the Paper tab and ensure that the correct default paper size
is set, then click OK.
* In Windows 2000 and XP:
% Choose Start > Settings > Printers (Start > Printers and Faxes in Windows XP)
% Select the default printer, then choose File > Printing Preferences
% In the printer driver dialog, click the Layout tab, then click Advanced (in the bottom right-
hand corner of the dialog)
% Choose the correct default paper size, then click OK twice to confirm the changes.
Printing
Choose File > Print (shortcut Ctrl+P or XP). A standard Print dialog appears, with some extra
options on. Note the following platform-specific information:
* On Windows, if you have more than one printer connected to your computer, you can choose
which one you want to use from the drop-down list at the top of the dialog. You can also alter
specific driver options by clicking Properties.
* On Classic Mac OS, you should use the pop-up list at the top left to select the G7 page of
options, rather than the default General page.
* On Mac OS X, you should choose the G7 page of options, then click the Print Settings button to
get the dialog containing options for booklets, spreads, etc. You can also set which pages to print
on the Copies & Pages page of the dialog.
Set the print options described below as you want them, then click OK (Windows) or Print (Mac)
and the printing will begin.
Print range
If you don’t want to print the whole score, you can type a list of pages to print (e.g. 1, 3, 8), and/
or a range of pages (e.g. 5-9), which can be backwards to print in reverse order (e.g. 9-5). You
specify pages using the numbering written in the score, so the first page isn’t necessarily page 1.
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Printing
Copies and Collate
By default, one copy will be printed, though you can set any other quantity you want in the Cop-
ies box (on the General page on Classic Mac OS, and on the Copies & Pages page on Mac OS X).
Multiple copies are done of each page in turn, so if you choose two copies the pages will come out
in the order 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, etc.
However, if you switch on Collate, each copy of the score is collated properly, so the pages come
out in the order 1, 2, 3, 4... 1, 2, 3, 4.... This saves you having to sort the pages into order yourself,
but on laser printers printing may take a little longer.
Fit to Paper
This scales the score down in size, if necessary, so that the music fits within the print margins of
the paper, to avoid the edges of the music being clipped. This is particularly useful for printing Let-
ter sized scores on A4 paper (and vice versa), and for reducing Tabloid/A3 scores onto Letter/A4
paper. Fit to Paper does not however expand the music to fill the paper if it is larger than the page
size.
This option automatically adjusts the Scale setting (see below), so if you have Fit to Paper
switched on, you shouldn’t change the Scale setting yourself.
Scale
Your music is normally printed at 100% size, though you can set any other scale factor you like. To
reduce the music to fit onto smaller paper, simply switch on Fit to Paper instead of working out
the scale factor yourself.
Beware that US paper sizes such as Letter and Tabloid are not quite the same shape as each other,
so the page margins may turn out differently than you expect if you scale (say) a Tabloid score to
fit on Letter paper. No such problem arises with European paper sizes.
Print View menu options

This prints options switched on in the View menu, such as hidden objects and breaks.
Print colored objects

When this option is switched on (as it is by default), any objects (such as notes, lines, text, and so
on) that you have colored using Edit > Color will be printed in your chosen color – provided you
have a color printer, of course!
Substitute options
These options fix various printer problems and/or may improve the print speed or quality. When
you have time to test them, try various combinations of these options to see if you can gain any
improvements.
The options are as follows:
* Lines: some printer drivers do not print staff lines evenly, and may even fail to print them alto-
gether; some drivers draw lines such as barlines and stems with rounded instead of flat ends.
Some PostScript printers may give ‘out of memory’ errors when printing many pages at once.
Turning this option on may solve these problems and should increase print speed, but may make
staff lines slightly uneven in thickness.
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Printing
* Braces: some printer drivers print braces either in the wrong place or using the wrong symbol.
Switch on this option if you have these problems.
* Arpeggios, gliss., etc.: some Windows printer drivers have a bug which makes angled text and
wiggly glissando and strum/arpeggio lines print at the wrong angle or in the wrong place; if you
find this happens, switch on this option.
* Resolution (Mac only): this option allows you to force G7 to print at a specific resolution, to
work around a bug in some versions of Mac OS which incorrectly sets the print resolution too
low. If you find that slurs and other lines look ‘jagged’ or low resolution, switch on this option
and set the resolution to a suitable value for your printer. Note that the resolution entered here
is square, i.e. if you type in 600, that means 600 x 600 dpi.
If you do set the resolution yourself, setting the value to a resolution higher than your printer
can actually print will not magically cause your printer to print at that resolution; but it will
cause your printer to print at its highest possible resolution instead, so setting the value too high
does no real harm.
* Symbols (Windows only): this option affects how symbol fonts – used for e.g. notes, time signa-
tures, clefs and other symbols in your score – are rendered by your printer. Symbol fonts include
Opus, Inkpen2, Opus Percussion, Opus Special, and so on, and other fonts such as Symbol,
Wingdings, and other dingbats fonts. If this option is set wrongly for your printer, then symbol
fonts may not display or print at all. The four choices are as follows:
% Default: the recommended setting; this should work in nearly all cases, and is the default on
Windows 95/98/Me
% Automatic: G7 detects whether symbol fonts are in TrueType or PostScript (Type 1) format
and renders them accordingly; this is the default on Windows NT/2000/XP
% PostScript: G7 assumes all symbol fonts are in PostScript (Type 1) format
% TrueType: G7 assumes all symbol fonts are in TrueType format.
Choosing good paper

Investing in very good paper can make your printouts look twice as good. Good paper is bright
white, is very opaque so the music doesn’t show through the back, and is reasonably stiff so it
doesn’t flop on a music stand. Avoid ordinary thin typing paper or photocopier paper – we recom-
mend paper of about 26 lb/ream or 100 gsm.
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Properties
Properties
Many objects in G7 have properties that can be edited using the floating
Properties window. To switch Properties on and off, choose Window >
Properties, or type Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP.
Text properties
You can change the font or text size of any selected text object using the
Properties window. You can also make text bold, italicized or underlined
using the B, I and U checkboxes respectively.
Note that if you want to, say, change the font used by all the lyrics in your
score, you should use the Format > Fonts dialog, which allows you to change the default text font
throughout your score in a single operation.
See Text on page 166 for further information on editing text.
Tunings and staff types

To change the tuning used by a tab staff, simply select a bar in the staff in question and choose the
new tuning from the Tuning / Staff type list in the Properties window. See Tunings and Staff
Types on page 175 for more details.
Noteheads
On notation staves, different types of noteheads are sometimes used. For example, drum notation
uses a variety of noteheads to denote different drums in the drum set – see Drums and percus-
sion on page 81 for more details. If you are preparing lead sheets or rhythm parts, you may also
want to use slashes, which G7 treats as a type of notehead.
It’s easy to change noteheads on a notation staff: just select the note or notes whose noteheads
you want to change, and then choose the desired notehead from the Notehead list in the Proper-
ties window. Alternatively, you can hold Shift+Alt or xz and type the numbers on the main key-
board (not the numeric keypad) to choose the notehead.
Trill intervals
The Trill (half steps) option allows you to change the playback interval of trills – see Trills on page
114.
Bar rests
You won’t normally need to change the type of bar rest used in your scores, but if you are writing
a drum or rhythm part you may want to use the repeat bar symbol (sometimes called a ‘cannon’)
instead of a bar rest. Select as a passage all the bars in which you want to use the repeat bar sym-
bol so that they’re surrounded by a single blue box, then choose the repeat bar symbol from the
Bar rest list in Properties.
(For the record, the other two bar rest types included there are a blank bar rest and a double
whole note – or breve – bar rest, but you’re unlikely ever to need them.)
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Repeats
Repeats
It’s quite common for songs to use special repeat structures such as codas, 1st- and 2nd-ending
lines, and text such as D.C. al Fine. G7 understands all of these kinds of repeat structures, and
more besides.
Repeat barlines
To create a start or end repeat barline, select the barline where you want the repeat to go, and
choose Create > Barline > Start Repeat or End Repeat.
Note that repeat barlines only repeat once (i.e. any passage with an end repeat barline at the end
of it will be played twice).
1st- and 2nd-ending lines

For information on creating these lines, see Lines on page 113.
Codas
Codas – music which comes at the very end of a song with a repeating structure – are normally
separated from the preceding music by a gap. To create a coda:
* Create the bars where the coda music will go
* Select the barline just before the coda
* Choose Create > Barline > Double (because codas are normally preceded by double barlines, to
show the end of the previous section)
* You would also normally add a text direction here informing the player what to do when they
get to this bar the first time through – see Dal segno (D.S.) and da capo (D.C.) below
* Choose Format > Make Gap Before Coda. This creates a gap after the selected barline.
* To write the word CODA above the start of the coda, hit Esc to make sure nothing is selected.
Then choose Create > Text > Tempo (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T or zXT) and click above the start of the
coda. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) to see the word menu, which includes the
coda symbol, then type the word CODA in the normal way.
Dal segno (D.S.) and da capo (D.C.)

The Italian term ‘Dal segno’ literally means ‘from the sign’. In most music you will see either D.S.
al Fine (which means ‘go back to the $ sign and play the music again until you come to the bar
marked Fine, then stop’) or D.S. al Coda (which means ‘go back to the $ sign and play the music
again until you come to the bar marked To Coda, then jump to the coda’).
Similarly, ‘da capo’ literally means ‘from the head’, i.e. the start of the song or piece. Just as with
D.S., in most music you will either see D.C. al Fine or D.C. al Coda.
In music, these instructions always appear at the end of the bar from which you have to jump
back (either to the $ sign or to the start of the piece). To input these instructions:
* Select the barline where the player has to jump back in the song
* Choose Create > Text > Other System Text > Repeat (D.C./D.S./To Coda)
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Repeats
* A flashing caret appears. Now right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) to see the word
menu, which includes the text you need – enter it in the score simply by clicking it in the menu.
Creating a segno
If the player has to jump back to a segno, you do of course need to put the segno symbol in the
right place. To do this:
* Select the note at the start of the bar to which the player has to jump back
* Choose Create > Special Symbol (shortcut Z for ‘zpecial zymbol’)
* The segno symbol ($) is right at the top of the dialog, in the row labeled Repeats. Click it once
to select it, and make sure the Attach to option is set to System.
* Click OK, and the segno is created in your score.
Fine and To Coda

The final special pieces of text used in repeat structures are Fine (which shows where the player
should stop playing the song if they’ve previously jumped back from a D.S. or D.C. instruction),
and To Coda (which shows where the player should jump forward to the coda, if they’ve previ-
ously jumped back from a D.S. or D.C. instruction).
Both of these instructions occur at the end of bars, and are entered the same way as D.S. and D.C.
– see Dal segno (D.S.) and da capo (D.C.) above.
Example score
For an example of how some of these repeat structures fit together in practice, take a look at the
Keyboard TV Theme example score supplied with G7, which you can find inside the Example
Scores folder inside your Scores folder.
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Scanning
Scanning
Introduction 3. Editing
Getting going 4. Sending to G7
1. Scanning Possible problems
2. Reading Advanced features
INTRODUCTION
PhotoScore Lite from Neuratron is a music scanning program designed to work with G7 – the
musical equivalent of a text OCR (optical character recognition) program.
It is a sophisticated program with many advanced features. If you intend to scan relatively com-
plex scores with lots of instruments, or scores of many pages, we strongly recommend that you
start with more simple music until you are proficient with PhotoScore Lite, and then familiarize
yourself with the ADVANCED FEATURES section.
PhotoScore Professional
An advanced version of PhotoScore Lite, called PhotoScore Professional, is available to buy sepa-
rately, with extra features and enhancements. PhotoScore Professional reads many more musical
markings (including slurs and text), reads scores with more than 12 staves, and multiple voices.
For details of how to buy PhotoScore Professional, choose Help > PhotoScore Professional, or
contact your local dealer or Sibelius.
Scanning
Scanning text is difficult for computers to do, and has only achieved reasonable accuracy in the
last few years. Music scanning is much harder because of the more complicated range of symbols
involved, and because of the complex two-dimensional ‘grammar’ of music.
The difficulty with scanning music or text is that by scanning a page, a computer does not ‘under-
stand’ it. As far as the computer is concerned, scanning a page merely presents it with a grid of
millions of black and white dots, which could be music, text, a photograph or anything else.
The process of actually reading or interpreting music, text or pictures from this grid of dots is
extremely complex and poorly understood. A large part of the human brain, containing many mil-
lions of connections, is devoted solely to solving this ‘pattern recognition’ problem.
Suitable originals
PhotoScore Lite is designed to read originals which satisfy the following criteria:
* Are printed rather than handwritten
* Fit on your scanner (i.e. the music itself is typically no larger than Letter/A4 size, though the
paper may be slightly larger)
* Have a staff-size of at least 0.12”/3mm
* Use no more than 12 staves per page, and 1 voice per staff. (Additional staves or voices will be
omitted.)
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* Are reasonably clear – for example, staff lines should be continuous and not broken or blotchy,
half note (minim) and whole-note (semibreve) noteheads and flats should have a continuous
circumference and not be broken or filled in, beams on sixteenth notes (semiquavers) and
shorter notes should have a significant white gap in between, and objects which are meant to be
separate (e.g. noteheads and their preceding accidentals) should not overlap or be blotched
together.
Music which does not match the above will probably work, but with considerably reduced accu-
racy.
Scanning from photocopies is not particularly recommended unless the photocopier is a particu-
larly good one, as photocopying tends to degrade the quality of an original significantly. You may
be obliged to scan from a reduced photocopy if your original is bigger than your scanner, but you
should expect lower accuracy.
Copyright music
You should be aware that if you scan someone else’s music without permission you are likely to
infringe copyright. Copyright infringement by scanning is illegal, and in any case is forbidden by
the G7 license agreement.
Most music states if it is copyright and who the copyright owner is. If you have a piece of music
which you want to scan and you are not sure about its copyright status, please contact the music’s
publisher, composer or arranger.
GETTING GOING
Like G7, PhotoScore Lite functions in exactly the same way on Mac and Windows. You can start
PhotoScore Lite either by choosing File > Scan in G7’s menus, clicking the Scan icon on the G7
toolbar, or by double-clicking the PhotoScore Lite icon (Mac) or running it from the Start menu
(Windows). G7 doesn’t need to be running when you use PhotoScore Lite.
The four stages

There are four stages when using PhotoScore Lite:
1. Scanning the pages
2. Reading the pages
3. Editing the resulting music
4. Sending the music to G7.
* Scanning a page simply makes PhotoScore Lite take a ‘photograph’ of your original.
* Reading is the clever bit – this is where PhotoScore Lite ‘reads’ the scanned pages to work out
what the notes and other markings are.
* Editing is where you correct mistakes that PhotoScore Lite has made. Editing within PhotoScore
Lite works in much the same way as editing music in G7.
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Almost any marking can be corrected or input in PhotoScore Lite, but it is only essential at this
stage to correct rhythmic mistakes – other corrections can be made after sending the score to G7
if you prefer.
* Sending the music to G7 is done simply by clicking on a button. After a moment the music pops
up as a G7 score just as if you’d inputted it all yourself.
You can then play the music back, re-arrange it, transpose it, extract parts, or print it out.
Quick summary
Before we examine how to use PhotoScore Lite in detail, let’s run through the process quickly to
introduce the four stages.
Although it is more useful to have a scanner connected to your computer when using PhotoScore,
it is possible to ‘read’ music without using a scanner. You will need each page of music stored as a
graphics file on your computer in .bmp (bitmap) format on Windows, or PICT (Picture file) format
on Mac.
The first step is either to scan some music, or to open a page you have already scanned:
* To scan a page, choose File > Scan pages (shortcut Ctrl+W or XW); your scanner interface will
load. Scan a page and it is added to PhotoScore’s list of scanned pages
* To open a graphics file, choose File > Open; when prompted for the resolution the image was
scanned at, choose the appropriate setting and click OK. The graphics file is then added to the
list of scanned pages.
PhotoScore Lite will show you the scanned image, with blue lines marking the staves it has found,
and red lines denoting that staves are bracketed together. Just click Read pages to turn the
scanned image into a music file (if another dialog appears with options in it, just click Read).
Reading the page will take a little while (depending on the speed of your computer) and a progress
bar will show you how long you will have to wait.
When PhotoScore Lite has finished reading
the image, the main editing window will
appear (see left). From this window you can
edit any errors in the music.
When you are satisfied with the corrections
you have made, choose File > Send to > G7
(shortcut Ctrl+G or XG) to send the music
to G7.
If G7 is not already running, it will start up,
and the Open PhotoScore File dialog will
appear, which allows you to choose various
options concerning which instruments will be used in the G7 score. Don’t worry about these now
– just click OK. Moments later, the G7 score will appear, ready for editing, just as if you had input-
ted it yourself.
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1. SCANNING
Choose File > Scan pages (shortcut Ctrl+W or XW) in the menu to produce a dialog, which will
vary depending on your scanner.
Before you scan, measure the size (height) of staves in the page you want to scan and choose a
resolution using the following table, and scan in black & white or gray – not color:
Staff size Resolution
0.25”/6mm or more 200 dpi
0.15-0.25”/4–6mm 300 dpi
0.12-0.15”/3–4mm 400 dpi
Reading accuracy and speed will be considerably reduced if you scan at too low or too high a reso-
lution. So, for example, do not scan at 400 dpi unless the staves really are small.
Usually, you can choose whether to scan in black & white or grayscale (shades of gray). Scanning
in gray produce significantly more accurate results – if the option is not available in your scanning
dialog, consult your scanner’s documentation.
Now you can scan your first page – try a page or two of simple keyboard music or something sim-
ilar:
* Put the page of music (the ‘original’) into your scanner, face-down and with the top of the page
pointing away from you.
Put one edge of the original flush against the raised edge of the glass.
You can put the page on its side if it fits better. PhotoScore Lite will automatically rotate the page
by 90 degrees if necessary. However you should normally align the top of the page with the left
edge of the scanner to ensure it does not turn out upside down. Don’t worry though if it is
scanned upside down, as it is easy to correct later on.
If you are scanning in gray, then the page does not need to be completely straight, providing that
it is not more than 8 degrees off – PhotoScore Lite will automatically make the page level (to
within 0.1 degrees) without loss of detail. It will still be rotated if scanning in black & white, but
there will be loss of detail, and thus less accurate results.
* Click the button marked Scan.
* After a moment, the scanner will whirr into life and transfer the page to your computer. (If this
doesn’t happen, see POSSIBLE PROBLEMS below.)
* If you are scanning from a fairly thick book, gently press down the lid (or the book if easier) dur-
ing scanning to keep the page flat on the glass.
* A window will appear for you to enter a name for the page, which will be Page 1 by default.
You can change this to any name you like (although to avoid any unexpected results it should
end with a number) – something like Piano p1 would do – then hit Return (on the main key-
board).
* Subsequent pages you scan will be automatically numbered e.g. Piano p2, but you can change
these names if you like.
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* Wait a few seconds while PhotoScore Lite makes the image level, chooses the best brightness,
and locates the staves.
* A scan of the whole original page will then appear. The buff paper color indicates that you are
looking at a scanned image (a ‘scan’) of the original page.
Check that all the staves are highlighted in blue – this shows that PhotoScore Lite has detected
where they are.
If the page has systems of two or more staves, check also that the staves within each system are
joined at the left-hand end by a thick vertical (or near-vertical) red line.
If not all staves are blue, or not all staves within systems are joined with a red line, you can
manually tell PhotoScore Lite where they are (see ADVANCED FEATURES below).
(Ignore the other buttons at the top of this window, which are also explained in ADVANCED
FEATURES below.)
* Put the second page of music in the scanner, choose File > Scan pages, and proceed as for the
first page.
Continue until you have scanned all the pages you want to scan.
Scanning summarized
Once you’ve scanned a few pages you’ll rapidly get into the routine of it. The procedure can be
summarized as follows:
* Place page in scanner
* Click the scanner button or choose File > Scan pages
* Choose the resolution, and whether to scan in black & white or gray
* Click Scan
* Enter page name (or leave the default name)
* Check staves and systems have been detected, and adjust if necessary
* Go on to next page.
Catalog of scanned pages

It’s important for you to understand that whenever you scan a page, PhotoScore Lite adds it to a
single list or ‘catalog’ of scanned pages to be read later. You do not need to save scanned pages or
the catalog – it is stored on your hard disk automatically.
This means that whenever you start using PhotoScore, it still remembers any pages you scanned
previously. (You can delete pages which you no longer need to keep.)
We’ll tell you more about the catalog later.
Hints on scanning
* If you want to read a page of music smaller than the size of your scanner, you should make sure
that only that portion is scanned.
Most scanner interfaces allow you to scan part of a page, usually by clicking a Preview button to
produce a thumbnail image, which may seem a little ‘blocky’. You can then adjust the required
area by dragging from the edges of the thumbnail.
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Then click Scan to scan the selected area at high resolution. Every time you click Scan after this,
only the selected area will be scanned, until you change it.
* Ensure that all of the music on the page you are scanning is on the glass of the scanner.
It doesn’t matter if your original is larger than Letter/A4, so long as the music itself will fit onto
Letter/A4.
* If you are scanning a page which is smaller than Letter/A4 size, it doesn’t matter where on the
glass you position the original. However, it helps if you put the edge of the page flush against the
edge of the glass, to ensure that it’s straight.
* If you are scanning a small music book then you may be able to fit a double-page spread (two
facing pages side-by-side) on the scanner glass, but don’t try this – PhotoScore Lite can only read
one page at a time. Scan each page separately.
* For simplicity, we recommend that you scan all the pages in a piece of music before reading
them all. You are allowed to scan a page, then read it, then scan another and so on (see
ADVANCED FEATURES below), but we don’t suggest you try anything like this until you are
proficient with PhotoScore Lite.
2. READING
As mentioned earlier, just scanning a page simply presents the computer with a grid of millions of
black and white dots, which as far as it’s concerned could be anything from text to a photograph.
‘Reading’ the music is the clever bit, where PhotoScore Lite works out from the scan where and
what the notes and other markings on the page are.
Starting reading
Once you have scanned every page of the piece of music in question, choose File > Read pages
(shortcut Ctrl+R or XR).
PhotoScore Lite will start to think, and a small progress window will appear. This shows the name
of the current page being read, and the progress made through it. This window can be minimized
(collapsed) or moved out of the way, so that you can continue with other work.
What PhotoScore Lite reads

PhotoScore Lite reads the following musical markings:
* Guitar tab (although it does not read rhythms on guitar tab staves)
* Notes & chords (including tail direction, beams & flags), rests
* Flats, sharps and naturals
* Treble and bass clefs, key signatures, time signatures
* 5-line staves (normal and small), standard barlines
* The format of the page, including the page size, staff-size, margins, and where systems end.
PhotoScore Professional, available separately, also reads text, a wider variety of clefs and acciden-
tals, and has improved accuracy.
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Hints on reading
* You should not need to interrupt reading, but you can normally do so if necessary by hitting
Esc, or by clicking Cancel on the progress window. PhotoScore Lite will show the part of the
page it has already read. You should delete this page by clicking Delete page at the top before
re-scanning or re-reading the page.
* If the computer gives a warning message while reading a page, or if a page seems to be taking a
very long time to read, see POSSIBLE PROBLEMS below.
* If you like, you can ask PhotoScore Lite to read just a single scan or a choice of scans instead of
the whole score; see ADVANCED FEATURES below.
3. EDITING
When PhotoScore Lite has finished reading the music, its interpretation of the first page pops up in
a window called the output window. Here you can edit mistakes PhotoScore Lite has made.
The top part of the window (with a buff-colored background) shows you the original page.
The large bottom part of the window (with a light gray background) shows PhotoScore Lite’s
interpretation of the first scan – that is, what PhotoScore Lite thinks the first page of the original
says. Hence this part of the window is where PhotoScore Lite’s mistakes can occur.
At the top left of the window it says (e.g.) Page 1 of 2, and by clicking on the arrows you can
move through all of the pages which have been read (the output score). It makes sense to edit the
first page completely, then advance to the second page and so on until the whole output score has
been edited.
To the bottom right of the window is the keypad, similar in function to G7’s keypad. This can be
repositioned by clicking its title bar, and dragging.
There is a Create menu at the top of the window, which is also similar in function to G7’s Create
menu, though features not appropriate for PhotoScore Lite have been omitted.
What to correct
The minimum level of correction recommended before sending the output score to G7 is to correct
key signatures and time signatures. Other mistakes such as pitch can be corrected in G7, but cor-
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recting key signatures and time signatures is much easier in PhotoScore Lite, so we recommend
you do that.
To correct mistakes in tab, select the fret number that’s incorrect and type the new number using
the number keys on the main keyboard (not the numeric keypad). It’s similar to editing tab within
G7 itself – see Tab input on page 164 for more details.
To correct rhythmic mistakes, add the appropriate time signature if it’s not already present: choose
Create > Time Signature (shortcut T) and click in one of the staves to add the time signature. Once
PhotoScore Lite knows the time signature, any rhythmic inaccuracies are indicated by small red
notes over the barline, showing the number of missing or extra beats. As you correct the mistakes,
these red notes disappear – and once your score is free of red notes, you can send it to G7.
Once you are more proficient with PhotoScore Lite, you can correct the music completely in Pho-
toScore Lite before sending it to G7. The advantage of this is that you can spot errors by looking at
the scanned original on the screen instead of having to refer to it on paper.
Checking for mistakes

Check for mistakes by comparing the bottom part of the window with the original scan at the top.
The top and bottom parts move about to show the region of the page the mouse is pointing at.
Avoid the temptation to compare the output page with the original music on paper – it is almost
always quicker to compare with the scan on the screen.
At the top right of the output window is the full detail view window, which shows in close-up the
part of the original which the pointer is over. Ctrl+clicking or X-clicking on this window makes
the view larger or smaller. This window can be repositioned by clicking its title bar and dragging.
MIDI playback
Another way to check for mistakes is to have the output played back to you. Your computer will
need a MIDI device attached to make use of this feature (if you have more than one attached, the
default one will be used).
To play the whole page from the start, ensure that nothing is selected by clicking on an area of the
page with no notation. Then choose Play > Play/Stop (shortcut P), or click the Play button on the
toolbar. Do the same to stop the music. To play from a particular point on the page, select an object
in each of the staves you want playback from. It will commence from the start of the bar with the
earliest selection.
By default, all the staves will play back with a piano sound, but you can change this: right-click
(Windows) or z-click (Mac) the names at the start of the first system (e.g. Staff 1) and choose
Rename. You will see a dialog that looks similar to G7’s Create > Instruments dialog, from which
you can choose the correct name (and therefore the sound) used by that staff.
While the music is playing, the currently played bars will be highlighted in gray.
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4. SENDING TO G7
Once you have edited all the pages in the score, you
should send them to G7. Choose File > Send to > G7
(shortcut Ctrl+G or XG), or simply click the little icon
next to the Save button at the top of the output window.
If G7 isn’t already running, it will start, and the Open
PhotoScore File dialog will appear:
* Manuscript Paper: allows you to choose the manuscript
paper G7 should use; note that any instruments in the chosen manuscript paper are not used in
your new score, but things like document setup and so on are used.
* Play using this device: choose the playback device G7 should use for the new score
* This is a transposing score: ignore this option
* Use default instruments: opens the file without trying to work out which instruments are used
in the score
* Choose instruments: allows you to choose an instrument for each staff in the score from a dia-
log similar to the usual Instruments dialog; choose the staff in the scanned music that you want
to replace with a G7 instrument, then click Add as normal. Note that if you add an instrument
that normally uses two staves (such as a piano), this will ‘use up’ two of the staves in the left-
most list on the dialog.
* Let G7 choose instruments: with this option switched on, G7 will attempt to work out which
instruments are used in the score; it does this by checking the names of the staves that are set in
PhotoScore – if a staff’s name doesn’t match an instrument G7 knows, it opens the file with the
default piano sound
* Use scanned page dimensions: this option, switched on by default, tells G7 to format the score
according to the page size suggested by PhotoScore. If you switch this option off, the page size of
the selected manuscript paper used for importing will be used instead.
Once your music has been opened in G7 you can do anything you like to it, just as if you had
inputted it yourself.
Editing rhythmic mistakes

If you send a score from PhotoScore Lite to G7 which has bars which don’t ‘add up’, G7 will
lengthen bars which are too short, and shorten bars which are too long.
To do this, G7 compares the length of the bars with the prevailing time signature. If a bar is too
short, G7 simply inserts rests at the end. If a bar is too long, G7 shortens it by omitting one or more
notes/rests at the end of the bar.
Although G7 adjusts the lengths of bars like this, you are strongly advised to correct faulty
rhythms in PhotoScore Lite in the first place rather than trying to fix them in G7 afterwards, as it
will save you extra work.
Be aware that when you scan tab, G7 will set the note value of each note on the tab staff to be
eighth notes (quavers). If you need to change the durations of notes after sending the score to G7
for editing:
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* To shorten a note, simply select the tab note you want to shorten and choose the new note
value from the Keypad window. This will create a rest or rests after the note that you have
shortened. You may then need to select the music that follows and cut it to the clipboard (using
Edit > Cut), select the new rest (or the first new rest if there is more than one), and paste the
music back in (using Edit > Paste).
* When you lengthen a note, G7 will overwrite any notes that fall before the end of the new
duration, e.g. if you have a passage of four eighth notes (quavers) and you turn the first eighth
note into a dotted quarter (dotted crotchets), the second and third eighth notes will be overwrit-
ten when G7 creates the dotted quarter. To avoid this, select the music after the note you want
to lengthen, cut it to the clipboard (using Edit > Cut), select the note you want to lengthen and
change its duration on the Keypad, then paste the music you previously cut to the clipboard
after the newly-lengthened note, using Edit > Paste.
Format
G7 ensures that the format of the scanned music is the same as the original pages. However, if the
notes seem uncomfortably close together or far apart in the end result, try changing the staff size
in the Format > Page and Staff Size dialog.
Multi-staff instruments
PhotoScore Lite treats all staves as separate instruments, which means that, by default, multi-staff
instruments such as keyboards will be sent to G7 as two separately-named staves without a brace.
When you send a PhotoScore file to G7, you can use the Open PhotoScore File dialog to tell G7
that, say, staves 1 and 2 are actually the right- and left-hand staves of a piano – either choose the
instruments yourself, or click Let G7 choose instruments.
Deleting the output score

If you have finished scanning a score and have sent it to G7, and are satisfied with the result, then
you will want to delete the score in PhotoScore Lite if you want to start scanning a new one.
To do this, simply click the Delete score button at the top of the output window. Note that for
safety the scans are not deleted when you delete the output score, and so the scans should be
deleted separately (see below).
If you forget to delete the output score before scanning the next piece of music, the new pages you
scan and read will be appended to the end of the previous output score. However, you can delete
the old pages individually from the output score by clicking on the Delete page button for each
one.
Deleting unwanted scans

PhotoScore Lite automatically saves each page you scan as a scanned image. This occupies a not
insignificant amount of hard disk space, so you should regularly delete scans which have been
read. You do not, however, have to delete the scans before scanning the next piece of music.
To delete unwanted scans:
* Choose View > Scanned pages (shortcut Ctrl+E or XE)
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* A catalog of all scanned pages appears (which has various advanced uses – see ADVANCED
FEATURES below). For each scan it says whether or not it has been read.
* Click the Select Read button at the bottom to select all scans which have been read, then click
Remove.
After a warning, all these scans will be deleted.
POSSIBLE PROBLEMS
Scanning takes a long time

If there are no signs of scanning happening – i.e. if after clicking on the Scan or Preview button
the scanner remains silent with no lights moving or flashing – communication between the com-
puter and the scanner has probably been interrupted.
Check that the scanner is switched on and that the cable between it and the computer is firmly
connected at both ends. If this doesn’t help, try reinstalling your TWAIN scanner driver software.
Note that some scanners need to be switched on before the computer is turned on, otherwise they
are not detected.
Not all staves/systems are detected

If after scanning a page you find that not all staves are highlighted in blue, or the staves are not
correctly joined into systems by a thick red vertical line, this may be because:
* The original has 13 or more staves on a page: only PhotoScore Professional can scan scores with
more than 12 staves.
* The original was not flat on the scanner glass: always close the lid when scanning, unless scan-
ning a thick book. It may also help if you gently press down on the scanner lid during scanning.
* The page was scanned at too low a resolution (i.e. the staves are smaller than you think): check
the staff size, alter the scanner setting accordingly, and re-scan.
* You tried scanning a double-page spread: PhotoScore Lite cannot read both pages of a double-
page spread (e.g. from a miniature score) at once. Re-scan each of the pages separately. Ensure
that the music on the facing page is completely off the glass, or not scanned – if any of it
impinges on the scan, PhotoScore Lite will not read the music correctly.
* The staves are not clear enough in the original to be detected: in this case, you can tell Photo-
Score Lite where any missing staves are located on the page – see ADVANCED FEATURES
below.
Reading takes a long time

* If the page was scanned without being flat on the glass or with the lid open: you will get a black
border around the page which may spread across and obliterate some of the music. This can
make PhotoScore Lite take an extremely long time to read the page. If this happens, interrupt
reading (see below), then re-scan the page.
* If not all staves were detected after scanning (i.e. some were not highlighted in blue): this can
slow reading down. see Not all staves/systems are detected above.
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Music reads inaccurately
If you find music seems to be reading very inaccurately, this may be because:
* the original is of poor quality, e.g. a photocopy or an old edition;
* the original is hand-written: PhotoScore Lite is not designed to read hand-written music;
* the music uses two or more voices, which can only be read by PhotoScore Professional: Photo-
Score Lite will regard all notes as being in a single voice;
* the music was scanned in black & white and was not straight enough: it is recommended that
you scan in shades of gray;
* the music was not straight enough when scanned and Make image level was not selected in the
preferences (see ADVANCED FEATURES below). Having Rotate more quickly selected in the
preferences will also result in lower accuracy, if the page is not exactly level when scanned;
* the music symbol designs used in the original are of a non-standard shape or size;
* you have the Read faster with lower accuracy option switched on – it is recommended that
you only use this option to speed up the reading of simple music which PhotoScore Lite could
read very accurately.
ADVANCED FEATURES
PhotoScore Lite has many features and options for more advanced use.
You are strongly recommended to familiarize yourself with this whole section before embarking
on any intensive scanning, such as orchestral/band scores or scores with many pages.
Choosing between scanners

In the unlikely event that you have more than one scanner connected to your computer, you can
choose between multiple scanner drivers by choosing File > Select Scanner.
Adjusting detected staves/systems

When you scan a page, PhotoScore Lite highlights staves it detects in blue, and joins them into sys-
tems with vertical red lines.
However, if the original is of poor quality, PhotoScore Lite may not detect some of the staves/sys-
tems, and you should tell PhotoScore Lite where they are.
The easiest method is to select the nearest blue staff (by clicking on it) and copy it by z-clicking or
Alt+clicking over the center line of the missing staff (the horizontal position is not important).
You can create a blue staff from scratch by clicking and dragging it out with the left mouse button.
After creating the staff, ensure that it is joined to any other staves in the same system (see below).
PhotoScore Lite will automatically ‘clip’ the staff in place, by adjusting the position and size of it, if
it finds an appropriate staff underneath. If it fails to position/size the staff correctly, scale the image
to full size (by clicking on the button at the top marked 100) and adjust it using the blue ‘handles’.
* You can drag any blue staff up and down with the left mouse button. This also causes the staff to
automatically clip in place.
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* You can drag the ends of blue staves around, and can even put blue staves at an angle.
* You can alter the size of any blue staff – pull the ‘handles’ in the middle of the staff up or down.
PhotoScore Lite can read pages which have a mixture of staff-sizes, and each blue staff can have
a different size. The top circular handle allows you to change the curvature of the staff. This is
useful when scanning pages from thick books, where it is not possible to prevent the page from
being curved at the edges.
* If any scanned staff is left with no blue staff on top of it, the scanned staff and any music on it
will be ignored when the page is read. This can slow reading down, but is otherwise harmless.
* To join two adjacent staves together into the same system, click one staff so it goes red, then z-
click or Alt+click the other staff. They will be joined near the left-hand end by a thick vertical (or
near-vertical) red line.
* To separate two joined staves into two separate systems, do exactly the same as for joining two
staves.
* Note that PhotoScore Lite automatically guesses whether staves should be joined together or not
when you create new ones, or move existing ones.
* If you’ve messed up the blue staves and want to start again, Ctrl+double-click or X-double-click
the scan, and PhotoScore Lite will reset the blue staves to their original positions.
* When you have finished editing the staves/systems, check carefully that the staves are all joined
into systems correctly, as you cannot alter this once the page has been read.
Scan window options

There are various further options and buttons available on the scan window:
* The Read this page button reads just this scan. Clicking the arrowed part of the button opens a
menu which lets you choose where in the output score to insert this page once it has been read.
* Scale produces a dialog which lets you zoom in and out of the scan. The button to the right of
Scale zooms the image to fit the main window; 50 zooms to 50%; 100 zooms to 100%.
* Upside down quickly rotates the image by 180 degrees, in case it was scanned the wrong way
up.
* Re-scan re-scans the page.
* On side quickly rotates the image by 90 degrees, in case it was scanned on its side.
List of scanned images

If you choose View > Scanned pages (shortcut Ctrl+E or XE), a catalog of scanned pages appears,
looking something like this:
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* The second column (Status) says whether a scan has been read or not.
* The Read next? column says whether scans will be read when you next click Read pages – you
can select or deselect this option for each scanned page. Do this by selecting the scan, and click-
ing the Read next or Don’t read button at the right. This allows you to compile an arbitrary
choice of scans into a score, rather than using all unread ones.
* The four buttons at the bottom select (respectively) all scans, only scans which have been read,
only those which have not been read, and no scans.
* Clicking on Remove at the right deletes the selected scans;
* Clicking on Display, or double-clicking on one of the scan names, displays the scan in the same
way as if you had just scanned it.
* The yellow arrow buttons at the left can be used to move a selected scan up and down in the list
(thereby changing the order in which they are read).
Omitted staves
In scores for many instruments unused staves are often omitted.
If you replace the default instrument names (e.g. Staff 1) at the start with proper names, then on
subsequent systems PhotoScore Lite will allocate instruments to staves in order from the top
down. Hence, if the original page omits an instrument from one system, then in the output win-
dow some of the staves will have the wrong names. To correct a name in this situation, Control-
click or right-click over the existing instrument name against the staff in question, and choose the
correct instrument from the list of current instruments.
On any system which has staves omitted you will probably have to correct several instrument
names like this. Do it with care, otherwise confusion will arise.
Instruments/staves introduced after the start

Some scores include instruments or staves which are not shown on the first system.
When this happens, on the system where the instrument/staff is first introduced you should do
the following:
* First, correct the names of each of the other staves:
Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows) each name, and choose the correct name from the
list of current instruments
* Then tell PhotoScore Lite the name of the newly-introduced instrument/staff
* Point over whatever name it has filled in (which may say e.g. Staff 5, or the name of an omitted
instrument). Control-click (Mac) or right-click (Windows), click New, and click a name from the
list of instruments displayed (similar to G7’s Instruments dialog.) If you want a non-standard
name, you can edit the name at the bottom.
You must do this with care – or else a lot of confusion can arise.
Small staves
In the output window, small staves are displayed at full size to make them legible, but they
are indicated by the symbol on the left at the end of the staff.
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Other preferences
The File > Preferences dialog contains various other options, as follows.
* On the Accuracy page, on which most options are disabled (since they are only available in Pho-
toScore Professional):
% Read faster with lower accuracy: this approximately doubles the speed of reading, but also
doubles the number of errors. We recommend you use this option only for simple music
which PhotoScore Lite would read with high accuracy.
% Display these preferences before reading: if this is switched on (as per the default setting),
you will get an opportunity to update certain preferences concerning accuracy and speed
before reading begins. Click Read at the bottom right of the dialog that appears to start read-
ing.
* On the Scanning page:
% Automatically make grayscale scans level: with this switched on, PhotoScore Lite will work
out how rotated a scan is, and then rotate it so that the staves are level. It is recommended
that this is left selected.
% Rotate page more quickly: with this selected, scanned images are rotated more quickly
when making the image level. However, this has the effect of distorting the image slightly
(adversely affecting reading accuracy), so is not recommended.
% Use standard TWAIN dialog box: (Windows only) with this switched off, PhotoScore Lite
will use its own (easier to use) scanning interface. Otherwise the standard TWAIN interface
(which works with all scanning programs) will be used when you choose File > Scan pages.
% Prompt user before scanning next page: with this switched on, PhotoScore will, oddly
enough, prompt you before scanning the next page.
* On the Display page:
% Attach scanned staff panel to current staff: on the output window, this puts the original
scan just above the highlighted staff instead of at the top of the window. This means you have
to move your eyes less when comparing the output with the original, but the effect can be
confusing.
% Drag paper by: allows you to choose whether you drag the paper either by clicking and drag-
ging, or holding Shift and dragging.
% Display anti-aliased when scaled (more details): this anti-aliases scans (shows them more
clearly by using gray shades), though it takes slightly longer to display them.
% Display splash screen at start-up: allows you to switch off the PhotoScore Lite splash screen
when you run the program.
If you change any of these options, they will remain in the new setting until you change them
again.
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Tab input
Tab input
This topic explains how to input tab directly using your computer’s keyboard. If you want to input
tab in another way, by:
* using your MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar, see Flexi-time™ on page 90;
* importing a MIDI file, see Importing a MIDI file on page 121;
* importing an ASCII tab file, see ASCII tab files on page 70;
* scanning printed music, see Scanning on page 149.
Inputting tab
Inputting tab using your computer’s keyboard is very simple, and the basics can be summed up in
just a few points:
* Select the bar in which you want to start inputting, then choose Notes > Input Notes (shortcut
N)
* The caret (a small vertical line) appears, showing you which string you’re on
* Choose the length of the note you want to input using the Keypad window, or by typing the
corresponding key on your keyboard’s numeric keypad
* Use the 3 and 2 keys to move up and down the strings, and 0 and 1 to move back and forth in
the bar
* To input a note, type the fret number using the number keys on the main keyboard (not the
numeric keypad).
You can change the default note value used when moving around the bar using the 0 and 1 keys
in the Notes > Note Input Options dialog; change Beat positions to snap to to whatever note
value you prefer. Switch off the Snap in guitar tab input option if you’d rather the 0 and 1 keys
simply move you the same distance as the currently selected note value on the Keypad, unless
there’s an existing note between the current caret position and the next, in which case that note
will be selected.
Notes out of range

When copying music between staves – e.g. from a 6-string guitar tab staff to a 4-string bass guitar
tab staff, or from a notation staff to a guitar tab staff – if the music contains chords with many
notes, G7 may not be able to correctly assign all the notes of the chord on the tab staff, in which
case a red question mark (?) will appear below the tab staff, to show you that you’ll need to check
this chord for yourself.
Guitar tab fingering options

When G7 creates tab for you – for example, when you copy from a notation staff to a tab staff, or
copy from one tab staff to another with a different tuning, when you play in from a MIDI key-
board or guitar in step time or Flexi-time, or when you import a MIDI file – it automatically tries
to produce the most playable fingering.
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The Notes > Guitar Tab Fingering Options dialog allows you to spec-
ify the preferred range of frets that you would like G7 to use when it
calculates fingerings. You can specify the lowest and highest frets that
G7 should attempt to use, whether or not it should try and use open
strings where possible, and the largest number of frets over which you
can stretch when playing chords.
Note that these options are not obeyed in all cases; they are merely
recommendations. For example, if you switch off the Prefer to use
open strings option but then G7 needs to create a note that can only
be played using an open string, G7 will finger that note as an open
string rather than not write it at all.
Note that changes you make in this dialog are not retrospectively applied – in other words, G7 will
not rewrite all the existing tab in your score if you make a change in this dialog. If you want to
apply new settings to existing tab, you need to use the Notes > Reset Tab Fingering function (see
below).
Resetting tab fingering

You can reset the fingering of a tab staff to your preferred ranges at any time. Simply select the
passage in which you want the fingering reset and choose Notes > Reset Tab Fingering.
For example, if you decide that a particular passage would be more comfortably played around the
fifth fret rather than at the nut, you could set new preferences in the Notes > Guitar Tab Fingering
Options dialog, then apply those preferences to that passage by choosing Notes > Reset Tab Fin-
gering.
When does G7 automatically reset tab fingering?

Generally speaking, fingering is retained if you are copying within the same staff, or to another
staff with the same tuning. If you copy music to a notation staff or to a tab staff with a different
tuning, G7 will recalculate the fingering for you based on the settings in the Notes > Guitar Tab
Fingering Options dialog.
Normally, G7 will not retain fingering information when notes are copied from a tab staff to a
notation staff (because that fingering information would be useless if you were then to copy the
same music to, say, a bass guitar tab staff, or a guitar tab staff using a different tuning). However, in
the specific case of scores which consist of a notation and tab staff only (i.e. different representa-
tions of the same music), it is useful to retain the fingering information when copying between
these staves. In this case, you should switch on the Remember fingering when copying to a
notation staff option in the Notes > Guitar Tab Fingering Options dialog.
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Text
Text
Text is used for many purposes in printed music. It’s used to tell you what lyrics to sing, how fast
to play, what techniques to use – in short, it tells you pretty much everything except the notes!
G7 has a wide range of built-in types of text or ‘text styles’, each of which has its own specific pur-
pose, and most of which look quite different. All of the available text styles can be found in the
Create > Text submenu. We won’t examine all of them in detail, but we will take a look at each of
the more useful styles in turn.
But first, let’s discuss how you create, edit and manipulate text in G7.
Creating text fast

There are five quick ways to create text:
* Preferably, first select a note near where you want the text to appear, then type the keyboard
shortcuts Ctrl+E or XE, Ctrl+T or XT and Ctrl+L or XL to get the three most common text styles,
namely Expression, Technique and Lyrics.
* Other text styles with shortcuts are: Lyrics verse 2 (shortcut Ctrl+Alt+L or zXL); Chord sym-
bols (Ctrl+K or XK for ‘kord’); and Tempo (Ctrl+Alt+T or zXT).
* If you have a note or other object selected, G7 will automatically create the text at that point in
the score; if you have nothing selected, the mouse pointer will change color to show that it ‘con-
tains’ an object, and you can click in the score to place the text.
* For standard words like cresc., use the menus of useful words – see Word menus below
* If the same text is used over and over again, just copy it with Alt+click or z-click
* You can copy text such as lyrics to the clipboard and then paste it elsewhere in the same score,
into another score, or even to/from another program – see Copying lines of text and text
between programs below
* You can also ‘copy’ the caret itself to start a new piece of text. Find some text on the screen in
the style you require, double-click it to make the caret appear, then Alt+click or z-click some-
where else to start some new text in the same style.
Word menus
To save you time, G7 has built-in menus of useful words to type when creating text. Each text
style has its own appropriate word menu. For instance, Expression produces a menu of dynamics
(etc.), and Chord symbols gives various bits from which you can make up any chord symbol.
To obtain the word menu, simply right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) while creating or
editing text.
Text editing
The text editing keys are similar to other programs, plus a few extra keys. The main ones are as
follows:
* To edit an existing text object, double-click it, or hit Return (on the main keyboard)
* To stop editing text, hit Esc
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* To select all text in the current text object, type Ctrl+A or XA
* For a new line while editing, hit Return (on the main keyboard)
* To make text bold/non-bold, click B (shortcut Ctrl+B or XB) in the Properties window. This
(and italic/underlining) affects text you are about to type, a chunk of text you have selected, or
the whole text object (or text objects) if it’s selected
* To make text italic/non-italic, click I (shortcut Ctrl+I or XI) in the Properties window
* To make text underlined/non-underlined, click U (shortcut Ctrl+U or XU) in the Properties
window. Underlining text is very rare in music.
* To change the point size of text, change the value in the Properties window.
You can also change the formatting of text (such as bold or italic) after you have created it: simply
select the text and change the options in the Properties window.
Fonts
The Format > Fonts dialog allows you to quickly change the
appearance of your score by changing the fonts used for text
(such as the title, lyrics, technique instructions, etc.), the music
itself (e.g. the notes, clefs, and so on), and the music text
instructions (e.g. dynamics such as mf).
Unless you imported a different house style when first creating
your score, most of the text in your score will appear in the
Times font, which is very clear but not particularly exciting. By
choosing a new Default Text Font in the Format > Fonts dialog
you can quickly change the appearance of your score; some
common fonts you might like to try are Arial (or Helvetica),
MS Comic Sans, Tahoma, or G7’s own handwritten text font, Inkpen2 Script.
G7 supports two music fonts: Opus, which is a traditional engraved font, and Inkpen2, which is a
handwritten music font that emulates the look of (surprisingly enough) an inkpen. To switch
between these two fonts, just choose the desired font from the Music Fonts list in the Format >
Fonts dialog.
Similarly, G7 supports two music text fonts: Opus Text (which looks best when using Opus as the
music font), and Inkpen2 Text (which goes best with Inkpen2 as the music font). To change this
font, choose the appropriate font from the Music Text Font list. If you want to make the change
retrospectively to existing text in your score (e.g. if you’ve already entered dynamics and want
them to use your newly-chosen font), switch on the Reapply to score option before clicking OK.
Staff and system text

The difference between staff and system text is simple: staff text applies only to a single staff, and
system text applies to all staves in the score.
For example, a playing instruction such as “let ring” only applies to a single instrument (so is staff
text), while a change in tempo applies to all the instruments that are playing (and is hence system
text).
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Expression
This text style is for writing dynamics (loudness indications) and other expressive instructions to
players, e.g. legato, lively, marcato. These are written in italics.
Dynamics such as mf are special bold italic characters which use a special font, normally Opus
Text. You can create these characters from the word menu (Control-click or right-click), or by
holding down Ctrl or X and typing the dynamic, e.g. Ctrl+MF or XMF to produce mf.
All common expression markings can be created quickly from the word menu, to save you typing
them.
Although nearly all dynamics you create in your score are played back automatically, note that the
words cresc. and dim. do not play back – if you need them to, create hairpins as appropriate and
hide them (b Lines).
Technique
This is for writing technical instructions which are not normally written in italics, e.g. mute, trem-
olo, let ring, A.H., etc.
Metronome mark
Metronome marks look something like q = 72, and are often accompanied by a tempo marking
(see Tempo below). To write a metronome mark:
* Select an object (e.g. a note or rest) in your score where you want the metronome mark to go,
normally the first note of a bar, and choose Create > Text > Metronome mark; a flashing caret
appears.
* Write notes in metronome marks by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Mac) to get
the word menu. You can alternatively use the Ctrl or X key in conjunction with the 1–6 keys on
the numeric keypad.
* You can then type = 60 or whatever in the normal way. Hit space on either side of the = sign.
Metric modulations
Metric modulations are used to illustrate the relationship between note values in different tempos,
for example:
Metric modulations are also frequently used to show a ‘swing’ feel, e.g.
Use the Metronome mark text style for metric modulations. To input beamed notes or triplets in
text, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) to display the word menu containing the vari-
ous symbols available. For instance, to get two beamed eighth notes (quavers), use a beamed
eighth note followed by a quarter note (crotchet), which will appear as the final eighth note. To
get a triplet quarter note plus eighth note, type the notes as normal, then add the triplet bracket
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separately: create another text object, choose the tuplet bracket from the word menu, hit Esc to
stop editing text, then drag the bracket into place using the mouse.
Tempo
Tempo text usually appears at the start of the score, e.g. Fast, and is often accompanied by a met-
ronome mark (see above).
G7 knows the meaning of a wide variety of tempo markings and will play them back even if you
don’t create a metronome mark. As usual, right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Mac)
while creating Tempo text gives a menu of useful words.
To create rits. and accels., we recommend you don’t type them as text, but use rit./accel. lines
instead (b Lines), as these play back. Note that A tempo and Tempo I don’t play back, so create a
metronome mark (which you can hide if you want) to revert to the original tempo.
In large scores, text in the Tempo and Metronome mark styles automatically appears not just at
the top, but duplicated over a lower down instrument as well. The two copies mimic each other
whenever you edit one of them – for instance, if you edit one piece of tempo text, both will
change simultaneously.
However, each piece of text can be dragged up and down or deleted independently. This is useful
to avoid collisions with a high note above the top staff which does not occur lower down the score.
To drag or delete both pieces of text together, do it to the top one. To delete one of the lower pieces
of text, simply select it and hit Delete.
Lyrics and Chord symbol

These text styles are a bit special – see Working with lyrics and chords on page 54.
Title, Subtitle, Composer, Lyricist, Dedication

By default, these text styles are left-, center- or right-aligned on the page, which means you can
only drag text in these styles up and down, not left or right.
You can put titles above any system in your score, not just at the start – you might want a new title
at the start of a new song, say – though if you do this it is best to put a system or page break at the
end of the previous system to keep the sections separated.
Fingering
G7 includes special text styles for both left-hand fingering (e.g. barre symbols) and right-hand fin-
gering (e.g. the p i m a notation used in classical guitar music).
To create left-hand fingering, choose Create > Text > Other staff text > Fingering. Right-click (Win-
dows) or Control-click (Mac) to see the word menu, which includes Roman numerals. (If you
need to draw a line to show how far the fingering persists, use the bracket with a hook from the
Create > Line dialog.)
To create right-hand fingering, choose Create > Text > Other staff text > Guitar fingering (p i m a).
Again, the word menu contains all the useful numbers and letters required for fingering. Hitting
space advances to the next note.
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To create string indicators (which are normally numbers inside circles), use the pre-defined lines –
see Lines on page 113.
Small text and Boxed text

These are for other technique-like instructions. Boxed text is useful for important instructions
such as changes of instrument.
Copyright
A copyright line is normally written on the first page of a score. This text style (choose Create >
Text > Other system text > Copyright) goes at the bottom of the page, centered, and is extracted
into all parts. The © symbol is available from the word menu.
You should create the text on the first bar of the score – though it will appear at the bottom of the
page, it will in fact be attached to the first bar, which will ensure it always remains on the first page
even if the score reformats.
Plain text
To create plain text in your score, for example to type miscellaneous performance instructions or
blocks of lyrics, use Create > Text > Other Staff Text > Plain text.
Roman numerals
To type roman numerals to, say, indicate the position of a capo or barré, simply use the normal
text letters I, V and X.
Selecting a line of text

To select all text in the same style along a staff, e.g. a line of lyrics, select a single text item on the
staff and then choose Edit > Select > Select More (type Ctrl+Shift+A or xXA). This allows you to:
* move all the items together with the mouse or arrow keys; or
* copy the text to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere in the score, or into another program (see
below).
Copying lines of text and text between programs

You can copy text objects in G7 in a variety of ways:
* within the same score or different scores, either using Alt+click or z-click or using Edit > Copy
and Edit > Paste – the latter method is especially useful with lyrics
* into another program (e.g. Microsoft Word): simply select the text to be copied, use Edit > Copy
(type Ctrl+C or XC) to copy it to the clipboard, switch to the other program, and use Edit > Paste
(type Ctrl+V or XV) to paste the text.
If you copy several text objects into another program at once, they will be pasted one after
another, with a space in between each; for lyrics, separate syllables of the same word are pasted
with hyphens in between. Note that when text is copied into another program, it is copied as plain
text, so dynamics and notes in metronome mark will not appear as such when pasted into, say, a
Word document.
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Text
To copy text into G7 from other programs:
* Select the text and copy it to the clipboard with Edit > Copy (shortcut normally Ctrl+C or XC)
* Switch to G7 and create a suitable text caret, e.g. select a note and type Ctrl+T or XT for Tech-
nique text
* Choose Edit > Paste (shortcut Ctrl+V or XV) to paste the text.
Pasting lyrics into G7 from other programs is slightly different – see Working with lyrics and
chords on page 54.
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Time signatures
Time signatures
Creating time signatures
To create a time signature at the start of your score, make sure that nothing is selected (hit Esc),
then choose Create > Time Signature (shortcut T), select the time signature you want and click
OK. The mouse pointer turns blue to show that it ‘contains’ an object – click at the start of the
score to place the initial time signature.
Pick-up (upbeat) bars

If your score starts with a pick-up (upbeat) bar, it’s easiest to specify this at the same time as creat-
ing the initial time signature. Click Start with bar of length in the Create > Time Signature dialog,
and choose the length of the bar from the list, or type it on the numeric keypad (with Num Lock
on). You can choose more than one note value if you want a pick-up (upbeat) bar with a peculiar
length such as a half note (minim) and a eighth note (quaver).
You will notice that pick-up (upbeat) bars at first contain a whole bar rest; create a rest of the cor-
rect length in the pick-up bar to make it look correct.
Should you forget to create a pick-up bar at this stage, you can create one simply enough later on:
for example, to create a pick-up bar one quarter note (crotchet) in length, just create a 1/4 time
signature at the very start of the score, input the pick-up note, then delete the time signature,
answering No when asked if you want the following bars rewritten.
Rebarring music
If you put a time signature into some existing music, G7 asks if you want to rewrite the following
music in the new time signature. If you do so, G7 splits the existing music up into new bar-
lengths, with ties across barlines where necessary.
Note that G7 only rebars the music up to the next time signature change in your score, if there is
one. This is very useful when you want to change the barring of a few bars in the middle of the
score. Put a copy of the prevailing time signature at the beginning of the bar following the passage
you want to rebar, and then put the new time signature at the beginning of the passage to be
changed. Click Yes when G7 asks if you want the following music rewritten.
In the unlikely event that you have copied some bars into a score which don’t match the prevail-
ing time signature and you would like to rebar them accordingly, select the time signature and
delete it. When asked if the bars following should be rewritten, click No, then reinsert the same
time signature, and this time when asked if the bars following should be rewritten, click Yes.
Cautionary time signatures

Allow cautionary allows a cautionary time signature to appear at the end of the preceding system
if the time signature is being put (or subsequently ends up) at the end of a system. You’d normally
want to switch off this box if putting a time signature at the start of a new song within a larger
score. (The same goes for cautionary key signatures and clefs.)
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Time signatures
Complex time signatures
To create a time signature other than the most common ones illustrated on the Create > Time Sig-
nature dialog, click Other and pick the numbers you want from the lists provided.
If you want the groups shown as an additive time signature, such as 3+2+2/8, simply type 3+2+2
into the box for the top of the time signature instead of picking a number from the list.
Modifying time signatures

You can copy and delete time signatures like other objects. You can also drag time signatures left
and right to move them – even to quite silly places. We don’t recommend you drag time signatures
out of the bar they belong to.
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Triplets and other tuplets
Triplets and other tuplets

‘Tuplets’ are rhythms like triplets, which are played at some fraction of their normal speed. (Tuplet
is not a nice word, though alternatives like ‘irrational rhythm’ aren’t too terrific either. Opinion is
divided as to whether ‘tuplet’ rhymes with ‘duplet’ or with ‘couplet’.)
Creating tuplets
* Input or select the first note (only) of the tuplet, which must be of the unit length of the tuplet.
For instance, if you want a triplet of three quarter notes (crotchets), the first note you input
must be a quarter note (crotchet).
* Type Ctrl+3 or X3 for a triplet – which, let’s face it, is what you’re probably after – or Ctrl+2–9 or
X2–9 for anything from a duplet to a nontuplet (which means a 9-tuplet, rather than some-
thing which isn’t a tuplet)
* The tuplet will appear, with the correct number of rests. Add the other notes in the normal way.
Moving tuplets
If you disagree with where G7 puts the tuplet by default, you can flip it to the other side of the
notes by selecting the number (or bracket) and choosing Edit > Flip (shortcut X).
You can also move the whole tuplet up and down by dragging the number (or the middle of the
bracket if there is no number) or using the arrow keys. Note that you shouldn’t try to drag a tuplet
to the other side of the notes – use Edit > Flip (shortcut X) instead.
You can adjust the angle of the bracket and number by dragging either tip of the bracket.
Copying tuplets
When copying passages containing tuplets, the only thing you can’t copy is part of a tuplet, such as
just the first note of a tuplet, as that would produce a chunk of fractional rhythm which wouldn’t
make much sense. If you get an unexpected warning that you’re copying part of a tuplet, make
sure you’ve selected the tuplet number or bracket as well as the notes within it.
Deleting tuplets
To delete a tuplet, select the number or bracket and hit Delete. This deletes not only the number
and bracket, but also the notes. This is because without the tuplet, the notes would no longer add
up.
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Tunings and Staff Types

G7 has more than 20 alternative guitar tunings built-in (not to mention half a dozen banjo tun-
ings, 11 dobro tunings, two sitar tunings and several lute tunings!), but despite this comprehensive
collection, you can also create your own.
Changing the tuning of an instrument

To change the tuning used by a staff in your score, select a bar in that staff so that it is surrounded
by a blue box, then choose the new tuning from the Tuning / Staff type list in the Properties win-
dow (choose Window > Properties or type Ctrl+Alt+P or zXP to show the Properties window if
it’s not visible).
What is a staff type?

A staff type is a collection of settings for a particular staff in your score, including things like
whether it’s a tab, notation or percussion staff, how many strings or staff lines it should have,
whether clefs, key signatures and so on should be displayed, and determining the behaviour of
notes and rests when entered onto that staff.
Most importantly, it’s the staff type where you determine how the strings in your tab staff are
tuned.
Each instrument that you create has a default staff type which G7 chooses for you automatically –
for example, when you create an electric guitar tab staff, G7 automatically chooses the default
Guitar tab (standard tuning, no rhythms) staff type – but you can always change the instrument
to use a different staff type, edit the staff type, or even create an entirely new staff type.
Note that changes you make to existing tunings or new tunings you create will only be available in
the score in which you make those changes.
Creating a new tuning

If the tuning you’re looking for isn’t built into G7, you can easily modify one of the existing ones
or create one from scratch using the Format > Others > Tunings and Staff Types dialog.
* Select a bar in the staff whose tuning you want to change so that it is surrounded by a blue box
* Choose Format > Others > Tunings and Staff Types; a dialog will appear, with the staff type cur-
rently used by that staff already chosen for you
* Click Edit (if you want to edit the existing staff type) or New (to create a new staff type based on
the existing one), either of which will bring up this dialog:
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* To change the tuning of a string, click the string in the large window at the top of the dialog,
then choose the new pitch from the drop-down Pitch menu underneath.
You can specify whether the note should be spelled as a sharp or a flat (occasionally required in
unusual tunings) by selecting the appropriate radio button.
* If you need to change the number of strings, click the General tab and change the number of
strings, then switch back to the Tab page to adjust their tunings.
* If you’re creating a new tuning (rather than editing an existing one), give your staff type a suit-
able name on the General page of the dialog.
* When you’re done, click OK to close the dialog.
To use a new tuning that you’ve just created, follow the procedure in Changing the tuning of an
instrument above.
Other staff type options

You won’t generally need to change any of the other options associated with staff types, but just in
case, let’s quickly examine them. The Staff Type dialog always has two tabs (General and Notes
and Rests), and will have a third if you edit a Percussion or Tab staff type. The options on each
page are as follows:
* General page:
% Name, obviously enough, is the name of the staff type
% Number of staff lines allows you to choose any number of staff lines (or strings on a tab
staff)
% Barline half-height (1/32 spaces) allows you to change the height of barlines in a particular
staff. Note that barlines originate in the middle of the staff, so if you set this parameter to, say,
32 (the default is 64), the barlines will touch the second and fourth staff lines.
% Staff line separation (1/32 spaces) allows you to change the distance between staff lines,
and thus the height of the staff. Note, however, that changing this parameter does not make
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other objects larger or smaller to match the new staff height, so there’s no reason to change
this unless you’re after a particularly strange effect.
% Bracket controls whether brackets and/or braces are drawn at the beginning of the staff
% Initial barline determines whether the initial barline is drawn at the start of each system.
Note that you cannot switch on an initial barline for a system consisting of only one staff.
% Initial clef refers to the clef at the start of each system, not just the initial clef at the very start
of the staff
% Barlines controls whether or not barlines are drawn in that staff
% Key signatures toggles whether key signatures are shown on the staff
% Used for Ossias is a special option which is only switched on for the No lines (hidden) staff
type
% Used as default staff is a special option which is only switched on for the 5 lines staff type.
* Notes and Rests page:
% Rhythms (stems, beams, ties etc.) controls stems, flags, and rhythm dots. It’s generally only
switched off for tab staff types where rhythms are not indicated (i.e. where there’s usually an
accompanying notation staff to show the rhythms).
% Bar rests can be switched off if you don’t want bar rests to appear in a particular staff. This
option is usually switched off if Rhythms is also switched off.
% Articulations always above the staff is useful for vocal and single-line percussion staves;
positioning articulations above the staff avoids collisions with e.g. lyrics, which have to go
below the staff
% Beams always horizontal forces all beams to be level. This is especially useful in percussion
music, and is also often used in some styles of tab notation that depict rhythms with stems
and beams outside the staff.
% Leger lines determines whether leger lines will appear when notes go above or below the
staff. This is usually switched on.
% The Stem Lengths options allow you to choose whether stems should have normal stem
lengths (the default setting for most staff types), or whether they should extend outside the
staff (which is useful for tab staff types where rhythms are shown).
If Extend stems outside staff is switched on, you can choose whether stems should be
drawn entirely outside the staff (i.e. cut off above or below, depending on stem direction) by
switching on Only draw stems beyond extra space; this look is commonly used in lute tab
and in some rhythmic guitar tab.
Allow space for n beams determines how far outside the staff stems should be extended; by
default, enough space is left for a note with three beams, i.e. a 32nd note (or demisemiqua-
ver). The Extra space to allow option is most useful for determining the distance between
the top staff line and the bottom of the stem above or below the staff if Only draw stems
beyond extra space is switched on.
% The Stem Directions options determine whether stems should point down for notes on the
mid-line (the conventional behaviour for most staff types), point up for notes on the mid-line
(conventional for single-line percussion staves), whether all voice 1 stems should point down
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(conventional for banjo tab), or whether all voice 1 stems should point up (conventional for
most guitar and lute tab).
One subtlety of the options that refer to voice 1 is that the settings are only respected when no
other voices are present. If you set all voice 1 stems to point downwards and introduce a second
voice (which always has downward pointing stems), the voice 1 stems will point upwards.
* Percussion page: these options are described in detail in Drum mapping on page 82
* Tab page:
% The tuning options are described in What is a staff type? on page 175
% The Frets options determine whether the tab staff should Use numbers (conventional for
guitar tab) or Use letters (conventional for most lute tablature styles), be drawn Between
staff lines or not (on the lines is conventional for guitar tab, between the lines is conven-
tional for lute tablature), whether the numbers or letters should have a white background
behind them (useful for tab staff types which depict rhythm), and whether stems should be
drawn between notes in chords (by default, stems extend through all the notes of a chord,
but in some rhythmic tab styles the stem is only drawn as far as the outside – i.e. top or bot-
tom depending on stem direction – note of the chord).
White out around tab notes

Different publishers have different conventions for whether numbers in tab staves sit directly on
the staff lines or whether they are cushioned by a little white space (so that the staff line does not
go through the number), and which you prefer tends to depend on what you are used to reading.
Naturally, G7 allows you to specify this yourself by editing the settings for individual staff types in
the Format > Others > Tunings and Staff Types dialog.
G7’s default settings are as follows:
* For tab staff types that show rhythms where stems are drawn in the staff, the White out around
notes option is switched on; this makes the stems clearer.
* For tab staff types that show rhythms where stems are drawn entirely outside the staff, and for
tab staff types that don’t show rhythms, the White out around notes option is switched off.
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Voices
Voices
In tab, you rarely need to have different simultaneous rhythms; but in keyboard, percussion and
classical guitar music it’s common to have two or even sometimes three independent rhythms on
the same staff at the same time. For cases like these, you need to use ‘voices’.
What voices are

Music usually has a single voice (or ‘layer’) of notes, chords and rests on each staff. The stems
point up or down according to the pitch of the note:
Just one voice
When music is in two voices, however, the staff has two independent streams of music which can
have different rhythms. The two voices are distinguished by drawing the stems upwards in ‘voice
1’ and downwards in ‘voice 2’:
Voice 1
Voice 2
Notice that there are also two different sets of rests, the higher ones belonging to voice 1 and the
lower ones to voice 2. Usually, for simplicity, people only write one rest where two identical ones
occur in both voices.
In guitar music and occasionally elsewhere, you can also have a third voice (with stems up again)
and even, very rarely, a fourth (with stems down again).
Using voices
G7 allows four independent voices per staff, which are color-coded: voice 1 is blue, voice 2 is
green, voice 3 is orange and voice 4 is purple.
You can change the voice of the selected object, or, if you are creating new objects, choose the
voice of a new object, by clicking the numbered buttons at the bottom of the Keypad. You can also
change the voice of an object via the Edit > Voice submenu. The shortcuts for changing voice are
Alt+1/2/3/4 or z1/2/3/4, with Alt+5 or z5 for putting objects such as dynamics into all voices.
When you create an object with the mouse, the pointer shows the current voice color, and when
you’re inputting notes, the caret (the vertical line that shows where the next note will be created)
shows the right color too.
Notes, chords, rests, accidentals, articulations, grace notes, tuplets, and some lines (e.g. trills, hair-
pins) and text (e.g. dynamics) are in specific voices, and so you should choose the correct voice
before you create these objects, primarily to ensure that they play back correctly. These objects can
also be in multiple voices, e.g. a dynamic above the staff might apply to all voices (rather than just
voice 1). When selected, these objects are in the color of their voice, or if they’re in all voices,
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Voices
they’ll be a lovely brown color (because brown is what you get if you mix blue, green, yellow and
purple together).
Other objects such as clefs, key signatures, system text (e.g. title, tempo markings) and system
lines (e.g. rit./accel. lines, 1st- and 2nd-endings) are not voice-specific and so are always light blue
(the color for system objects) when selected. It doesn’t matter which voice is chosen when you
create these objects.
Starting off an extra voice of notes

To start off an extra voice with the computer keyboard, or during step-time input:
* Select a note, rest or other object (such as text or a line) at the point where you want the new
voice to start
* Type N followed by Alt+2 or z2 for voice 2; the caret goes green
* Input the first voice 2 note or rest as normal
* The note/rest is created in voice 2, and the rest of the bar is filled with the appropriate rests in
voice 2
* Now you can continue adding notes in voice 2 as normal.
To start off an extra voice with the mouse:
* With nothing in your score selected, choose the note value and any other note properties from
the keypad, then click the desired voice button at the bottom of the Keypad (or type Alt+2/3/4
or z2/3/4)
* Click in the score where you want the new voice to begin; G7 inputs the note or rest, and fills up
the rest of the bar with rests in the new voice.
* Now you can continue to input notes in the new voice as normal.
To start off Flexi-time recording in an extra voice, choose the desired voice in the Notes > Flexi-
time Options dialog (shortcut Ctrl+Shift+O or xXO). If the voice already exists in the score, you
can just select a rest in that voice and then start Flexi-time as normal. Note that Flexi-time can also
automatically record in multiple voices, working out the best notation possible as you play –
b Flexi-time™.
Bars partially in two voices

If you don’t want two voices right to the end of a bar, Delete any unwanted rests at the end, to
hide them.
If you want voice 2 to start part-way through a bar that already contains notes in another voice,
simply input the voice 2 note at the point where you want it to start; G7 will pad out the bar on
either side of the note with the appropriate rests.
In either case, the notes in voice 1 will revert to having stems both up and down where you
deleted the rests.
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Voices
Deleting voice 2
You can remove parts of bars of voice 2 by deleting rests, as described above. However, if you want
to delete a whole bar of voice 2, you should just put a bar rest into voice 2 from the second keypad
layout, then Delete it.
Merging voices
If you want to merge all the notes in a passage in multiple voices into a single voice, simply select
the passage and choose the desired voice using the buttons at the bottom of the Keypad window
(shortcut Alt+1/2/3/4 or z1/2/3/4):
Before After
Voices 3 and 4
Add voices 3 and 4 just like voice 2. If you want three voices, you can use voices 1+2+3 or 1+2+4
depending on the stem directions you want the voices to have. The stems of voices 1 and 3 point
upwards, and those of voices 2 and 4 point downwards.
Swapping voices
If you start creating music into the wrong voice, then instead of scrapping it and starting again you
can just select the music as a passage and swap the voices round.
The various options are in Edit > Voice. You’re only likely to want to swap voices 1 and 2, for
which you can type the shortcut Shift-V.
Copying voices
To copy a single voice from a staff containing notes in more than one voice, select the passage you
want to copy and use, say, Edit > Filter > Voice 2 to filter only the notes in voice 2. Now you can
Alt+click or z-click them into another staff as normal.
G7 copies notes and rests into the same voice as the voice they came from. However, if you want to copy
from one voice to another...
Copying from one voice to another

Do this by swapping voices. For instance, suppose you want to copy some voice 1 notes into voice
2 elsewhere:
* Swap voices 1 and 2 in the original you’re copying, so that the notes you’re copying end up in
voice 2. Do this by selecting the music as a passage and choosing Edit > Voice > Swap 1 and 2
(shortcut Shift-V)
* Select the voice 2 notes to be copied by selecting a passage and filtering to get voice 2, as
described in Copying voices above
* Copy the notes, which will end up in voice 2 as that’s the voice they came from
* Swap voices 1 and 2 back again in the original passage.
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Voices
Rests
When rests appear in multiple voices, G7 automatically draws them above or below their normal
positions so it’s clear which voice they belong to. You can drag the rests up or down further or
move them with the arrow keys if they start getting in the way of other voices.
Hiding voices
In some situations you might wish to hide notes in one or more voices, e.g. if you want your score
only to show a written tune but want it, say, to play back with hidden harmonies. To do this, add
the harmonies in a different voice than the melody, then use filters (see Filters on page 89) to
select all the notes in the extra voice(s), and choose Edit > Hide or Show > Hide (shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+H or xXH) to hide them.
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Index
1st- and 2nd-ending lines .......................114, 147 bend .....................................................................65
8va lines .............................................................114 bend and release ................................................66
BMP files ...........................................................101
A boxed text .........................................................170
a tempo ..............................................................169 breaks ...................................................................73
accel. ...................................................................114 page break ...................................................73
accidentals removing .....................................................73
defined .........................................................33 system break ...............................................73
accompaniments viewing ........................................................73
generating automatically ..........................58
anti-aliasing ........................................................80 C
arpeggio .............................................................114 capos ....................................................................69
articulations chord diagrams .......................................22, 54, 74
defined .........................................................16 copying ........................................................76
ASCII tab files .....................................................70 creating ........................................................75
exporting .....................................................71 deleting ........................................................76
importing .....................................................70 editing ..........................................................75
audio CDs libraries ........................................................76
creating ......................................................124 maximum stretch ......................................76
audio files ..........................................................124 options .........................................................76
auto-save .............................................................85 playing back ................................................76
chord symbols ......................................22, 54, 166
B creating ........................................................57
backups ................................................................85 playing back ................................................58
bar rests .............................................................146 clefs ......................................................................77
barlines changing ......................................................77
repeat .........................................................147 deleting ........................................................77
bars hiding at the start of the system ..............77
creating ..................................................19, 46 hiding cautionaries ....................................77
deleting ..................................................19, 47 moving .........................................................77
partially in two voices .............................180 click ....................................................................141
beams ...................................................................72 coda ....................................................................148
across rests and barlines ...........................72 colored objects ....................................................78
angles ...........................................................72 printing ......................................................144
beam groups ...............................................72 copying ................................................................46
editing ..........................................................72 chord diagrams ...........................................76
reversing ......................................................72 graphics .......................................................97
183
Index
copyright ........................................................... 170 EPS files ............................................................. 100

Create menu exporting
Chord Diagram .......................................... 74 ASCII tab files ............................................ 71
Clef ............................................................... 77 BMP files ................................................... 101
Key Signature .......................................... 110 EMF files ................................................... 100
Line ............................................................ 113 EPS files .................................................... 100
Text ............................................................ 166 graphics files ............................................... 98
creating lyrics ............................................................ 56
bars .............................................................. 19 MIDI files .................................................. 124
chord symbols ............................................ 57 PICT files ................................................... 101
drums .......................................................... 82 Sibelius 2 files ............................................ 87
instruments .......................................... 19, 40 Expression text ................................................ 168
key signatures .......................................... 110
lines ............................................... 50, 51, 113 F
credits ................................................................ 169 File menu
New ............................................................. 39
D Open ........................................................ 6, 31
D.C. (da capo) .................................................. 147 Preferences ..................................... 29, 71, 85
D.S. (dal segno) ............................................... 148 Quick Start ................................................. 30
deleting ............................................................... 46 Quick Start dialog ..................................... 14
bars .............................................................. 19 Save As .............................................. 107, 124
breaks .......................................................... 73 Scan ........................................................... 149
chord diagrams .......................................... 76 Score Info ........................................... 87, 107
clefs .............................................................. 77 Score Info dialog ....................................... 87
graphics ....................................................... 97 files ....................................................................... 85
instruments ................................................ 19 ASCII tab .................................................... 70
diapasons .......................................................... 117 audio ......................................................... 124
drums .................................................................. 81 auto-save .................................................... 85
adding patterns .......................................... 45 backups ....................................................... 85
creating ....................................................... 82 BMP ........................................................... 101
dynamics EMF ........................................................... 100
defined ...................................................... 168 EPS ............................................................. 100
file formats ................................................. 86
E file size ........................................................ 85
Edit menu importing .................................................... 19
Copy ............................................................ 46 opening ....................................................... 31
Repeat ......................................................... 46 PDF files .................................................... 102
editing PICT files ................................................... 101
notes ............................................................ 44 saving .......................................................... 85
EMF files ........................................................... 100 sharing ........................................................ 85
Sibelius 2 files ............................................ 87
184
Index
fill boxes ..............................................................68 guitar frames ...................... see chord diagrams

filters ....................................................................89 Guitar Guide ...............................................15, 103
note filters ...................................................89 quitting ......................................................104
object filters ................................................89 guitar tab
using .............................................................89 bend .............................................................65
voice filters ..................................................89 bend and release ........................................66
fine .....................................................................148 changing tunings .....................................117
fingering ............................................................169 converting from notation ...................21, 52
resetting .....................................................165 converting to notation ..............................53
resetting automatically ...................165, 170 fill boxes ......................................................68
using text ...................................................169 fingering options ......................................164
Flexi-time ................................................18, 43, 90 grace note bends ........................................66
click when recording .................................91 inputting ....................................................164
Live Playback ........................................37, 91 pre-bend and release .................................66
options .........................................................92 pre-bends ....................................................66
fonts rhythm guitar .............................................68
changing ....................................................167 slides .............................................................66
Inkpen2 .....................................................167 special notations ........................................21
music ..........................................................167 transposing ..................................................60
Opus ...........................................................167 unison bend ................................................66
Format menu vibrato bar dip ............................................67
Fonts ..........................................................167 vibrato bar dive ..........................................67
formatting ...................................................23, 111 vibrato bar scoop ........................................67
FreeMIDI ...........................................................134 white out behind notes ...........................178
fretboard ..................................................15, 33, 36
arrows on ....................................................17 H
changing size ..............................................33 hairpins ..............................................................114
hollow circles on ........................................17 help
fretboard diagrams ............. see chord diagrams buttons drawn incorrectly ........................79
crashes when switching programs ........119
G Guitar Guide opens in Preview .............104
G7Music.net ......................................................107 no sound during playback ................15, 119
General MIDI ....................................................126 problems with MIDI input .....................120
graphics red question marks ..................................164
copying ........................................................97 setting the optimum screen resolution ..79
deleting ........................................................97 setting up MIDI devices ............................29
file size .........................................................97 hidden objects ............................................32, 105
importing .....................................................97 playing .......................................................105
graphics files printing ......................................................105
exporting .....................................................98 viewing ......................................................105
185
Index
I L
importing layout .......................................................... 23, 111
ASCII tab ..................................................... 70 lines ................................................................... 113
ASCII tab files ............................................ 70 8va ............................................................. 114
graphics ....................................................... 97 accel. .......................................................... 114
lyrics ............................................................ 55 arpeggio .................................................... 114
MIDI files .................................................. 121 creating ............................................... 50, 113
Inkpen2 ............................................................. 167 editing ....................................................... 115
input hairpins ..................................................... 114
basic ............................................................. 42 octave lines ............................................... 114
Fretboard .................................................... 16 over two or more systems ..................... 115
introduction ............................................... 42 pedaling .................................................... 114
Keypad ........................................................ 16 rit. .............................................................. 114
mouse .......................................................... 42 slurs ........................................................... 113
real-time ..................................................... 90 string indicators ....................................... 115
step-time ..................................................... 18 strum ......................................................... 114
tab .......................................................... 18, 44 trills ............................................................ 146
text ............................................................. 166 Live Playback ....................................... 37, 91, 123
installing lute tablature .................................................... 117
G7 for Mac .................................................. 11 diapasons .................................................. 117
G7 for Windows .......................................... 8 rhythms .................................................... 117
OMS or FreeMIDI ................................... 132 lyrics .............................................................. 22, 54
instruments block lyrics .................................................. 55
creating ................................................. 19, 40 exporting .................................................... 56
deleting ....................................................... 19 importing .................................................... 55
Internet publishing ......................................... 106 saving .......................................................... 56
on G7Music.net ....................................... 107 typing .......................................................... 54
on your own site ..................................... 107 verses ........................................................... 55
printing ..................................................... 108
M
K margins ............................................................. 142
key signatures .................................................. 110 menus .................................................................. 35
cautionary ................................................ 110 metric modulations ......................................... 168
creating ..................................................... 110 metronome click
deleting ..................................................... 110 in Flexi-time ............................................... 91
moving ...................................................... 110 in playback ............................................... 141
Keypad .......................................................... 14, 33 metronome marks
creating ..................................................... 168
186
Index
MIDI octave (8va) lines .............................................114

banks ..........................................................127 OMS ...................................................................134
channels ....................................................127 Opus ...................................................................167
defined .......................................................126
devices .......................................................118 P
for beginners .............................................126 page break ...........................................................73
input .............................................................84 deleting ........................................................73
messages ................................................92, 93 page margins .....................................................142
program numbers ....................................126 page size ....................................................111, 142
setup for Mac ............................................131 passages .........................................................20, 46
setup for Windows ..................................129 PDF files .............................................................102
MIDI files ...........................................................127 pedaling .............................................................114
cleaning up ...............................................123 percussion ...........................................................81
exporting ...................................................124 creating drum patterns .......................45, 81
importing ...................................................121 drum mapping ............................................82
Live Playback ......................................37, 123 PhotoScore Professional .................................149
Mixer ..............................................................15, 38 pick-up bars ......................................................172
mouse input ........................................................42 PICT files ............................................................101
multiple monitors ..............................................80 plain text ...........................................................170
music fonts ........................................................167 Play menu
Devices dialog .............................................29
N Live Playback ..............................................37
Navigator .......................................................14, 32 Performance dialog ....................................37
new score ................................................16, 39, 54 Playback Options .......................................38
note values playback .........................................................15, 36
defined .........................................................16 chord diagrams ...........................................76
noteheads ..........................................................146 chord symbols ............................................58
notes Live Playback ..............................................37
in text .........................................................168 of MIDI files ..............................................123
out of range ........................................50, 164 Performance dialog ....................................37
Notes menu setting up ..................................................118
Add Drum Patterns ..............................45, 81 specifying what to play .............................36
Guitar Tab Fingering Options ................165 tools ..............................................................36
Make Notes from Chord Symbols ...........58 trills ............................................................146
Transpose ..............................................46, 60 zoom level ...................................................38
preferences ....................................................29, 71
O default save location .................................85
objects display settings ...........................................79
defined .........................................................20 guitar tab fingering ..................................165
printing ......................................................143
187
Index
printing ................................................. 23, 60, 143 scanning ............................................................ 149

colored objects ......................................... 144 Scorch ................................................................ 106
from Scorch .............................................. 108 printing ..................................................... 108
setting paper size ..................................... 143 toolbar ....................................................... 106
Properties .................................................... 15, 146 screen resolution ............................................... 79
segno ................................................................. 148
Q selections ...................................................... 20, 46
question marks ................................................ 164 Sibelius 2 ............................................................. 87
Quick Start dialog .............................................. 30 slides .................................................................... 66
QuickTime Music ............................................ 133 slurs ................................................................... 113
smoothing ........................................................... 80
R spacing
horizontal ................................................. 112
real-time input ................................................... 90
vertical ...................................................... 111
red notes ............................................................. 50
split point ............................................................ 93
registering ..................................................... 14, 28
staff size ..................................................... 111, 142
reinstalling .................................................... 10, 12
staff types .................................................. 146, 175
repeats ............................................................... 147
defined ...................................................... 175
1st- and 2nd-ending lines .............. 114, 147
options ...................................................... 176
D.C. ............................................................ 147
staves
D.S. ............................................................ 147
adding ......................................................... 40
da capo ...................................................... 147
step-time input .................................................. 18
dal segno ........................................... 147, 148
string indicators ............................................... 115
fine ............................................................. 148
strum ................................................................. 114
in MIDI files ............................................. 124
strum lines ........................................................ 114
repeat barlines ......................................... 147
subtitles ............................................................. 169
to coda ....................................................... 148
system
rests .................................................................... 182
defined ........................................................ 46
bar rests ..................................................... 146
text ............................................................. 167
rhythm guitar ..................................................... 68
system break ...................................................... 73
rit. ....................................................................... 114
deleting ....................................................... 73
Roman numerals ............................................. 170
S T
tab input ............................................... 18, 44, 164
saving .................................................................. 85
Technique text ................................................. 168
lyrics ............................................................ 56
Tempo text ....................................................... 169
Sibelius-compatible files ........................... 87
terminology .......................................................... 6
188
Index
text .....................................................................166 tuplets ................................................................174

bold ............................................................166 copying ......................................................174
boxed .........................................................170 creating ......................................................174
composer ...................................................169 defined .......................................................174
copying between programs ....................170 deleting ......................................................174
creating ................................................51, 166 in Flexi-time ...............................................93
creating notes in .......................................168 in imported MIDI files ..............................93
dedication ..................................................169 moving .......................................................174
editing ........................................................166 typography ............................................................6
expression .................................................168
italic ............................................................166 U
lyricist ........................................................169 uninstalling
lyrics .............................................................22 G7 for Mac ..................................................12
plain ...........................................................170 G7 for Windows .........................................10
Properties ..................................................146
roman numerals .......................................170 V
selecting .....................................................170
vibrato bar dip ....................................................67
underline ...................................................166
vibrato bar dive and return ..............................67
word menus ..............................................166
vibrato bar scoop ................................................67
textures ................................................................80
View menu
time signatures .................................................172
Smoothing ..................................................80
cautionary .................................................172
Textures .......................................................80
complex .....................................................173
Toolbar .........................................................34
creating ......................................................172
voices .................................................................179
modifying ..................................................173
3 and 4 .......................................................181
rebarring music ........................................172
copying ......................................................181
toolbar ..................................................................34
copying between ......................................181
playback controls .......................................36
defined .......................................................179
transparency .......................................................80
deleting voice 2 ........................................181
transposing ....................................................46, 60
hiding .........................................................182
guitar tab .....................................................60
merging .....................................................181
trills .....................................................................114
starting .......................................................180
intervals .....................................................146
starting a second voice ..............................50
tunings .........................................................21, 146
swapping ...................................................181
changing ............................................117, 175
using ...........................................................179
creating ......................................................175
W
WAV files ..........................................................124
189
Index
Window menu word menus ..................................................... 166

Fretboard .................................................... 33
Keypad ........................................................ 33 Z
Mixer ........................................................... 38 zoom .................................................................... 32
Navigator .................................................... 32 default level when opening files ............ 85
Properties ............................................ 34, 146 during playback ......................................... 38
Translucent Windows ............................... 80
190
License Agreement
License Agreement
By installing or using any component of the Software, or by registering the Product, you (an indi-
vidual or legal entity) agree with the Licensor to be bound by the terms of this License which will
govern your use of the Product. If you do not accept these terms you may within 14 days of pur-
chase return the Product, its packaging and documentation unused and intact to your supplier
together with dated proof of purchase for a full refund.
The Product is copyright © Sibelius Software Limited and its licensors 1987-2003.
1. DEFINITIONS
In this License the following words and expressions have the following meanings:
"Documentation": the G7 User Guide, Technical Help sheet, on-screen help and any other documentation relating to the Software supplied to you in any
form by the Licensor or with the Software.
"License": this agreement between you and the Licensor and, if permitted by the context, the conditional license granted to you in this agreement.
"Licensor": Sibelius Software Limited, an English company (registered no. 3338819) of The Old Toy Factory, 20-22 City North, Fonthill Road, Lon-
don N4 3HN, UK.
"Product": the Software and the Documentation.
"Software": G7, Sibelius Scorch, PhotoScore Lite, Acrobat Reader, QuickTime, Opus and Inkpen2 font families, example music files, installer, and
any other programs or files supplied to you on or with the G7 CD-ROM or download.
2. License
2.1 (1) The Licensor grants to you a non-exclusive non-transferable license to use the Software in accordance with the Documentation, subject to the
terms of this License and of any discount, offer or scheme which the Product may have been obtained under. You may install the Software on at most
two computers. Only you may use the Software. You may not use the Software on more than one computer simultaneously. Any further use is pro-
hibited.
(2) Title to the Product is not transferred to you. Ownership of the Product remains vested in the Licensor, subject to the rights granted to you under
this License. All other rights are reserved.
2.2 You may make one printout for your own use of any part of the Documentation provided in electronic form. You shall not make or permit any third
party to make any further copies of any part of the Product whether in eye or machine-readable form.
2.3 You shall not, and shall not cause or permit any third party to, translate, enhance, modify, alter, adapt or create derivative works based on the Product
or any part of it for any purpose (including without limitation for the purpose of error correction), or cause the whole or any part of the Product to
be combined with or incorporated into any other program, file or product for any purpose, except as expressly permitted by the Documentation.
2.4 You shall not, and shall not cause or permit any third party to, decompile, decode, disassemble or reverse engineer the Software in whole or in part
for any purpose.
2.5 You shall not, and shall not cause any third party to, translate, convert, decode or reverse engineer any file in any version of the G7 or Sibelius Scorch
formats (whether created by your copy of the Software or not), or modify any such file (except by using the Software in accordance with the Docu-
mentation), in whole or in part for any purpose.
2.6 In accordance with the Documentation and subject to compliance with Section 2.1, the Software's "Save as Scorch Web Page" feature and Sibelius
Scorch web browser plug-in may be used to publish music scores on the Internet or by means of CD-ROM, floppy disk or by other similar means;
provided, however, that you shall not and shall not permit any third party to, directly or indirectly, charge or receive any fee, payment or other con-
sideration for the viewing, playing, printing or other use via Sibelius Scorch or via the Internet of any file which is created by (or based on any file
created by) the Software, unless expressly permitted by the Licensor in writing.
2.7 The Product or any part of it must not be used to infringe any right of copyright or right of privacy, publicity or personality or any other right what-
soever of any other person or entity, including without limitation infringement of any such right by use of the Product in conjunction with any of the
scanning programs PhotoScore Lite, PhotoScore MIDI or PhotoScore Professional, or by use of the Product's Internet publishing capability.
3. Copyright
3.1 You acknowledge that copyright in the Product as a whole and in the components of the Product as between you and the Licensor belongs to the
Licensor or its licensees and is protected by copyright laws, national and international, and all other applicable laws. Further details of the ownership
of all copyright in the components of the Product are set out in the Product.
4. Liability of the Licensor

4.1 The Licensor warrants that the Product will be free from defects in materials and workmanship and perform substantially in accordance with the Doc-
umentation under normal use for a period of 90 days after the date of original purchase (the "Warranty Period"). If a defect in the Product shall occur
during the Warranty Period, the Product may be returned with dated proof of purchase to the Licensor who will at its sole discretion either return the
price paid or repair or replace it free of charge.
4.2 The Licensor shall not be liable for any claim arising from:
191
License Agreement
(1) any failure or malfunction resulting wholly or to any material extent from your negligence, operator error, use other than in accordance with the
Documentation or any other misuse or abuse of the Product;
(2) any loss of or corruption to any data, however caused, where such loss or corruption could have been avoided or corrected or substantially reduced
if you had taken and retained in a secure place appropriate backup copies;
(3) the decompilation or modification of the Software or its merger with any other program or any maintenance repair adjustment alteration or en-
hancement of the Software by any person other than the Licensor or its authorized agent;
(4) the failure by you to implement recommendations previously advised by the Licensor in respect of, or solutions for faults in, the Product;
(5) any loss or damage whatsoever resulting from any omissions or inaccuracies in any information or data contained in the Product.
(6) Except as otherwise expressly provided in Section 4.1, all conditions, warranties, terms representations and undertakings express or implied, stat-
utory or otherwise in respect of the Product are hereby expressly excluded.
(7) Except as expressly provided in Section 4.1, the Licensor shall have no liability to you for loss of profits, revenue or goodwill or any type of special,
indirect or consequential loss (including loss or damages suffered by you as a result of an action brought by a third party) whether such loss is caused
by the Licensor's breach of its contractual obligations hereunder or any negligence or other tortious act or omission.
(8) The Licensor's entire liability for breach of its covenants and warranties in this License and for any defect or errors in the Product shall (except as
expressly provided in Section 4.1) be limited to the price paid by you for the Product.
5.Termination
5.1 This License shall terminate automatically upon your destruction of the Product and deletion of all installations of the Software. In addition, the Li-
censor may elect to terminate this License in the event of a material breach by you of any condition of this License or of any of your representations,
warranties, covenants or obligations hereunder. Upon notification of such termination by the Licensor, you will immediately delete all copies of the
Software from your computer(s), destroy any other copies of the Product or any part thereof, and return the Product to the Licensor.
6.Miscellaneous
6.1 No failure to exercise and no delay in exercising on the part of the Licensor of any right, power or privilege arising hereunder shall operate as a waiver
thereof, nor shall any single or partial exercise of any right, power or privilege preclude any other or further exercise thereof or the exercise of any
other right, power or privilege. The rights and remedies of the Licensor in connection herewith are not exclusive of any rights or remedies provided
by law.
6.2 You may not distribute, loan, sub-license, rent, lease (including without limitation renting or leasing a computer on which the Product is installed) or
otherwise transfer the Product to any third party without the Licensor's prior written consent, which the Licensor may grant, condition or withhold
in the Licensor's sole discretion.
6.3 This License is intended by the parties hereto to be a final expression of their agreement with respect to the subject matter hereof and a complete and
exclusive statement of the terms of such agreement. This License supersedes any and all prior understandings, whether written or oral, between you
and the Licensor relating to the subject matter hereof.
6.4 (This section only applies if you are resident in the European Union:) This License shall be construed and governed by the laws of England, and both
parties agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
6.5 (This section only applies if you are not resident in the European Union:) This License shall be construed and enforced in accordance with and gov-
erned by the laws of the State of California. Any suit, action or proceeding arising out of or in any way related or connected to this License shall be
brought and maintained only in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, sitting in the City of San Francisco. Each party
irrevocably submits to the jurisdiction of such federal court over any such suit, action or proceeding. Each party knowingly, voluntarily and irrevocably
waives trial by jury in any suit, action or proceeding (including any counterclaim), whether at law or in equity, arising out of or in any way related or
connected to this License or the subject matter hereof.
(License v2.7, 28 Jan 2003)
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G7

G7 copyright © Sibelius Software Ltd and its licensors 1987–2003

What can G7 do for me?

About this User Guide

Basic terminology in this User Guide

Before you install

Installing G7 for Windows

Installing additional components

Installing G7 on two computers

Installing G7 for Mac

Installing additional components

Quick Start dialog

Look and feel

Starting a new score

Mouse input with the Keypad and Fretboard windows

Tab input on the computer keyboard

Notation input on the computer keyboard

Importing files from other programs

Learning a song with the Fretboard

Inputting versus editing

Adding and deleting bars

Adding and deleting instruments

Adding text, lines and other objects

Selections and passages

Converting notation to tab and vice versa

Tab styles and tunings

Special tab markings

Chord diagrams and chord symbols

Laying out your score

Sharing your music

About this tutorial

Running for the first time

The Devices dialog

Finding your way around

Toolbar Score view

Navigator Fretboard Keypad

Let’s just take a moment or two to explore the display.

Customizing the display

Fast-forward (shortcut 1) Pause (shortcut P) Tempo slider

Specifying what to play back

Zoom level during playback

Starting a new score

New score wizard

Your first score

Now we need to actually input some music. Read on!

Ways of inputting notes

Tab input using the computer keyboard or step-time

Advanced guitar markings

Selections and passages

Adding and deleting bars

Adding a second voice

Notes out of range

Converting notation to tab

Converting tab to notation

Changing the tuning of a tab staff

Working with lyrics and chords

Start a new score

G G7/F C/E C Am Em Dm7 G7 C

Multiple verses of lyrics

Importing lyrics from other programs

Adding guitar chord diagrams

Adding text chord symbols