Using the Keyboard panel - Sibelius Tutorial

- [Narrator] The Keyboard panel is a virtual piano keyboard that you can open on your screen as a tool for note input. To see the Keyboard panel, go to the View tab, to the Panels group, and choose Keyboard. And I'm going to move my keypad a little bit out of the way. You can also use the shortcut Control + Alt + B on Windows or Command + Option + B on Mac to toggle the Keyboard panel on and off. Now, one thing I'd like to mention about the Keyboard panel is that because of its visual display of the notes on the staff and on the keys of the piano keyboard, the Keyboard panel is a great teaching tool, as well as a good note input tool. It works wonderfully on overhead projectors in classrooms. Now, usually when you open the Keyboard panel, it will be docked to the main Score window by default at the bottom of the screen and all of its buttons will not be engaged or highlighted blue. If any of your panels buttons down here in this area are blue, go ahead and toggle them off for now. You can click on the Keyboard's title bar and drag it out of its docked position if you'd like to, you can also click on its Maximize and Minimize buttons, but those generally don't work all the time, so I typically like to just drag its title bar around. The Keyboard panel has three sizes that you can toggle between using its Change Size button, which is this button right here. So I'm going to click it once, and again, so there's its smallest size, that's medium, and large. You can also resize the panel if it's undocked, like mine is, by dragging its right or left side to the left or right. So I'm going to come over here, I'm going to get that arrow pointer, click and drag. On the Keyboard panel, middle C is labeled C4 and if its size is not maximized, you can use the bottom scroll bar to scroll through the keyboard to access additional octaves. Let me see if I can show that to you real quick. There we go, I've sized it down, and now I have a scroll bar. When I size it up, the scroll bar goes away. To input notes with the Keyboard panel, we need to of course tell Sibelius where we want to begin. So, as usual I'm going to come up here, I'm going to click on a rest, and then you need to select a duration in the keypad, so I'm going to press number four for recorder note, and then just press a key on the Keyboard panel using your mouse. So here's middle C. (note plays) Now, a guitar is a transposing instrument, so it sounds middle C even though it's written up above. So Sibelius will input the note and will automatically advance you to the next beat as usual. So I can continue inputting quarter notes. (notes play) Like that. If you want a rest, as usual, come to your keypad and press the rest key. If you want to change duration, change duration in the keypad, and then click the notes in. To input an interval or chord using the Keyboard panel, we're going to input a note first, I'm going to change this back to a quarter note so it's a little bigger for us, and input the first note. (note plays) And you want to click the Chord Mode button to enter into Chord Mode, and that is this button right here that looks like a chord. In Chord Mode, as you input notes, they will stack on top of each other, and all of the corresponding keys on the Keyboard panel will remain highlighted for you. To move to the next beat in Chord Mode, use the right arrow on your QWERTY keyboard, or you can press this button right here on the Keyboard panel, this is called Move Forward. It's just like using your right arrow, and it advances your input caret to the right. And then you can build your next chord. (notes play) To move backward while in Chord Mode, you can use your left arrow or press the Move Back button on the keyboard panel. To turn Chord Mode off, disengage the Chord Mode button on the Keyboard panel itself. And then go ahead and Escape when you're done. There's one more thing I'd like to talk about and that's this button right here. The QWERTY mode button on the Keyboard panel transforms your computer's QWERTY keyboard into a virtual piano keyboard where the letter A is middle C, W is C sharp, S is D, and so on. So the layout of your QWERTY keyboard in QWERTY mode is similar to the layout of the white and black keys on a piano keyboard. So this is what I was talking about. So QWERTY mode turns your QWERTY keyboard into a virtual piano keyboard. Also in QWERTY mode, the letter Z will adjust the octave selection down by one octave, and the letter X will adjust the octave selection up by one octave on the Keyboard panel. Once QWERTY mode is engaged, you can choose values in your keypad, first tell Sibelius where you're going to begin, and I have a quarter note selected, and then use the QWERTY mapping to input pitches as if inputting them from a piano keyboard, but using your QWERTY keys. So if I typed the letter A on my QWERTY keyboard, I get a C. If I type W, C sharp. S, D, and so on. Of course when you're done, Escape. Always make sure you toggle QWERTY mode off when you're done using it, so toggle that button off like that. There's a somewhat funny history with QWERTY mode, because it used to remain on even after the Keyboard panel was closed. And if that were the case, pressing the letter S for slur would add the pitch D to the score, and there'd be a slew of other confusions. Now that issue should have been fixed and QWERTY mode should always toggle itself off for you if you close the Keyboard panel. But it's still a good idea to get in the habit of turning it off after you're done using it. The dropdown menu over here on the Keyboard panel is called Follow During Playback. The Follow During Playback dropdown menu displays the tracks that the panel will follow or display the notes of during playback. If your keyboard panel is set to Auto, if nothing is selected in the score, the Keyboard panel will show all of the notes from all of the staves and the score during playback. Let me Escape out of this, and I only have notes in my acoustic guitar, so I'm going to go ahead and copy these. It pastes them into some of the other staves real quick, just a quick in, let's put that down an octave or two and then let's do the same thing here. I'm just using a quick copy option click. All right. So, if I Escape and this is set to Auto, if nothing's selected, the Keyboard panel's going to show all of the notes from all of the staves. So if I start playback from here, see I'll move my playback line to this position, and play. (notes play) It's going to show all of the notes and all of those octaves that are on the screen. However, if you select an object on a staff, the Keyboard panel will display only the notes from the selected staff automatically. (notes play) We're still hearing everyone, but we'll only be seeing the notes from that acoustic guitar staff. If your Keyboard panel is set to All Staves, regardless of what is or is not selected on the score page, the Keyboard panel will show notes from all staves during playback. And then if any individual staff names are selected in this Follow During Playback menu, the Keyboard panel will display the staff's notes only regardless of what is or is not selected in the score. When the score is not playing back, the Keyboard panel always displays the note or notes that you select on the score page and it displays them in concert pitch whether you're viewing and selecting notes in a transposing score or part or a C score. And if you're not seeing the note that you selected, we're just not seeing its octave. So I'm going to do a little trick here, I'm going to make this smaller, move this down, so we can see that lower octave, and there's our note. So when you're all done using the Keyboard panel, you can toggle it off with its shortcut, Command + Option + B for keyboard or Control + Alt + B on Windows. You can also toggle it off by unchecking its box in the ribbon up at the View tab panels group, Keyboard, here it is there, or you can use its Close button, on the Mac it's going to be on the left hand side here, the red X, and on Windows systems it will be on the right.