A Scoring page is always made up of two layers – the Note Layer and the Layout Layer. When you add Symbols, these will be inserted into either layer, depending on the type of symbol. Those symbols that have a general relation to notes – accents, dynamic markings, slurs, lyrics etc – will be put in the Note Layer. Other symbols – such as repeats, rehearsal marks, some types of text, etc – are put in the Layout Layer. Later in this chapter you will find detailed information about which symbols belong to which layer.
Layout LayerWe will now look at the symbols in these two layers, in more detail:
• Note symbols. These are each tied to a single note. Examples of Note symbols are accents and lyrics. When you move the note, the symbols moves with it. The same is true if you Cut the note and then Paste, the symbol is Cut and Pasted at the same time.
• Note dependant symbols. Only a few symbols belong to this category, for example the arpeggio lines. In one way, these behave just like grace notes (see page 174). They must always be in front of a note or chord. If there is no note “after them” on a staff, they will disappear.
• All other Note Layer symbols (Tempo, dynamics, chords etc). These have their position related to the bar. No matter what you do to notes, they remain unaffected. However, their positions are tied to their position within a measure. If you for example change the spacing of the bars across the page (see page 274) this will affect the symbols’ positions.
Now let’s examine the Layout Layer Symbols. As described above, there is a certain collection of symbols, which are drawn in a different “layer” on the page than all other graphic elements. These are called Layout Layer symbols. All these Symbols are collected in the “Layout” section of the Symbols Palette, see below.
The Layout layer is not stored individually for each Track, as the other symbols are. Instead it is common to a “set of Tracks”. Let’s illustrate this with an example:
You have four Tracks that make up a string quartet. You edit them all at the same time and add Symbols to the score, both Note Layer Symbols and Layout Layer Symbols.
Now let’s say you close the Score editor and open only one of the Tracks for editing. All your Note Layer symbols are there just as you left them, but the Layout Layer Symbols have disappeared!
Don’t worry, close the Editor again, and open all four Tracks for editing and the Symbols are back.You have probably got a clue to what is going on by now. The Layout Layer symbols are part of a “bigger entity” called – the Layout. And a Layout is something that is stored not per Track, but for a group of Tracks. Each time you open the same combination of Tracks for editing, you get the same layout.
There are also other things that are part of the layout — apart from he Symbols in the Layout Layer. You will find more info about this in “Working with Layouts”.• Many of the Symbols that are in the Layout Layer can be stretched to span over several Staves, or for other reasons make more sense to think of as belonging to a certain group of Tracks.
• The Layout Layer is only one part of the bigger concept of Layouts. Layouts allows you to easily extract parts from a full score and perform automatic formatting. This is all described in “Working with Layouts”.
To view the Layout Layer only, go into Page Mode and select “Layout Layer Only” from the Score menu. This view is redrawn very fast on the screen and may for example be used to quickly scan through many pages to find a certain part of the score which can be identified by its Layout Layer symbols.
“Layout Layer Only” activated for the example in the previous illustration. On page 185 and onwards you will find out which symbols are part of the Note Layer and which are part of the Layout Layer.