Lyrics and SATB parts

Lyrics

Lyrics are entered from the Text tab, one syllable per note, and render directly under the note they belong to. Alignment is automatic — a syllable stays with its note through re-barring, line breaks and page breaks, because it’s keyed to the note rather than to a position.

A few things that follow from that:

• Split words across notes where the melody does. Each syllable is its own entry, so A-ma-zing occupies three notes and stays that way.
• A held note keeps one syllable. When a note is split at a bar line into a tied pair, the syllable stays on the head — the onset — because that’s where the word is sung.
• Multiple verses stack under the music.

Building an SATB score

Layout tab → SATB turns a single melody into a four-part score: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, with part labels on the left and bar lines aligned down the system.

Two ways to fill the other three voices:

1. Write them yourself. Pick the active part, then enter notes as usual.
2. Harmonize with AI. AI tab → Enhance → Harmonize to SATB takes your melody and writes a four-part arrangement under it, voice-led for real choirs, carrying the lyrics across.

For guzheng and other two-hand instruments, Layout → 2 staves names the parts Right hand and Left hand instead.

Bars are locked across parts

This is the rule that keeps a multi-part score readable, and it’s worth stating plainly because it surprises people who expect each staff to be independent:

A bar exists in every part or in none. Insert a bar and every voice gets one. Delete a bar and it goes from every voice. New parts are padded with bars of rests so they start the same length as the others.

Without that, deleting a bar from the soprano line would slide every later bar one place left in that voice only — and the aligned grid the renderer draws would stop matching the data underneath. What looks like a tidy edit becomes a score where bar 12 in the soprano is bar 11 everywhere else.

So, to take music out of one voice without disturbing the others:

• Delete on a note turns it into a rest of the same length. The bar keeps its beats; the other parts don’t move.
• Press Delete again on that rest and the time itself is removed.
• − Bar in the Layout tab is the deliberate “remove this bar everywhere”.

Rehearsing one section

Once you have parts, the Instruments control (beside the play button, and in the Score tab on a phone) gives each voice its own instrument, plus M to mute and S to solo.

That’s the sectional-rehearsal tool: mute the alto line and the altos sing it themselves against the other three, or solo the tenors to drill an awkward entry. Mute and solo are session-only — they change what you hear now, not what the score is or what anyone else opening the link will hear.

Where to go next

• Playing your score back — voices, tempo and the singing voice.
• SATB arranging in solfa — how to write the inner parts.