Notes, rhythm and rests

Note entry in DomiSol is type-and-advance. Every pitch key writes a note at the cursor and steps forward, so writing a phrase is one continuous action rather than click-select-click.

Replace or insert

What a pitch key does to the note the cursor is on is your choice, set by Typing at the top of the Note tab:

Mode	Typing a pitch	Use it for
Replace (default)	Types over the note at the cursor and steps forward	Correcting a scan, fixing a wrong pitch — the note count doesn’t change
Insert	Pushes a new note in after the cursor and shifts the rest along	Adding notes a scan missed, or writing into the middle of a phrase

The switch shows which one is live, and it stays where you left it — including next time you open the app. It applies to the Rest key too: in Insert mode Rest adds a beat of silence rather than silencing the note you’re on.

Nothing is lost either way — ⌘/Ctrl+Z undoes a note in one step.

Adding one note without switching modes. Enter opens a blank slot after the cursor and ⇧+Enter opens one before it — the After and Before buttons on the Note tab. Type into the slot to fill it. These never replace anything and never change with the mode, so they’re the thing to reach for when you only need one note in the middle of a line. With nothing selected, Before puts a slot at the very start of the part, which is how you add an upbeat a scan missed.

On a phone it depends which DomiSol you’re using:

• In the browser (dash.domisol.app), the Note tab is in the tools panel, which slides up from the bottom. The panel button at the right end of the top bar opens and closes it. Typing, Before and After are all there. The pitch keyboard folds away while the panel is open. After you use one of those three, tap Pitch keyboard to bring the keys back, which also closes the panel.
• In the DomiSol app for iPhone and Android, they’re along the bottom instead. The Replace / Insert switch starts the row above the pitch keys, and + before / + after are at the end of that row.

Pitches

d r m f s l t     solfa
1 2 3 4 5 6 7     jianpu — the same degrees

The keys follow the display. While the score shows solfa, the letters write notes and the numbers do nothing. While it shows jianpu, it’s the other way round. The pitch keyboard along the bottom always shows the set that works. If you read solfa but your hands know the numbers, switch the display to jianpu (the d r m / 1 2 3 switch on the Note tab), write, and switch back. See Solfa, jianpu and the key.

Octaves. Notes carry an octave mark: a dot above for higher, below for lower, up to two. o steps through the whole range (middle → up → up-two → down → down-two → middle), and Shift+↑ / ↓ moves one octave at a time. Both change the selected note. With nothing selected, they set the octave for the notes you type next.

Accidentals. Sharp, flat and natural are on the Note tab (+, _ and = on a keyboard) and apply to the selected note. Press the same one again to take it off. They show as ♯, ♭ or ♮ before the note in both notations: ♯d in solfa, ♯4 in jianpu. The Solmisasi template strikes a sharp or flat through the digit instead.

Duration

Pick a duration before you type and it applies to everything you write until you change it. With a note selected, the same keys and buttons change that note’s length instead:

Key	Duration	Beats in 4/4
w	Whole	4
h	Half	2
q	Quarter	1
e	Eighth	½
x	Sixteenth	¼

. toggles a dot, which makes the current duration half again as long — a dotted quarter is 1½ beats. It is not a staccato dot; that mark lives on the Expression tab.

In jianpu these render the way the notation expects: a plain number is a beat, underlines below shorten it, and dashes after it hold it. You don’t manage that — write the duration and the renderer draws the right thing.

Notes that don’t fit their bar

Write a note longer than the space left in its bar and DomiSol splits it into a tied chain that stops at the bar line. A half note followed by a whole note in 4/4 doesn’t make a six-beat bar; it makes a bar that ends correctly and a tie carrying the rest into the next one.

It stays one sound — playback holds through the tie rather than re-articulating — and each piece is a duration the notation can actually draw.

Holding a note

Type the pitch, then press - — or Hold on the Note tab and next to Rest on the keyboard — to give it one more beat. That is how both notations spell a long note on paper (d -, 5 - - -), so you can write a long note the way you’d write it by hand, without picking its length first. Hold lengthens the selected note. With nothing selected it lengthens the last note in the part, which is the one you just typed.

d  -   s  -  -        d held for two beats, then s for three

Each press is one beat, and DomiSol writes the result on a length the notation can actually draw: three beats becomes a dotted half rather than something with no spelling, and a note held past the bar line becomes a tied pair that stops on the line and sounds as one note.

Rests and silence

Three different things, deliberately:

• Rest (the Rest button, or 0) inserts a silence of the current duration. Use it to write a beat of nothing.
• Hold (-) does the opposite: it gives the beat to the note that’s already there. A rest takes the beat for silence; a dash gives it to the sound.
• Delete (Backspace) turns the selected note into a rest of the same length, keeping the bar’s beats intact so parts stay aligned. Press it again on that rest and the time itself is removed, closing the gap.

That two-stage delete is deliberate. Deleting straight to a gap silently pushes one voice out of step with the others in a multi-part score; deleting only to a rest leaves no way to take time out at all.

A rest prints as 0 in both notations — the same key you press to write one. Solfa used to print it as a dash, which was the same mark as the dashes of a held note, so a bar reading d — m — gave a singer no way to tell which was a silence. Tonic sol-fa’s own convention is to leave the beat blank, and that only works inside the : . , beat lattice DomiSol doesn’t draw — on a printed sheet there would be nothing to count.

Ties

Tie on the Note tab joins the selected note to the next one of the same pitch. The arc renders in both notations and in the PDF, and the two notes sound as one held note rather than two attacks.

Chords: stacked notes or chord names

“Chord” means two different things in DomiSol, and both controls are labelled Chord, so it’s worth telling them apart:

You want	Use	What you get
Two or more notes sounding together, like an octave on the guzheng or a part that divides	Note tab → Chord → + Pitch	Real notes stacked on the selected note. They play, print and export like any other note.
A chord name over the melody for a guitarist or keyboard player, like D, Em or G7	Text tab → Chord box	A label printed above the note. It adds no notes, though playback can sound it as a soft pad.

Stacking notes

Select a note, open + Pitch, and tap the notes to add. Each one lands above what’s already stacked, so you spell a chord from the bottom up without picking octaves: on a d, tap m and then s. Tap the note’s own name for the octave above it. The Below row adds a note underneath the stack instead, and − takes the top note off. You can also hold Shift and type a pitch key to stack it on top: a letter in solfa, a digit in jianpu. On a French (AZERTY) keyboard, where Shift is how you type a digit, turn Caps Lock on and then hold Shift on the digit key.

Chord symbols

Click the note where the chord changes, then type the chord’s name into the Text tab’s Chord box: D, Em, G7, F#m, Bb. You get up to 12 characters, with # and b for sharp and flat. The name prints above that note on screen, in the solfa/jianpu PDF and in the staff-notation PDF. Clear the box to remove it. Chord symbols in an imported MusicXML file arrive the same way.

A chord symbol is a letter name, not a scale degree, so it doesn’t follow the key the way the notes do. If you change the key, a D still says D, so retype the symbols to match. The one exception is Transpose → Keep the sound, which leaves the pitches where they were, so the names stay right.

Hearing them. Once a score has a chord symbol, a Chords button appears on the practice bar. Turn it on and playback adds a soft pad under the music. Each chord sounds from its note until the next chord symbol. The pad uses the part with the most chord symbols, and it knows the everyday names: D, Em, G7, Cmaj, Cmaj7, F#m7, Bdim, Asus4, Dsus2. A slash chord like G/B plays without its bass note, and a name it can’t read stays silent. The button isn’t on the narrow practice bar of a phone-sized screen yet.

AI tab → Enhance → Chords suggests a progression for your melody in a table you can copy. It doesn’t put symbols on the score, so type the ones you want into the Chord box.

The DomiSol phone app shows chord symbols, but it has no Chord box and no Chords button yet. Add and play them from the browser.

Moving around

Key	Action
← →	Previous / next note
↑ ↓	Move the selected note up or down a scale step
Enter	Insert a new note after the selected one
⇧+Enter	Insert a new note before the selected one
⌘/Ctrl+Z	Undo
⌘/Ctrl+⇧+Z	Redo

↑/↓ is worth a moment: it moves by scale step, not semitone, so 4 becomes 5. Select everything with ⌘/Ctrl+A and it transposes the whole piece by a step — a fast way to try a melody a little higher for your sopranos.

The full list is in the editor under Shortcuts (or press ?).

Where to go next

• Your first score — if you skipped ahead.
• Notation guides — what the durations and octave dots mean.