Whether it’s a squiggly line, a complex curve, or something that totally defies description, sometimes your music requires notation that’s more creative than the ordinary music symbols we’re accustomed to seeing. That's when it comes time to dive into the use of graphics in music notation, and how to work with graphical files in the software. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk about how to create those graphical symbols and bring them into your notation software without sacrificing quality, as well as how to create complex graphics by just using the notation tools. We also cover exporting graphics out of notation software and into other programs, and discuss the “slices” feature in Dorico, which allows you to retain persistent score excerpts that you can export as graphics over and over again, changing them along the way.

More from Scoring Notes:

• Graphic notation workflow with Sibelius and Adobe Illustrator
• Creating custom line ends in Sibelius with SVG files and Illustrator
• Use graphics as symbols in Sibelius, and define them as custom articulations
• Using tone clusters in Sibelius
• Lines and line style editors in Dorico
• David MacDonald video — Graphic Notation Workflow with Sibelius and Adobe Illustrator