Chapter 1
Getting started
Maestro is a notation editor designed for people coming from Finale: the Main Tool Palette, Simple Entry and Speedy Entry, Page View and Scroll View all work the way you remember. This chapter covers the window, creating a new score and the main settings. If you are opening Maestro for the first time, the Getting Started Tour walks you through it step by step.
The window
Each score opens in its own window (on Windows, in a tab; see Mac and Windows). From top to bottom you find:
- the toolbar, with the most used commands;
- the secondary palette above the score: durations, dot, rests and accidentals for entering notes, or the buttons of the current tool (articulations, dynamics, lines…);
- the Main Tool Palette on the left, with the tools;
- the score in the middle, white pages on a grey background;
- the Inspector column on the right, when you open it;
- the playback bar and the status bar at the bottom; the status bar shows the visible page, the zoom, the active layer and a hint about the current tool.
On the Mac you can move the secondary palette into a column to the left of the score: Maestro → Settings… → Appearance → Secondary palette → Vertical, left of the score.
The Main Tool Palette
As in Finale, what a click on the score does depends on the selected tool. The tools are also in the Tools menu, and the first nine have a shortcut (the number is shown in the corner of the button):
| Tool | Mac | Windows | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selection | ⌘1 | Ctrl+1 | Selecting notes and measures, copying, transposing, deleting |
| Simple Entry | ⌘2 | Ctrl+2 | Entering notes with the mouse |
| Speedy Entry | ⌘3 | Ctrl+3 | Entering notes with the keyboard |
| Key Signature | ⌘4 | Ctrl+4 | Changing the key from a measure on |
| Time Signature | ⌘5 | Ctrl+5 | Changing the meter from a measure on |
| Clef | ⌘6 | Ctrl+6 | Changing the clef from a measure on |
| Measure | ⌘7 | Ctrl+7 | Inserting or deleting measures |
| Staff | ⌘8 | Ctrl+8 | The staff menu and the spacing between staves |
| Articulations | ⌘9 | Ctrl+9 | Accents, staccatos, tremolos, arpeggios |
At the bottom of the palette are the other tools with their own palettes: Expressions, Lines, Tuplets, Repeats and Jumps and Layout. With these you select notes just as with the Selection tool, then pick the marking from the palette above the score. Among them is also the Chord symbols tool (“C7”): with it you click above the note and type the chord symbol straight away.
Two handy habits: Esc takes you back to the Selection tool, and double-clicking a measure with the Selection tool puts you in Speedy Entry right there. Like Finale, Maestro remembers which tool you were using among Selection, Simple Entry and Speedy Entry, and the scores you open start with it; the first time, it starts with Simple Entry. To start writing music, see Entering notes.
New score
File → New Score… (⌘N; Ctrl+N on Windows) opens the setup wizard, like Finale’s Setup Wizard:
- At the top, under Start from, pick a template (they wrap onto several rows, so you see them all; the chosen one is filled with the accent color): blank, piano, voice and piano, SATB choir, guitar, string quartet, wind quintet, brass quintet, jazz combo, big band, classical orchestra and your own templates.
- Search the catalog on the left for instruments (type «clar» for the clarinets, or open a family; below the search you can show only those of one ensemble: orchestra, band, jazz and pop, choir and voices, early and baroque, traditional and world) and add them to the ensemble with a double-click or Add →, which appears on the selected row; on the Mac also with Return. The catalog families and the ensemble instruments have the color of their family; while the ensemble is empty, a hint in the middle explains how to fill it. In the ensemble, − and + next to each instrument set how many there are: with 2 or more they’re named «Flute 1», «Flute 2»… automatically. Drag rows by the handle to reorder them, rename them with a double-click and remove them with the × or ⌫.
- On the right the fields are in three groups: Piece (title and composer), Music (key, time signature, tempo, number of measures; on the Mac the most common time signatures also with one click on 4/4, 3/4, 2/4 or 6/8) and Page and fonts (page format, music and text fonts; on the Mac it opens with a click). Below the fields is a preview of the first page. Create score opens the score; without instruments it tells you what’s missing. With at least one instrument, Save Template… appears at the bottom left: your choices become a personal template, which you’ll find right away among those in Start from.
File → New Blank Score (⌥⌘N; on Windows from the File menu) creates a score straight away with the template chosen in the settings (piano by default), with no questions. On the welcome screen, New Blank Score and the Blank card give a single staff in treble clef instead. You set the starting values (template, composer, tempo, meter, key, number of measures, page format, swing) in Settings → New Scores.
Your own templates
If you often write for the same ensemble, save it as a template: File → Save as Template… keeps instruments, names, clefs, transpositions, sounds, mixer, brackets, page format, tempo, key, meter and composer, but not the music. You find it again in File → New from Template, which creates the score immediately, and in the setup wizard, after Maestro’s own templates.
Views and zoom
- Page View shows the pages as they will print; Scroll View puts all the music on one long horizontal strip. Choose them in the View menu (Page View and Scroll View, with a check mark on the current one); ⌘E switches between them.
- Zoom: View → Zoom In (⌘+), View → Zoom Out (⌘-), View → Actual Size (⌘0). You can also use the zoom slider in the status bar (click the percentage to go back to 100%) or pinch on the trackpad.
On Windows: View → Page View and View → Scroll View (Ctrl+E, or the button at the top right); zoom with Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0, or hold Ctrl and turn the mouse wheel. To scroll, drag the bars along the right and bottom edges of the score, turn the mouse wheel (with Shift to go sideways), or use two fingers on the touchpad.
Navigator
View → Navigator (⌥⌘G; Ctrl+Alt+G on Windows), or the three-pages button in the status bar next to the page number (lit while the navigator is open), opens a strip below the score with thumbnails of every page, side by side (in Scroll View, the whole strip of music). A blue frame marks the part you see in the window and follows it as you scroll or during playback. Click a thumbnail to bring the score there; drag, and the score scrolls along with the mouse. With many pages the strip scrolls by itself to keep the frame in view. The same command closes it.
Inspector
View → Inspector (⌥⌘I; Ctrl+I on Windows) opens a column on the right with the properties of what you have selected, or of the note under the Speedy Entry cursor. Its sections are:
- Note: pitches, duration and dots, tie, articulations, tuplet;
- Measure: key and time signature from that measure, repeats, new system and new page;
- Staff: name, instrument, sound, transposition, staff size and more;
- Document: title, composer, metronome mark, page format.
Every change applies immediately and can be undone with ⌘Z. With several notes selected, a change applies to all of them.
The section for what you selected opens by itself; the others close and reopen with a click on their title (with the small triangle) and, when closed, show a summary: tempo and key of the measure, the staff’s sound, the document’s title.
Toolbar
At the top of the window; on Windows it sits on the right of the top row, next to the palette, and buttons that don’t fit go into the … menu at its end. It holds Undo and Redo, the menu for switching between the score and a part, view and zoom, concert pitch and multimeasure rests, the playback and recording controls, the mixer, Add Staff, Extract Parts, Print and the Inspector. Right-click → Customize Toolbar… (on Windows also View → Customize Toolbar…) lets you add more buttons (save, export, title, text, chord symbol, virtual piano…); View → Hide Toolbar (⌥⇧⌘T) hides it, on Windows View → Toolbar (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T). On the Mac each button shows its name and keyboard shortcut in its tooltip; on Windows they appear in the status bar when the pointer is over the button.
Getting Started Tour
The first time you launch Maestro, an interactive tour opens: one bubble per step, next to the control it talks about. It shows you the tools, entering a note with Speedy Entry, durations and chords, an articulation, playback, the mixer, the Inspector, new scores and Finale files. Where it says “Try it”, the tour notices when you have done it and moves on by itself. You can skip a step, go back or close it. Reopen it any time from Help → Getting Started Tour.
Welcome screen
At launch, when you close the last score, and with Window → Welcome to Maestro (⇧⌘1; on Windows File → Welcome Screen) the welcome screen opens:
- on the left, the actions: New Score…, New Blank Score (a single staff in treble clef), Open…, Setlist… and Templates…, and at the bottom the Getting Started Tour, what’s new and the Show at startup box;
- at the top, the recent scores, with a thumbnail of the first page, the title and below it the composer and the date. Only full rows are shown: Show All (N) next to the title shows them all, Show Less goes back to full rows. When several recent scores have the same title, the file name (or the folder) appears below to tell them apart. Search recents finds by title, composer or file name; right-click to open, show in Finder (on Windows in File Explorer) or remove from the list;
- below, New from Template: the Blank card and Maestro’s templates, each with the name of the ensemble on the page and how many instruments it has, and on a row of their own Your Templates.
When the mouse passes over a card, its border takes the accent color; one click opens it.
Splash screen
At launch a splash screen shows the icon, the name, the version and the date of the last update for a couple of seconds. A click closes it at once; if you don’t want it, turn it off in Settings → General.
Settings
On the Mac choose Maestro → Settings… (⌘,); on Windows Edit → Settings… (Ctrl+,). Every choice applies immediately. There are five sections:
- General: what to open at launch (the welcome screen, a blank score, the setup wizard, nothing, or the last document; Windows has no “nothing” option), the splash screen, autosave and backup copies, how many documents to remember in Open Recent, the Getting Started Tour, language and updates;
- New Scores: the starting values for the blank score and the setup wizard;
- MIDI: the MIDI keyboard and recording, see MIDI keyboard;
- Playback: metronome, scrolling, count-in, volumes, sounds and reverb, see Playback and audio;
- Appearance: light or dark, Inspector, key hints in the status bar, secondary palette, measure numbers, selection and layer colors, playing notes as you enter them, zoom and view for new windows.
Appearance and language
Maestro follows the system’s light or dark mode; in Settings → Appearance you can choose Automatic, Light or Dark. The pages always stay white, like paper.
The interface is available in Italian, English, German, French and Spanish. By default Maestro uses the system language; to fix it, go to Settings → General → Language (on Windows, the Language section) and choose Automatic or one of the languages (Italiano, English, Deutsch, Français, Español). The change takes effect the next time you launch Maestro. In English, the instrument names in new scores are in English too.
Updates
Once a day Maestro checks the website for a new version; if there is one, it shows you what’s new and asks whether to install it. You can check by hand with Maestro → Check for Updates… (on Windows Help → Check for Updates…) and turn off the automatic check in the settings. The changes in each version are listed in Maestro → About Maestro (on Windows also in Help → What’s New in Maestro).
Mac and Windows
Both versions have the same tools, the same commands and the same file format. The main differences:
- on Windows ⌘ becomes Ctrl; many Mac shortcuts using ⌥ or ⌃ don’t exist on Windows, and you use the menus instead;
- the Notation menu (articulations, dynamics, lines, text, chord symbols) is the same on both systems;
- on the Mac each score has its own window; on Windows open scores live in tabs (Ctrl+Tab to switch, Ctrl+W to close);
- on the Mac MIDI devices are also listed in Playback → MIDI Devices; on Windows in Settings → MIDI, and the mixer is also in View → Mixer.
For the full list of keys, see Keyboard shortcuts.