Copying notes

In this lesson you will learn how to

move around the song using fillbar,
quickly select multiple lines,
copy and paste whole parts of songs,
move all notes after some beat.

Before you start

This lesson requires a songfile with first chorus ready. You can either do it yourself for practice or download the files from here:

3MB

David Amber - Second Time Around [copy-paste].zip

Moving around the song

Before we begin, let's load the song file with the first chorus ready:

As you remember, you can change what is visible in the main editor in 2 ways:

switch the active line - use down or up arrows,
switch to free mode (e.g. by ctrl + scroll) and move the visible area (e.g. by shift + scroll)

These approaches are good when you just want to move to a part of the song that is close by. If you want to move to some far away point, using the fillbar is much more convenient.

How to use the song fillbar?

Fillbar is located above the main editor and shows you how the mapped lines are placed in the song. It also lets you quickly move to some other place in the song.

Left side of the fillbar represents the audio beginning and the right side represents the end. As you can see, currently we have mapped only a small part of the song at its beginning.

Each rectangle represents one song line. If you click on it, you will be transported to that line. The black border represents the range of beats currently visible in the editor. You can resize it - just drag its left or right border.

If you click somewhere without any lines, you will be simply moved to that part of the song.

Reusing the chorus

Identifying remaining choruses

Equipped with this knowledge, you can try to locate all other choruses in the song.

You can use play to the end option (go to menu Play -> To the End -> Audio) if that helps you.

Just add a note at the beginning of each chorus and change it duration to 64 beats to make it more visible in the fillbar. Make sure that each marker note starts in the correct beat using standard synchronization technique described in one of the previous lessons.

The result should look like this:

Two last choruses are incomplete - they begin before the previous one ends.

Selecting the first chorus

To copy the first chorus we need to select it first. It can be done in multiple ways:

using lyrics editor - simply select the lyrics of the first chorus,
using fillbar - click on the first line of the chorus, hold shift and click on the rectangle representing last line of the chorus. Once all notes are visible use ctrl + a shortcut to select them,
using select more option - select the first note of the chorus and hold shift + ↓ until you select all chorus notes.

Either way it should look like this:

Copy the first chorus

Once all first chorus is selected just use ctrl + c to copy it.

Paste the chorus

Go to the place where you have marked the next chorus beginning - either press ↓ once or twice or click on the fillbar. Select the placeholder note.

And press ctrl + v to replace the temporary note with copied chorus.

Repeat the process for other choruses and partial choruses. In the places where choruses overlap simply let the previous line finish and start the new chorus from the next line (in the first case: "or is this really the end" and in the second "that if you need a friend"). It should look like this:

Finetuning pasted notes

Now review all of the pasted notes and finetune them. They should be roughly ready. Still, we should review them - even if the choruses seem the same, singer might have sung some notes at a slightly different pace.

You can move multiple notes at once

All of the shortcuts for moving notes that we have previously learned, can be also used on multiple selected notes at once.

Moving all notes after some point of time

If you want to move all notes that are after some beat, you can use time marker for that. Just select the first note that should be moved and drag the time marker.

Dragging first note precisely in active line display mode may be difficult

Remember that in active line mode visible area automatically adjusts to the notes. If you start dragging the first note, area will be automatically adjusted - rescaled. It might be difficult to precisely drag the notes in such case.

Either enter the free display mode first or simply drag the time marker starting from the second note and move the first note manually.

Finishing the first track

The female track consists only of choruses so we have just finished it 🎉

Before we move on to the male track, let's make sure that we have not forgotten anything by playing the whole song. Remember that you can lower the relative volume of the audio file in audio manager.

Just go to menu Play -> Whole Song -> Audio Only to check timing. You may also use Audio & Midi mode to check pitches.

Do not check timing by using audio & midi mode

The midi synthesiser of your operating system does not react immediately therefore midi might have a lag compared to audio. To check synchronization use ticks in audio only mode.