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.
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. 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:
- Pick a template: piano, voice and piano, SATB choir, guitar, string quartet, wind quintet, brass quintet, jazz combo, big band, classical orchestra, or blank.
- Add instruments by family, remove the ones you don’t need, reorder them and rename them with a double-click.
- Type the title and composer, then choose tempo, key, time signature, number of measures and page format.
File → New Blank Score (⌥⌘N; on Windows from the File menu) creates a piano score straight away, with no questions. 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. Switch between them with View → Scroll View (⌘E).
- 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.
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.
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.
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 (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 and English. By default Maestro uses the system language; to fix it, go to Settings → General → Language (on Windows, the Language section) and choose Automatic, Italiano or English. 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 Mac Edit menu is split in two on Windows: Edit (undo, copy, paste, transpose, settings) and Notation (articulations, dynamics, lines, text, chord symbols);
- on the Mac each score has its own window; on Windows open scores live in tabs (Ctrl+Tab to switch, Ctrl+W to close);
- the MIDI menu is Mac only; on Windows MIDI devices are listed in Settings → MIDI, and the mixer is also in View → Mixer.
For the full list of keys, see Keyboard shortcuts.