Staff Scribe
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the Microsoft® Visio® Musical Notation Stencil

Want to create professional-looking musical scores?
Budget doesn't allow for expensive musical notation software?
Have access to Microsoft Visio, version 2000, or higher?

Then Staff Scribe is for you!

Staff Scribe is a collection of five musical notation stencil files created for Microsoft Visio. They contain over 500 shapes arranged by category, so that you can immediately get started composing your score. Create a piece of any complexity-from a single staff to multiple pages of music. Add your key signature, musical notes, and then your desired annotation (repeats, volume, tempo, whatever!). The software comes with three example scores, so that you can see what Staff Scribe can do for you.

The shapes in Staff Scribe include:

• Individual pages, or full pagesof single staffs, Grand Staffs, and Grand Staffs with Soloist
• 60 built-in key signatures for four clefs (treble, alto, tenor, and bass)
• One whole note, 12 half notes, 12 quarter notes, 38 eighth notes, 18 sixteenth notes, 32 "mixed" eighth and sixteenth notes
• Seven unique non-printing "spacers" to help you space out the notes in your score evenly and clearly.
• "Repeat" annotation in volta, segno, coda, and begin-end two-dot notation forms
• Ordinary music notation: 17 volume, 14 expression, and 16 sound articulation shapes, as well as 21 tempo speed words ("Andantino," for example), 36 metronome markers and 13 tempo designations (such as 2/4, 4/4, and 6/8)
• Additional special instrument annotation for piano, bowed stringed instruments, and wind instruments
• 21 guitar chords to be placed above staffs
• Guitar "Tab" notation: single Tabs and a staff joined with a Tab; also, two notations for the Tab symbol
• Shapes for lyrics, vocal ranges, measure numbers, instrument names
• Seven common drum roll notations
• 16 special percussion instrument symbols
• Plus much more!

With Staff Scribe, you can quickly and easily produce professional-quality sheet music.

The Stencils

Whenever you create a music score, you will probably start with the first three stencils below: Staff Scribe--Page 1, Staff Scribe--Musical Notes, and Staff Scribe--Annotation. They contain the foundation elements of most musical scores: staffs, clefs, keys, musical notes, annotation, and so on.

Here are actual screen shots of the five Staff Scribe stencil files. Skip ahead to example music scores.  

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Staff Scribe--Page 1.vss

Contains the basic elements of every musical score, starting with staffs, clefs, and key signatures.

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Staff Scribe--Musical Notes.vss

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Staff Scribe--Annotation.vss

Contains the shapes used to denote any kind of musical notation: volume, tempo changes, sound sculpting, and so on.

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Staff Scribe--Percussion.vss

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Staff Scribe--Guitar.vss

Sample Music Scores Created with Staff Scribe

Example speaks louder than directions. Here are three musical scores created in Visio 2007 and saved as PDFs. In each file:

• the first page is the original score to be transcribed with Staff Scribe;
• the second page is a simple transcription of the piece;
• and in the case of Example 3: two additional pages show a more elaborate transcription of the work.

Note 1: You will receive these Visio files and their PDFs on your Staff Scribe CD, or as part of your download (if you choose to buy Staff Scribe that way).

Note 2: The text in the scores below refer to "spacers." Since the spacer shapes don't print, the spacers do not appear in the PDFs. I will give all testers copies of these Visio files, so they will be able to see the original documents with the spacers. In the meantime, here are two clips of the same file, comparing what the file looks like while editing versus what it looks like when it's printed.

This is a partial screen shot of Example 3, showing the hidden spacers, Visio guide lines, and other non-printing shapes and lines. This is what you will see when you edit the score in Visio. The spacers are the green arrows with the vertical red lines through them. There is one spacer per measure, and each red line represents one beat. There is a guide line aligned with each red line, and each musical note is aligned with the appropriate guide line. By "appropriate," I mean that since this piece is played with 3/4 tempo, each red line represents one quarter note, so it takes two eighth notes per red line, one quarter note per red line, and one dotted quarter note takes up 1 1/2 red lines. This ensures even horizontal spacing between the notes.

A partial clip of the same file as a print preview. Notice the spacers and guide lines aren't showing any more. This is what prints. So clean!!!

Now that you know what a spacer is, and why you can't see it in the PDF of the files, here are the three example music scores.

Staff Scribe Example 1--St Margaret's.pdf
Staff Scribe Example 2--Der Pilger aus der Ferne.pdf
Staff Scribe Example 3--The Ash Grove.pdf

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How to Buy Staff Scribe

Payment Methods

We do not accept credit or debit cards.
We do accept cash, check, money order, cashier's check, or PayPal. My PayPal user name is cmk@seedlingsoftware.com.

If you order using PayPal, we will receive your order information via e-mail, and there is no need to print an order form and mail it in.

Online

Order Staff Scribe using PayPal and get your order sooner! Great for international as well as US orders.

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