I always advise educators beginning with technology to devote themselves to just one piece of new software at a time, using it frequently in order to maximize their effectiveness with it. But finding the right software to focus on from among dozens that might be appropriate for your teaching can be dizzying. In my opinion, a great place to start for all music educators is with a full-featured music-notation (or “scoring”) program because they can do so much for you.

The primary purpose for applications such as MakeMusic's Finale or Sibelius Software's Sibelius is to notate music in a professional manner. Not surprisingly, that's the way they're usually employed by music educators. Yet music-notation applications are replete with features that can be exploited in novel ways to effectively deliver multiple components of the music curriculum. Used creatively in general, instrumental, and vocal music, they become versatile and powerful pedagogical tools.

Over time, you will probably find many more great ways to use notation software in your teaching than I've presented here. These 11 approaches are merely some of my favorites that I think you will find useful. Although all 11 applications are accomplished easily with both Finale 2003 and Sibelius 2, I've used the former for many years and therefore will refer to it when citing specifics.

An ever-increasing number of educators want to use sequenced classroom, rehearsal, and performance accompaniments in their teaching. Since notation software allows for playback of music you've entered (in real time or step time), you can use it to sequence chorus and band selections, solo and small ensemble pieces, general-music class songs, and Orff arrangements, just to name a few.

Using your notation software for sequencing saves you the time of having to learn a separate sequencing application. For many educators, busy with full teaching loads and ever-increasing administrative chores, that alone is a sufficiently compelling reason. In time, if you do a lot of Finale or Sibelius “sequencing,” you will discover some limitations and want to move on to a dedicated sequencer.

However, the major sequencing features you'd be interested in are implemented in notation programs, as well. You get clear and simple buttons for Play, Stop, Pause, Rewind, and so on. Beginning playback from within the piece is easy, too: with Finale 2003, you type the measure number in a field on the Playback Control window; with Sibelius, you click on a measure.

When you hit the Play button in Sibelius, a handy tempo-adjustment slider appears. You'll use this when your students aren't quite ready to work at performance speed. In Finale 2003, you can type the playback tempo into a field on the Playback Controls window.

By digging a little deeper, you'll discover ways to accomplish the more expressive and musical playback elements often associated with sequencing. For starters, take advantage of the playback options that can be programmed when you create an expressive marking for your music. For instance, a tempo marking such as Allegro assai that you've created with Finale's Expression tool can be programmed to play back at 156 bpm. Settings like this are made in the Playback Options area on the lower portion of the Text Expression Designer dialog box (see Fig. 1).

Many common musical instructions, such as Allegro or the symbols for forte or staccato, come intelligently preprogrammed in Finale's Expression library or Sibelius's House Styles. But when the playback doesn't sound the way you'd like, you can easily change those settings.

If music with a dynamic marking of mezzo forte sounds too loud, for instance, lower the value for key Velocity (which generally equates to dynamic response). To make adjustments such as these in Finale, double-click on the handle attached to the expression you wish to tweak, and the Text Expression Designer dialog box will appear. Similarly, playback settings for articulations may be adjusted in the Articulation Designer dialog that opens when you click on their handles in Finale.

Even expressions that change over time can be programmed for playback by matching the event to a ramp shape rather than a set value. Again, in Finale, you program these expressions in the Text Expression Designer. First select a Playback Option (Tempo, Key Velocity, and so on) from the Type pull-down menu. Next, click on Execute Shape and click on the Select button; a new dialog will open, from which you assign (or design!) a shape. Crescendo calls for a velocity ramp up; ritardando uses a tempo ramp down (see Fig. 2).

Many teachers in my district use Finale to prepare Standard MIDI Files (SMFs) for rehearsal playback and for posting on the Web. Finale and Sibelius let you save files in SMF format in the same way: from the File menu, choose Save As and select MIDI File from the drop-down Format menu of the Save dialog box (see Fig. 3). The file extension .mid will automatically be appended to the file name you typed. If prompted, choose Type 1 (all instruments saved to separate tracks) rather than Type 0 (all instruments saved into a single track).

Programs like Finale and Sibelius also can be used to play back SMFs downloaded from the Web. You can use this feature to play examples you've found online of piano music from various style periods for your seventh-grade general-music class, or perhaps you've found a sequenced accompaniment for a chorus or band piece at the site of a publisher or fellow director. Just open (or import) the SMF from within your notation program and hit Play. When you open the file, an Open/Import dialog box appears; I recommend accepting the default settings.

If you do make the leap to a software sequencer, you will notice that you have the option of entering notes one note at a time, which is called step recording, step entry, or step sequencing. While this enables trumpeters like me to enter even the most complex parts, I have found this feature's implementation in most sequencing applications to be unintuitive. Often there's not even an insertion point cursor to see graphically where you are entering notes.

A work-around used by many musicians goes like this: enter notes as you normally would with your notation software, save the file as an SMF, and open the SMF in your sequencing program. One caution: assign different instruments — not staves — to tracks you want to keep separate, since all staves of the same instrument will be merged into one track.

One of the things I'm most asked to explain by music teachers in courses and in-service training I've led is the procedure for exporting graphics from a notation program for use in a text editor such as Microsoft Word or Apple's AppleWorks. Maybe you or your students are preparing a research paper that needs musical examples, or perhaps you want to create a quiz for your eight-grade general-music section. Or maybe you just want to incorporate a musical example into an 11-by-17 poster, a music analysis graphic, a Web page, or some sort of musical tutorial. Regardless of your purpose, it is very easy to save all or a portion of a notation file in a common graphic image file format.

Using Finale's Graphics Tool, select (double-click, hold, drag, release) the music you want to export. Then choose Export Selection from the Graphics menu (see Fig. 4). If you want an entire page or the entire piece, select Export Pages from the Graphics menu instead. From the dialog box that opens, select from the available file formats, choose a resolution, and click OK.

You can do most of this in Sibelius by choosing Save As Graphic from the File menu. Unfortunately, it's a little tougher to export just a portion of a page. One work-around is to export the entire page that contains the area you want to use, open the exported page in a graphics program, and crop out whatever you don't want. Another is to save your Sibelius document under another name and make the page contain only what you want, then export the page.

Two factors drive me to continually generate custom compositions and arrangements for my band students: the stress level and the difficulty level.

One source of stress for me was an awards-assembly performance my band has to do on the last day of school each year. Now instead of forcing everyone to participate, I use a three-part arrangement of “Pomp and Circumstance” (melody, harmony, bass line) with piano accompaniment and get volunteers from within the band to play the event. They actually want to be there, it's much easier to rehearse, and as part of a small ensemble, they feel special. From year to year the instrumentation varies, but that's okay. I just use Finale to generate parts for whoever volunteers.

Problems of difficulty level come into play in both small and large ensemble rehearsals. Too often, the exact same music sets off both fear and boredom in a section, depending on playing ability. A low brass section that consists of two excellent trombonists, two decent baritone players, and a beginning tubist isn't ideal, but all too often it's reality.

Fortunately, differentiated instruction — reaching and teaching your students simultaneously despite their various levels of proficiency — is a concept that can be realized with the help of a notation program and some creativity on your part. A custom trio with a challenging first part (trombone), a moderate second part (baritone), and a rudimentary third part (tuba) would be a blessing to both these students and their teacher.

When arranging for the entire band, you can take into account things like your weak trumpet section or your very advanced clarinets. Whether it's a flute duet written especially for the fifth-grade talent show or a middle-school band arrangement that respects the ability level and size of your various sections, your special knowledge of your student's abilities will enhance the music you create for them.

Many students who study privately work on solos both with and without piano accompaniment. These kids are already working on the music, and most would love to be chosen for a feature. All that's missing is an arrangement of the accompaniment parts for your band. Why not use notation software to create a simple-to-learn accompaniment for band that features the talents and efforts of a soloist for an upcoming concert?

A few years back, a trumpet student of mine was learning the solo “Flower of Damascus” contained in the back of Arban's Method for the Cornet. The holidays were approaching, and I really wanted to feature him with our band. The piece had no piano accompaniment, but the harmony was clear from the solo part. So I cranked out a straightforward “oom-pah-pah” accompaniment for the band, renamed it “Winter Waltz,” and was able to have our young trumpeter “wow” everyone.

Today's notation programs contain several cool arranging features that can help out if you decide to do something similar. Sibelius 2 has an Arrange feature that the company describes as an “intelligent copy-and-paste.” To use it, first copy some music and choose Arrange from the Notes menu. A dialog box opens, in which you can select from over 100 instrumental and vocal templates (see Fig. 5). Finale 2004 has a feature like this, and the Band-in-a-Box Auto Harmonizing plug-in implemented in Finale 2003 uses PG Music's algorithms for hip jazz part-writing. Both programs allow the user to “explode” music from one staff to several staves. Sibelius 2 includes this as part of the Arrange feature; in Finale you use the Explode Music Utility with the Mass Edit tool.

With Finale or Sibelius, you can check the range of the instrument parts you've written to see if they lie within a range acceptable for your players. In Finale, use the Check Range Plug-in that allows you to select the level of the player (see Fig. 6). You can customize the range to match your players as well. Sibelius 2 continually reports range information, based on a professional's range, by showing red note heads for notes out of range. To alter these presets, highlight a staff and click on the Staves tab of the Properties window; there you'll find pull-down menus for making the changes.

Regardless of the reason you create a custom piece for your ensemble, there's one thing you shouldn't fail to do before saving your final version and hitting the Print button: dedicate the piece to your ensemble! Kids get a kick out of doing music they know was written just for them, and they'll work just a little bit harder to see it performed successfully. A neat by-product I've experienced is that some students, when regarding the music I've typeset for them, will ask me, “Hey, how did you do that?” That's when I point them to NotePad, the entry-level notation program from MakeMusic, which is available for free downloaded at their Web site.

Using your program's visual-playback feature to scroll music can be a great way to demonstrate musical elements such as texture (polyphonic and monophonic), melodic contour, counterpoint, principles of arranging, and more. Scrolling is also a good way to introduce a custom instrumental or vocal arrangement. To display scores to larger groups, you'll need a projector and screen.

In Finale, choose Scroll View from the View menu, and scale the view to as large a percentage as possible without hiding staves you want to see. Sibelius 2 is always in Page View, but by resizing the window and setting the view percentage, you can accomplish the same thing.

There are lots of great reasons you might want to create custom parts for music already published. In many elementary band arrangements, for example, there is one trombone/baritone/bassoon part and one tuba part. But with ten trombones, three baritones, and a tuba in your ensemble, you may choose to have the baritones double the tuba an octave up. So simply play (or scan in) the tuba part and transpose it.

But what if in that same band you have 12 alto saxophones? I've divided my alto sax section and had the “second altos” double the tuba an octave up. Here you'd need to adjust the tuba part by transposing it and changing the clef.

Often I'm looking for music for a concert finale for combined band and strings. If I don't write the piece myself, we usually find an orchestral arrangement we like, and we create custom parts for our nonorchestral instruments (saxes, baritone, and so forth).

You have a couple of options for getting the part you're altering into your notation software. Using the refined scanning abilities of both Finale 2003 and Sibelius 2.1, you could scan in your source part. However, if you're handy with notation software, and the piece isn't too difficult, you may be able to record the notes in real time or step time just as quickly.

To scan music for a notation program, you need a third-party program that not only controls your scanner but also does optical character recognition (OCR) for music. The scanner only produces a graphics file, such as a TIF file; that's fine for printing copies, but you can't edit the notes. The OCR software analyzes the graphic image and “recognizes” the notes, time signatures, key signatures, and so on, producing an editable score in your notation program.

Finale is bundled with a pared-down version of Musitek's SmartScore; with Sibelius it's Neuratron's PhotoScore. These pared-down versions are adequate for scanning at least a single instrumental part. However, OCR for music is very complex, and accuracy is often an issue, so you'll have to edit the score after the scan is imported and be sure to pay particular attention to the instructions for configuring your scanner and scanning software when you're capturing the original score.

You can transpose in several ways with Finale. Using the Staff tool, you can open the Staff Attributes dialog (by double-clicking on the staff or choosing Staff Attributes from the Staff menu) and can adjust the transposition and clef (see Fig. 7). Using the Mass Edit tool, highlight the entire piece (Edit, Select All) and choose Transpose from the Mass Edit menu. Sibelius 2 has a similar Transpose function in the Notes menu.

I also like to create an optional part, with some notes above the break, for my better elementary clarinet students. Many elementary band arrangements only have snare drum, bass drum, and cymbal parts — but 25 of the 220 members of our district-wide, fifth-grade band play percussion. We've diffused that mighty and raucous sound by creating extra percussion parts, both easier (tam tam hits) and harder (timpani, xylophone).

This might seem like an obvious one considering the type of software we're examining, but remember: composing music isn't the same as notating music. With notation software, I believe young students are more motivated to compose and can better understand some elements of the writing process.

The motivation is easy to understand. Today's GenTech kids like to work with the tools of their generation. The mouse and the screen trump the pencil and paper. In addition, the music looks more attractive when finished, and certain features of the software (such as limiting the number of notes in a measure to match the time signature) make it easy to use.

As for increasing your students' understanding, features such as copy, paste, and transpose are extremely valuable in allowing kids to experience the importance of repetition in music. And the playback function is liberating for students without keyboard skills, enabling them to hear, react to, and self-evaluate multipart works as they progress.

Here are some suggestions for helping young instrumentalists express themselves with notation software:

1. Encourage a wide variety of improvisation and the creation of tunes in lessons. To get students used to playing without music in front of them, ask them to figure out familiar tunes, or have them try to echo back small phrases you play for them.

2. Hand out manuscript paper, made with your notation software, so they can jot down notes for tunes they are writing. Don't worry if they can't notate the correct rhythm; maybe they need to just use dots for note heads (a la Gregorian chant).

3. Help students notate their tunes correctly with NotePad. At first they'll need your guidance, but before long they'll be able to work independently and will want to come in before school and during recess! Use the software to point out compositional techniques they may want to consider for their piece. Make it a rule that they may only write music that they can perform on their instrument.

4. If a family member or close friend also plays an instrument, add blank staves so the student can add a duet part or piano accompaniment later.

5. Let your students have fun coming up with a title, and encourage them to include a personalized dedication (see Fig 8).

Develop an arsenal of songs that your students will be excited about playing or singing, and present them at key moments in the students' musical journey. Use these at the beginning of the year for a fun review, or hand them out to band and strings students at the end of the year to motivate them to play during the summer. Hand them out when a lesson group or individual is getting discouraged, in order to help them rediscover the joy of playing their instrument.

I've developed a collection of songs that are not in the method book but which students always ask to play. This “Best Loved Songs” sheet includes tunes like “Yankee Doodle,” “Old MacDonald,” and “Ode to Joy” and was created easily in Finale by entering one part and changing transposition and clef to generate all the others (see Fig. 9). Now that it's created, I can easily add new songs.

Not everyone has Finale, but most computer users have the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can send notation files electronically in PDF format and be fairly certain the user on the other end will be able to view and print it.

I use PDFs of documents created with Finale to post sheet music on the Web that my students can access from home and I can access from anywhere I can get online. For an examples of this, go to Home Practice Online (http://astro.temple.edu/~swatson) and look around the Private Lesson area. I like this solution because the quality is fairly high, and the bandwidth is fairly low when compared with formats such as GIF and JPEG. I also attach PDFs of my music to e-mails to clients for whom I am writing music, or to send to an editor, or to share with teaching colleagues.

The full version of Adobe Acrobat or some other PDF program is necessary to convert documents created in Word or Finale to PDF. I bought the reasonably priced academic version of Acrobat a few years ago and have used it considerably. When Acrobat is installed properly, you'll be able to choose “Create PDF” when printing from Finale; instead of sending to a printer, your file is converted to PDF format.

Both Finale and Sibelius 2 support free Web-browser plug-ins (Finale Viewer and Scorch) that play specially saved versions of their files. The functionality of these players is great, allowing users to do things like see the music scroll while playing and to change playback tempo, and they are worthy of your consideration if you decide to post notated music online. However, at present, far more users have Acrobat Reader than are willing to download, configure, and use notation plug-ins. For me, ubiquitousness and ease of use were primary concerns, especially since my site is aimed at younger students.

Finale comes with an Exercise Wizard for creating a wide variety of teaching drills under the headings of Scales, Intervals, Arpeggios, and Twisters. Exercises from these categories can be mixed and matched in any key and with various articulation patterns to create custom lessons. Sibelius uses a partner application (purchased separately), Teaching Tools, which includes tons of exercise templates and other resources, such as worksheets and music files.

Even with all that, it may be easier to start from scratch to create exactly what your students need. There's almost nothing that you can't do with a combination of text, music, and graphics. Assuming you are placing separate exercises together on the same sheet, you will want to consider some special settings, described here for Finale:

Normally, when a piece typeset with Finale moves from 3/4 time to 4/4 time at the beginning of a line, there will be a “courtesy” time signature at the end of the previous line to warn you of the change. You also get “courtesy” key changes at the beginning of a line. Chances are you don't want these cluttering up the ends of separate, independent exercises. To turn these default settings off, select Document Options from the Options menu. From the categories at the left of the dialog box that opens, choose Time Signatures, and then deselect Display Courtesy Time Signature at End of Staff System. Similarly, select Key Signatures from the list at the left and deselect Display Courtesy Key Signature at End of Staff System. While you're there, I also recommend deselecting Cancel Outgoing Key Signature (see Fig. 10).

Although each line of your exercise sheet is a separate entity, Finale views all the exercises as one continuous piece. Therefore, if your second exercise is in the same key and time signature as the first, no key signature or time signature will appear at its beginning. You can force these elements using the Measure Tool. Double-click on a measure where you want to force a key signature or time signature, and the Measure Attributes dialog box will open. Choose Always Show, using the drop-down menus for key signature and time signature (see Fig. 11). Another Measure Attribute that normally appears in exercise or warmup sheets is double-bar or final-bar lines at the end of each drill; again, double-click on a measure and select the type of bar line you want to use.

You'll no doubt want to add titles and instructions to your custom exercise sheet. Use the Text tool as you normally would, but remember that if you alter the page layout, the text will stay where it was and may conflict with what you've moved.

The Lyric tool is useful for placing blank spaces under notes in the exercise. When using the sheet with students, you can have them use the blank spaces to write in things like note names, solfège syllables, or fingerings. Aside from its pedagogical benefit, it may come in handy when the phone rings or you have to deal with a student and want something for everyone to do!

Once you've created an exercise, it can be easily altered, expanded, and reworked year after year (see Fig. 12; for the complete sheet, see Web example 1).

Each year, students ask me for sheet music to many familiar tunes. Maybe it's their dad's birthday and they want to play “Happy Birthday” at his party. Or they've been asked to play at church and want Beethoven's “Ode to Joy,” but not just the first phrase that appears in their lesson book. I have typeset these tunes and others with Finale, and I used to hand them out to anyone who asked for them. Now, for students ready for a little challenge, I make them work for it by handing out an incomplete version of the song they so much want to play! Using trial and error and their band instrument, students must find the missing notes that I've hidden. This sharpens their listening ability and their familiarity with their instrument. Ask yourself how many times a student has requested the music to some song they want to play, and you'll see how useful this idea can be.

Hiding the notes is a cinch. Highlight the measures you want to hide (using the Mass Edit tool) and select Notes and Rests (Hide) from the Note, Beam, and Rest Editing Plug-in submenu. To see the notes again (in case you want to print out the correct answers for your kids), just select Notes and Rests (Show). If you want to hide just part of a measure, be sure that Select Partial Measure is chosen from the edit menu before you highlight. (See Web example 2 for an ear-training activity using hidden notes.)

The more intimately you know your music-notation program, the more ways you will find for it to make your job simpler and more effective. Once a high-end notation package is sufficiently mastered, it can become more than just a tool for typesetting music; it will take its place at the center of your teaching software arsenal.

Scott Watson (watsons@parklandsd.org) teaches elementary band and university music technology courses in the Philadelphia area. His music for band is published by Alfred Publications and Shawnee Press.

MakeMusic! Inc./Coda Music Technologies tel. (800) 843-2066 or (952) 937-9611; e-mail finalesales@makemusic.com; Web www.makemusic.com

Musitek tel. (800) 676-8055 or (805) 646-8051; e-mail chrisn@musitek.com; Web www.musitek.com

Neuratron Ltd. e-mail info@photoscore.com; Web www.neuratron.com

Sibelius Software, Ltd. tel. (925) 280-0600; e-mail infousa@sibelius.com; Web www.sibelius.com