Editing amplitude and muting notes

In this tour, you will learn how to use the amplitude tool to alter the volume of, and to mute, notes.

Adjusting the amplitude

Select from the toolbox or the context menu in the editing area the amplitude tool.

With the tool selected, click on a note (or one of several notes selected) and – without releasing the mouse button – drag it (or them) up or down. The notes will get thicker or thinner as they get louder or softer.

The gearing of the amplitude adjustment is dependent upon the vertical zoom resolution. Press and hold the [Alt] key, to switch to smaller increments for finer adjustment.

The inspector

As an alternative to editing selected notes with the tool, you can enter the desired values in the inspector beneath the toolbar. Drag the existing value to change it or double-click on it and type in the value desired. Press and hold the [Alt] key, to switch to smaller increments for finer adjustment.

If you have selected several notes to which different amplitude adjustment has been applied, three hyphens are displayed in the box – followed, as you click in the box and drag, by values describing the extent of the relative change.

Amplitude transitions

A thick orange line appears between connected notes as soon as you change the amplitude of one note more, or in a different direction, than that of the other. This line represents the amplitude transition between the two notes. If you move the amplitude tool to the end of the first note, it changes into the amplitude transitions tool. Dragging vertically with this tool governs the speed of the amplitude transition, which is indicated by the steepness of the connecting line.

Double-clicking with the amplitude transitions tool at the end of a note deactivates the amplitude transition and the orange line disappears. A further double-click reactivates the transition.

Muting and unmuting notes

Double-clicking with the amplitude tool on one or more selected notes mutes them. Only the outline of the blobs is now shown, to indicate that the notes in question have been muted, but you can still select and edit them. A further double-click unmutes the muted notes.

The Reset commands

In the Edit > Reset Specific Edits > Amplitude cascading menu, you will find two commands that can be used to reverse the effects of particular types of amplitude editing (thereby restoring the notes selected in certain respects to their original state) as well as the Unmute command, which is self-explanatory. These commands relate always to the current selection and are grayed out if no editing of the type in question has been applied to the selected notes. Note that these commands operate independently of the normal undo function.