Keypad Shortcuts

Geek-o-meter: 1️⃣ 2 3

In front of me is a laptop. It’s small, handy, and has 54 keys. Most of these are letters and numbers, while some are special characters and others serve specific functions.

In total, they give me quick access to 54 commands in Sibelius. Pressing ‘I’ opens the ‘Add or remove instruments’ dialog, while ‘W’ toggles between parts and score. Other keys open galleries: ‘T’ opens time signatures and ‘K’ opens key signatures. Some keys don't do anything... yet.

On the desktop computer, I have a keyboard with a numerical keypad. I hope you have one as well since it is indispensable for working in Sibelius. It mirrors the virtual keypad where you can select accidentals, note lengths, and more. Pressing ‘4’ on the keypad is a shortcut for a ‘quarter note’. How do I know? Let's find out!

Welcooooooome to the Machine

Press ⌘ + , (comma) to open Sibelius preferences. In this menu, select ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ and for the category select ‘Keypad (all)’. This shows us that the shortcut for ‘4 on keypad’ is indeed ‘4’.

Slight digression: If you go to the ‘Note Input tab’ category and select ‘Add interval 4th above’, it shows that the shortcut is also 4. What Sibelius neglects to tell us is that it differentiates between the ‘4’-key just above ‘E’ and ‘R’ (on a QWERTY-keyboard) and the ‘4’ on the keypad. This is the difference between the key label and the key position. Thanks, Sibelius!

Hopefully, using the keypad is not as surprising to you as an analog phone is to Gen Alpha. I also hope that you take advantage of this and don’t mouse over to reach the functions. Instead, make it a habit to use the keypad for note length, accidentals, rests, and articulations.

What long-time users of the app might know is that these two buttons just above the tie[^1] have another primary function.

Up until Sibelius’s tablet adaptation, these were used for browsing the panes. A feature that is still evident when you are on the four right-most panes. Try pressing what looks like the beaming for two 16th-notes (or semiquavers to you imperialists out there). Pressing the bottom of the two moves one pane over, and pressing the upper one takes you back to the first pane. The bottom row is for assigning voices. I’ve never seen a keypad with these buttons, so we’ll use other shortcuts for these.

You might have visited these outskirts in your quest for special symbols. You might even have gone to this neck of the woods by the aforementioned navigation buttons for browsing. But now I want to introduce you to the power of…

Modifiers

By pressing any of the modifier keys, we are essentially creating a whole new keyboard set. Instead of 16 keys on the keypad (I want you to keep the navigation buttons intact), we have 16 more if we press the ⌘-key. Additionally, 16 more with ⌥, 16 with ⌃, and 16 with ⇧. Also, 16 for each of the combinations of two, three, and all four keys. (If you're having trouble pressing the four keys, you should definitely check out the Hyper-key). Combinations of keys and modifiers give us 15 alternations of the keypad, leading us to perform 256 commands on the keypad alone.

Pressing the ⌃-key, I can get it to act as the second pane of the keypad. The ⌥-key could control the third pane. ⌃+⌥ could be reserved for the fourth pane and so on.

I don’t think you gain that much by converting entire panes. For example, on the second pane, there are a lot of features that I don’t even use once a year. Instead, I can identify the three most common ones I use.

Then, under Keypad (more notes), assign the shortcuts ⌃-1 for Bracket notehead, ⌃-/ for Acciaccatura, and ⌃-Enter for ‘Cue size (on/off)’.

Three very useful commands to me.

Some of you may already have Acciaccatura triggered by the slash-key[^2] but on my keyboard in sleek Scandinavian design, where we umlaut all the vowels, that is the key just above the ‘9’-key on the keypad which famously triggers the staccato dot.

Take a look at the next pane in the same way. All of these are actually really valuable, so I map them out as ⌃-⌥ and then mirror the keypad.

If you are doing a lot of big band writing, the fifth pane might be something to take a closer look at, or if you find yourself with double accidentals, you might want to look into that on the sixth pane.

Now, the next time you are working, first of all, never mouse over. Instead, press the buttons on the keypad. Press the navigation buttons to move between panes, and if you find yourself looking for the same buttons again and again, add them to a list of shortcuts to remember.

It will be a matter of time before you, like me, work without the virtual keypad open. Instead, the physical one is enough because the modifiers expand the palette.

Redundancy

There are 4 redundant buttons on the virtual keypad: the three buttons in the top row are delete, undo, and redo from left to right, plus the Escape-key represented by an arrow in a circle pointing in the direction your focus *should* be. We already have keys and shortcuts for these, and they are not even represented by a key on the keyboard. I know this new redesign of the keypad comes from Avid’s push to make Sibelius for the iPad where it probably makes a lot more sense.

Practice

Like the ribbon, close the keypad and enjoy the valuable screen real estate to focus on what matters. With a couple of new shortcuts in front of you to practice, press the button to close the keypad. You can always bring it back up with the ribbon. It’s under ‘View’ and then I’m going to let you find it with hotkeys.

For many years, I enjoyed keypad serenity until—for some reason—Avid wanted to remind me that I can always get the keypad back with the Sibelius embodiment of Clippy:

Go to Preferences > Display and uncheck ‘Minimize Keypad to floating button’ and zen with me.

Footnotes

[^1]: Please remember to use this button when two noteheads represent one sound, i.e., when (in 4/4) you need a note of 2 beats that starts on the last beat you’ll end up with two noteheads—one on each side of the barline—that represent one event. For legato, phrasing, bowing, and notes that in general are of different pitch, use a slur: press the S-key.

[^2]: Not invented by the guitarist but named in honor of.