Notes, rhythm and rests

Note entry in DomiSol is type-and-advance. Every pitch key writes a note at the cursor and steps forward, so writing a phrase is one continuous action rather than click-select-click.

Replace or insert

What a pitch key does to the note the cursor is on is your choice, set by Typing on the Note tab — on a phone, the Replace / Insert switch above the pitch keys:

Mode	Typing a pitch	Use it for
Replace (default)	Types over the note at the cursor and steps forward	Correcting a scan, fixing a wrong pitch — the note count doesn’t change
Insert	Pushes a new note in after the cursor and shifts the rest along	Adding notes a scan missed, or writing into the middle of a phrase

The switch shows which one is live, and it stays where you left it — including next time you open the app. It applies to the Rest key too: in Insert mode Rest adds a beat of silence rather than silencing the note you’re on.

Nothing is lost either way — ⌘/Ctrl+Z undoes a note in one step.

Adding one note without switching modes. Enter opens a blank slot after the cursor and ⇧+Enter opens one before it — the After and Before buttons on the Note tab, and + after / + before on the phone keyboard. Type into the slot to fill it. These never replace anything and never change with the mode, so they’re the thing to reach for when you only need one note in the middle of a line. With nothing selected, Before puts a slot at the very start of the part — which is how you add an upbeat a scan missed.

Pitches

d r m f s l t     solfa
1 2 3 4 5 6 7     jianpu — the same degrees

Both are always live, whichever display mode you’re in: if you read solfa but your hands know the numbers, type the numbers.

Octaves. Notes carry an octave mark — a dot above for higher, below for lower, up to two. Press o to cycle the input octave through the full range (middle → up → up-two → down → down-two → middle), or Shift+↑ / ↓ to move the selected note.

Accidentals. Sharp, flat and natural are on the Note tab, and apply to the selected note. In solfa they change the syllable (d sharpened is di); in jianpu they show as # or ♭ before the number.

Duration

Pick a duration before you type and it applies to everything you write until you change it:

Key	Duration	Beats in 4/4
w	Whole	4
h	Half	2
q	Quarter	1
e	Eighth	½
x	Sixteenth	¼

. toggles a dot, which makes the current duration half again as long — a dotted quarter is 1½ beats. It is not a staccato dot; that mark lives on the Expression tab.

In jianpu these render the way the notation expects: a plain number is a beat, underlines below shorten it, and dashes after it hold it. You don’t manage that — write the duration and the renderer draws the right thing.

Notes that don’t fit their bar

Write a note longer than the space left in its bar and DomiSol splits it into a tied chain that stops at the bar line. A half note followed by a whole note in 4/4 doesn’t make a six-beat bar; it makes a bar that ends correctly and a tie carrying the rest into the next one.

It stays one sound — playback holds through the tie rather than re-articulating — and each piece is a duration the notation can actually draw.

Rests and silence

Two different things, deliberately:

• Rest (the Rest button, or 0) inserts a silence of the current duration. Use it to write a beat of nothing.
• Delete (Backspace) turns the selected note into a rest of the same length, keeping the bar’s beats intact so parts stay aligned. Press it again on that rest and the time itself is removed, closing the gap.

That two-stage behaviour is deliberate. Deleting straight to a gap silently pushes one voice out of step with the others in a multi-part score; deleting only to a rest leaves no way to take time out at all.

Ties

Tie on the Note tab joins the selected note to the next one of the same pitch. The arc renders in both notations and in the PDF, and the two notes sound as one held note rather than two attacks.

Moving around

Key	Action
← →	Previous / next note
↑ ↓	Move the selected note up or down a scale step
Enter	Insert a new note after the selected one
⇧+Enter	Insert a new note before the selected one
⌘/Ctrl+Z	Undo
⌘/Ctrl+⇧+Z	Redo

↑/↓ is worth a moment: it moves by scale step, not semitone, so 4 becomes 5. Select everything with ⌘/Ctrl+A and it transposes the whole piece by a step — a fast way to try a melody a little higher for your sopranos.

The full list is in the editor under Shortcuts (or press ?).

Where to go next

• Your first score — if you skipped ahead.
• Notation guides — what the durations and octave dots mean.