Spotlighting Conflict: Keyboard Maestro’s Bar Line Palette in Sibelius
Geek-o-meter: 1 2️⃣ 3
You’re in the middle of crafting your next great opus. The bassoon ventures a little high with ledger lines? No problem! Just press Q to navigate to the tenor clef and hit Return. Your need for bitonality has vanished, and you want the key signature of D major? Easy peasy! Press K, type ‘d ma,’ find it, and press Return. You’ve settled on a hymn for the final section? No problemo! Press T - 4 - Tab - 4 - Return to quickly insert 4/4 time. You want the last section to repeat; no probl… Wait, there’s no shortcut for barlines?
Well, I suppose they must’ve been in a hurry when that feature was first implemented. It’s true that B is occupied for something else, and L is taken for lines. They could’ve settled on the pipe character |, but I suspect that few people even know it exists.
So, let’s do it the hard way:
Select the barline
Right-click
Select the type of barline
If you instead select the bar, keep in mind that Sibelius applies the same barline to both the first and last barline of the selection. This feature is quite handy for double barlines, but not always ideal for final barlines. Fortunately, it’s also clever enough to insert facing repeat barlines.
But what if I told you we could bring up a menu like this:
The Keyboard Maestro Trick
In Keyboard Maestro, I’ve created a group of macros specifically for Sibelius barlines and assigned them all the same trigger: hyper–B. For each of these different barline types, I instruct KM to send an obscure shortcut to Sibelius—one that I’m not trying to remember[^1]—to create the barlines.
Since all the macros in my group share the same hyper–B shortcut, whenever I press hyper–B, I get a conflict palette. It’s Keyboard Maestro’s way of saying, “Hey, which one of these do you mean?”
I’ve named the macros in a hotkey style, placing the character I want to press to invoke them as the first character. For example, ‘hyper–B - 2’ gives me a double barline.
In reality, it sends the shortcut Control-Option-3 to Sibelius. Let’s see what that does.
Sibelius
Let’s head over to the notation side. If I search for “double barline,” I can see that they are all commands, meaning they are triggered from the menu and not from a plugin.
So, let’s dive into the familiar Keyboard Shortcuts Preferences and search for “double barline”:
Add the shortcut you prefer for that, along with a couple of others, and you’re good to go.
It’s as simple as that—and incredibly powerful!
Palettes
I’ve created a handful of palettes for barlines, symbols, filters, and more. They all correspond to the hyperkey plus what I want to do with them—hyper–B (for barlines), for example, allows me to get the barline I need with a simple keystroke.
This is why iPad applications or Stream Deck profiles with extensive menus have never made much sense to me. First, I’d have to remove my hands from the keyboard (and in the case of the iPad, reach for a non-tactile surface), which introduces lag. Second, I’d have to hunt for the menu I need. Sure, the three most used might be ingrained in muscle memory, but they’re often arranged by categories that don’t mean much to me. Third, I would then need to find the command.
In a perfect world, I would remember all the shortcuts, but I won’t. My focus is on music. With the palettes, I can eliminate that crucial first step, keeping my fingers on the keyboard. With a simple hyper + any key, I can execute a command with just three keystrokes.
If you’re sold on Keyboard Maestro or simply have it lying around, try setting up this barline palette and let me know what you think after a while!
Footnotes
[^1]: Remember when I advocated for hotkeys? We should reserve shortcuts for something else, and this is one of those cases.