Tip #12 - Use The CapsLock Key When Entering Lots of Down Stem Notes

This is a quickie, but remember that if you are entering a lot of down stem notes with the keyboard you can use the CapsLock key so that you don't have to hold Shift down for every note. CapsLock won't affect non-note symbols (eg. v still enters hammer-on, V enters pull-off) and it also won't affect hitting a-g to jump the caret down and A-G to jump the caret up in treble/bass lines.

One good use for this feature is when you are entering a treble staff with two voices, one in the upper range (usually up stem notes) and another in the lower range (down stem notes) as in the attached example. The easiest way to enter this kind of music is by entering all the up stem notes first, then go back to the beginning, hit CapsLock, and then enter all the down stem notes. (To be more precise, it's best to enter the voice with the most notes first, so if there is a rich melody in the low voice with only a few notes in the high voice it's better to enter the lower voice first.) Doing it this way generally saves a lot of up and down motion on each chord, plus you don't have to keep toggling the Shift key all the time for the down notes.

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