Handling documents and windows (2) |
- Handling musical documents
- The various Pizzicato windows
- The score view and the global view
- The instruments view
- The sequencer view
- The piano roll view
- The graphic view
- The musical effects view
- Association of a comment
- The scrolling score view
- The lyrics window
- The chord progression window
- The main view and the conductor view
- The windows management modes
Watch also the following video:
Handling musical documents [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] We continue to explore the handling of documents and the
various Pizzicato windows. When you create a new Pizzicato document, it is placed by
default into the My scores folder. Its name is made out
of the date and time of the creation of the score. When you close the document or exit Pizzicato, the files from
that folder are automatically saved if you have modified them.
Otherwise, they are deleted. You can manage your documents inside this folder. Here are the
main operations you can use to arrange your documents. Except for Pizzicato Light, all other versions of Pizzicato
will automatically save the document every 10 minutes and make
two backup copies of the document in case something goes wrong.
You can always find the backup files in the Backups
folder of the main Pizzicato folder (for Window, you will find it
in My Documents and for Mac, in the Application folder).
You can modify this default behaviour. See the lesson on Automatic saving and backup. The various Pizzicato windows [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] Since the first release of Pizzicato, many different windows
have been developed to help you display and/or modify music
documents. They are all available from the Pizzicato Windows menu,
but according to the version you have, some of them are not
available. In the most recent versions of Pizzicato, the purpose is to
gather the most useful features of Pizzicato into a limited
number of windows, so that you do not need to open and handle
many windows for various aspects of your work. Accordingly, the
most important windows are the score view, the global
view and the conductor view. The score
view is present in all versions of Pizzicato, but the other two
are only available in the more advanced versions of Pizzicato. Here is a short description of each windows, in relationship
to the Pizzicato version you have. Please note that most of these
windows can also be open if you right click on the icon of a
score and select the window you want to open for that score. The score view and the global view [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] The score view is the default view when you open a document.
It displays the content of the score, in music notation. There are three modes in which you can view the score in the
score view. According to the version you have, you can select the
mode in the menu appearing in the upper tool bar of that window.
The three modes are Page, Linear and Global. The Page mode displays the score as it will be
printed on paper. It is very useful when you work on the page
layout of the score. You will learn a lot about the page mode in
the lesson covering the page layout. The Linear mode displays the score with all the
measures one after the other on a horinzontal line, as a large
system of staves that contains all the measures. You can scroll
from left to right to select which part of the measures are
displayed. This mode is useful when you enter the music or
compose a music. At this step, you often do not need to worry
about how it will be laid out for printing. The Global mode is similar to the linear view, but
several other lanes may be displayed, to help you in many aspects
of music composition, arranging and sound rendering. This mode is
the subject of a specific lesson about the
global view and is only available in the more advanced
versions of Pizzicato. The instruments view [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] Open the Ex044 example. To get the instruments view,
select the Instruments item of the Windows menu
: According to your MIDI configuration, the contents of some
boxes may be slightly different but it does not matter now. Each line represents the characteristics of a staff. It is
here that you determine the name of the staff, the instruments
used, as well as various other parameters which affect the way
the piece will be played. You can reach the other parameters by clicking on the This view is a little different from the others, because it
does not have a zoom box and its size is fixed. It can be moved
but not resized. Close this view with the close box. The sequencer view [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] The word sequencer usually means a program or a device used to
record sequences of notes (played directly on a musical
keyboard), to work on them in various forms and to play them
back. Most sequencers you find on the market let you see the
musical recorded measures as an array of small blocks. Pizzicato has a view which lets you display the measures in
the same way, hence the name given to this view, the sequencer
view. Open the Ex042.piz document in the
Examples folder. In the Windows menu, select the
Sequencer item. The sequencer view appears: This view behaves exactly like the score view: you can move
it, close it, resize it or change the zoom level. Its contents displays 4 measures in the shape of 4 small
blocks in which notes are represented by horizontal lines. The
length of the lines represents the duration of the note and the
vertical position of the line inside the block represents the
pitch (the high pitch notes higher than the low pitch notes). The
melody is thus presented in a visual way in the shape of a curve
which follows the pitch of the note. The higher part has four buttons, respectively named H- H+
V- and V+. These buttons let you increase or
decrease both horizontal and vertical sizes of the measures. For
example, the H+ button increases the horizontal size of
the measures. By clicking twice on V+ and once on H+,
the sequencer becomes: By clicking on the V- and H- buttons, the
size decreases. These zoom functions thus let you adapt the
sequencer view to the work you do. It is sometimes useful to look
closer in some measures to follow a melody. On the other hand, to
see the overall picture of an orchestra score, you can decrease
the size of the blocks to the minimum in order to have the
maximum number of measures visible on the screen. Open the sequencer view of the Ex043 example. The 4
staves of 4 measures each are represented in the following way: You can listen to the score with the space bar. A small cursor
shows the current measure in progress, as for the score view. You
may also use the buttons of the recorder, displayed to the left
of the zoom buttons. Those buttons appear in almost each view and
let you control the playing of the score: Just to the right, a text box displays the number of the
playing measure. The "..." button give you access to
various play parameters. We will explain them later. The piano roll view [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] To open this view, select the piano
roll item of the Windows menu. The following window
appears: Increase this window with the zoom box You will notice that each staff is represented by a different
colour for the notes. If your screen is smaller, it can happen
that some are not visible. The pitches of the notes are measured
with a musical keyboard on the left and it can be used to locate
them. The digits from 1 to 4 located in the higher part of the
window are the measure numbers. In the higher part of the window you can see the same H-
H+ V- and V+ buttons which have the same function
as in the sequencer view. They let you resize the display of
measures and notes. Try the 4 buttons one after the other so you
can see the effect they produce on the display. Note that you can
use the same button several times. If you want to increase the
thickness of the note lines, you can for example click three
times on V+. This window is only used to view many instruments together on
the same piano roll. You can not modify the music with this
window. Pizzicato has another similar window, the graphic window,
which is a full piano roll editor where you can enter and modify
the notes directly. The graphic view [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] The graphic view helps you to enter music in the form of small
graphic bars that you can add, move or delete. It looks like this
: You can open it from the Graphic editor... of the Windows
menu. For more information, see the lesson on the
graphic editor. The musical effects view [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] You can open it from the Musical effects... item of
the Windows menu. It is used to add musical effects to
the content of the measures, for each staff. It looks like this: You can learn more about it in the lesson about the musical effects view. Association of a comment [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] You can associate a comment to each musical
score. Select the Comments item in the Windows
menu. The following dialog box appears: The text box lets you introduce personal notes, remarks or
comments about the musical score. You can, for example, use it to
specify the work that still needs to be done with the score or
the explanations on its contents, etc. These notes will be saved with the document and you can thus
read or modify them again later. Close this dialog box by
clicking OK. The scrolling score view [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] Open the Ex045.piz document. The lyrics window [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Pro] [Guitar] [Choir] [Soloist] This window is used as a fast method to enter the lyrics under
the notes of a song or choir part. See the lesson on the lyrics for more information. The chord progression window [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] This window is used to enter or modify a chord progression
efficiently. See the lesson on the chord
progression window. The main view and the conductor view [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] The main view has been developed at the beginning of
Pizzicato. You will still find some references of it in the
course, but it has been presently replaced by the advantages of
the conductor view and the new document manager. See for instance
the lesson about working with the sequencer
and the main view. The conductor view is a musical desktop on which you can
organize your scores and use the numerous tools to help the
process of music composition. You will find a full description of
it in the lesson about the conductor view
and the following lessons. The windows management modes [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] Pizzicato has three ways of handling the score and conductor
views on the screen. The default mode is oriented around the
score view. You can select the windows management mode in the Windows
menu, under the Windows management... item. Here is the description of the three modes. All other windows are not affected by this window management
mode, but they may be covered by the other windows.
icon which
reveals a popup menu with a list of the available configurations.
Select for example the Volume+ effects item from this
menu. The view offers you a mixing table determining volume,
balance and two effects (here reverberation and chorus) for each
instrument :
(on Mac:
"+" ). You will be able to observe all the notes of the
4 staves, placed in the same view: