Real time recording (2) |
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Tracks and staves [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] When you place notes on the staff, they are
associated to the measures and are memorized into these
measures, in the form of a graphic data structure. In other
words, Pizzicato memorizes the vertical and horizontal
positions of notes and rests related to the beginning of the
measure, it memorizes the widths of measures, the spacing
between staves, etc. This set of digital information is used
by Pizzicato to draw the score on the screen or printer. When
Pizzicato plays the score, it computes the notes to be sent
and their respective durations. On the other hand, for each staff of the
score, Pizzicato keeps a storage section called a MIDI track. A track can be viewed as a long band which unrolls
into time and on which MIDI information is
placed, representing a piece of music without musical
notation. Let us take a very simple score which contains 2
music notes. This piece could be represented by the 4
following information: Each note of the musical keyboard is
located with a number (central C of the keyboard is key
number 60). Those four information are sufficient to
represent this little two notes musical score. A whole
symphony could be represented this way and would contain
thousands of lines like those above. This format is not very
practical for a performer, but the computer can easily treat
this kind of information. In a MIDI track, a melody is stored
in a similar way. When you play notes on the keyboard and
Pizzicato memorizes them, the notes are initially stored in
the MIDI track of the concerned staff, under the above
format. Then, starting from this table, Pizzicato calculates
the musical notation. This operation is called the transcription and is done automatically. For the above example,
the equivalent score would be: The notes path is thus: It is possible to avoid the last two steps,
so as to keep the notes in the tracks without transforming
them into musical notation. It lets you execute intermediate
operations on these notes, before transcribing them. Now let
us study the various aspects of the tracks transcription and
contents.
Transcription [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] The tracks contents are visible in the sequencer view and in
the piano roll view. The score has 4 measures. The operation which transforms the
information contained in a track into musical notation is called
transcription. To transcribe one or more measures, select them
with the selection tool and choose the Transcribe item
from the Edit menu. You can also execute this operation
from the sequencer view. In the score view, with the selection tool, select 4 measures
of the bass staff: It now displays the content of the track in the form of notes.
The track data were converted into musical notation. We used here the standard options of transcription. A dialog
box is used to modify the way the transcription is done. In the
Options menu, select the Transcription item
The following dialog box appears: Let us go through the options. Click OK. Open the
Ex052 document. The track associated with the first staff
contains a recording done in real time for the two hands of the
piano. Listen to this track with the space bar. We will
transcribe it in musical notation. Add a key signature with 2
sharps. You get: As we have seen, the
transcription allows to calculate the musical notation starting
from the information contained in the tracks. After this
operation, the notes are erased from the tracks. The opposite
operation is also possible. Select all measures and in the Edit
menu, select the Score to track item. All notes
disappear, but if you make the score play, it is played as
before. Pizzicato simply removed the musical notation and placed
the notes in the associated MIDI track. Close this document without
saving. Quantization [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] The quantization is an operation which consists
in adjusting the position and the duration of notes played, in
order to align them together and with the beats of the measure. When you add 4 quarter notes in a 4/4 measure,
Pizzicato will play them exactly. Each note start will be placed
exactly on the beginning of the beat and each note duration will
be exactly 1 beat of the measure. The graph in the piano view
will looks like this: Each line is precisely aligned with the beats.
When a person plays this melody on a keyboard, the precision
reached is never comparable with the above diagram, especially
for a beginner, and the diagram will rather look like this: Quantization lets you go from this diagram to
the previous one. It corrects the spacing and brings the notes
back to the beginning of the nearest beat. It is a double-edged weapon and you must not
misuse it. A musician who performs a musical work will
voluntarily create light differences in his manner of playing the
notes. It is one of his tools to personalize the performance and
to express what he feels. If after recording his performance in
real time you quantize the play, you will remove this expression
and the piece will appear much more mechanical and artificial. If you make your first steps on the musical
keyboard and want to introduce melodies or battery rhythms in
real time, the quantization will be useful because it lets you
correct your precision errors. The basic rule is thus to use the quantization
to remove shiftings caused by errors. When the shifting belongs
to the musical work, you must not touch them, otherwise you will
remove a part of the score beauty. When working with percussion rhythms,
quantization will be very useful, because this kind of instrument
must often have a rather important rhythmic precision. Let us see now in practice how to use
quantization. Three types of operations are possible. Here
are their descriptions. This operation move the note start by
bringing it to the nearest quantization value. The note total
duration does not change. The end of the note is moved in the
same manner as the note start. In the piano roll, it
corresponds to a horizontal shift of a line. The quantization value determines the
precision used. If you use a quarter note value, each note
will be moved to start exactly at the beginning of the
nearest quarter note which can be placed in the measure. With
a 4/4 measure, the notes will thus be brought back on the
first, the second, the third or the fourth beat. By selecting
an eighth note, the notes will be adjusted to the nearest
half-beat. There will thus be 8 possibilities, because a 4/4
measure contains 8 eighth notes. If you use a 16th note for
the quantization value, you will have 16 possibilities, and
so on. We thus see that the influence of the
quantization is weaker as its value gets lower. By selecting
the 128th note as quantization value, the notes could be
moved only from a half-128th note and the effect will be
almost impossible to hear. If you place a whole note as
quantization value, all notes will be brought back to the
beginning of the current measure or the following one, and
the effect will be terrible. The Dotted box specifies a dotted
value such as for example a dotted quarter note (useful in
6/8 measures for example). By checking the 3 for 2 box,
the rhythmic value is considered as a triplet. Independently of the note start position,
you may also quantize the note duration to bring them back to
multiples of the quantization value. The principle is the
same, but only the length of the line representing the note
is modified. The start of the note is not affected. This operation corrects the unexpected
notes. While playing on the keyboard, you accidentally slide
on a note which was unexpected. These notes are often very
short, because the reflexes of the performer will stop this
note as soon as possible. By using this option, Pizzicato
simply removes all notes having a duration lower than the
specified duration. The first operation is checked. Check also the
second one and click on Quantize. Go back to the piano
roll to visualize the effects of these operations. The measures
are now displayed as follows: Compare this drawing with the one before
quantization. The notes are now all aligned with quarters of
beats because the value of the selected quantization was the 16th
note. By going back in the score view, listen to the sound
difference. Recording multiple voices - Correcting the notes [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] You can also directly work in the score to record in real
time. It is possible to record several voices on the same staff. We
will combine the rhythmic voices menu with the transcription
options. You can execute that with voices 1 to 8. In practice, beyond
three voices, the notation becomes complex and more difficult to
read. Notice that if you play chords, those are considered by
Pizzicato as only one rhythmic voice if each note of the chord
has the same duration. When you play notes on the keyboard and when Pizzicato
transcribes them in musical notation, it nevertheless memorizes
the exact way in which you played them. In other words, your
performance imprecision (desired or not) is associated to the
notes, so that Pizzicato can play them again as you originally
played them. You can reach these performance parameters and
modify them. You can also reach it by clicking a note while holding down
the SHIFT key. The values will not necessarily be the same on
your screen, because they depend on how you played the note. When you add a note with the mouse, these three boxes are
disabled. You can then modify them to create performance effects.
In addition, if you play notes on the keyboard, you can modify
one or more notes using this dialog box to correct the
performance, or simply to disable the three boxes to go back to a
note such as it would be played with musical notation. The Justification frame allows two things: Other frames are present in this dialog according to the
Pizzicato version you have. See the lesson on the contextual menu of a note. Click OK.
. In the
recorder, activate the metronome.