Measures and staves (1) |
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The measures and staves tool [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] In this lesson, we will learn how to use
the measures and staves tool. It lets you
add or delete measures and staves in the score.
Start Pizzicato. In the Tools menu, select the
Main palette item. A tool window appears: It contains a whole series of icons representing working tools. According to your version of Pizzicato, some of
these tools may be missing. To select one of them, click on it
and the tool becomes selected (its contrast is reversed). Select
the When starting, Pizzicato automatically opens a
default score, according to the version you have and to the
selection you can do from the template manager. According to the work you want to do, this
starting template is not necessarily appropriate. If you want to
work with a small orchestra, you need to add other staves.
According to the length of your score, you will need to add
measures. The measures and staves tool lets you to do that. Let
us see how. Important remark: In the following examples, we take the case of
an existing piano score. According to your Pizzicato version, the
starting template may be different. Simply use the template you
see when you start Pizzicato. Most of them have at least one
page, with one staff or more. Just adapt the example to what you
see as the principles are the same. Notice thought, that
Pizzicato Soloist only allows one staff, so in that case
you will not be able to add more staves. Pizzicato Composition does not handle Page layout, so
you will only be able to work in linear view. The principles are
the same, just adapt the example to the linear view. Adding and deleting measures and staves [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] We will start by removing 16 measures of the score.
Double-click the first measure of the second system, as shown by
the red circle: The measures and staves dialog box appears: For now, click Cancel. You can also reach this dialog
box without using the tools palette, thanks to a shortcut key.
Place the mouse cursor at the same position (red circle above),
without clicking. Then type the lower case letter "m"
on the keyboard. The dialog box appears. By using this shortcut,
you do not need to open the tools palette to reach this dialog
box: it is faster and you have more space on the screen. The left part displays the type of operation for the measures.
Check the Delete box. To the left, fill in
"16" in the texte area. It is the number of measures to
delete. The measure on which you clicked is contained in the
measures that will be deleted. Pizzicato will delete 16 measures starting with the measure
you clicked on to call this dialog box. All following measures have been removed. We will now add a staff. Call the previous dialog box on the
first measure of the lower staff (by double clicking or with the
shortcut m as above). In the left part, for the measure,
check Nothing and check Add for the staves (by
default it will be "1" staff). The staff will be added
below the clicked staff, so in this case, below the lower staff.
Click OK. The score becomes: Remark: For Pizzicato Guitar, Drums,
Choir, Keyboard, you can add one staff at a
time and the text box is replaced by two menus that you can use
to select the family and instrument you want to add. Pizzicato adds a staff, by default named "3",
with a treble clef and the same time signature than the two other
staves (C is a conventional abbreviation of a 4/4 time
signature). Now let us add 8 measures to the score. Call the measures and
staves dialog box on the fourth measure of the staff (staff 1, 2
or 3, it does not matter). Fill in the measures text box with 8.
Click OK and the score becomes: Pizzicato added 8 measures. When measures are added, the
program automatically creates systems of staves to contain all
the measures. Each staff is increased by the number of added
measures. Here, the page was large enough to display the
resulting score. You can use the "-" zoom
button of the score view in order to see the full page, as above
(zoom 67 % by clicking twice on the "-" button,
according to the size of your screen): Notice that there are shortcuts for the zoom, valid in most
windows. They are the CTRL key plus the arrow keys of the
keyboard. The right and up arrows increase the zoom and the left
and down arrows decrease the zoom. Let us add 24 measures to the score. Notice that you are not
forced to add them at the end. Here, as all measures are empty,
you can insert them anywhere. When the measures are filled with
notes, you may insert measures before or add measure
after any existing measure. Call the measures and staves dialog
box on the first measure of the score and fill in the measures
text box with 24. Click OK. Apparently nothing
changed, except the left lower side of the score view, which now
displays (for instance): Remark: this is not the case for the Composition Light and
Composition Pro versions, which do not have the page mode. P-1/3 means that the page currently displayed is page 1 and
that there is a total of 3 pages. As the page was already filled
with the first 12 measures, Pizzicato has added 24 measures by
creating new pages. The above horizontal scroll bar lets you
scroll through the pages. Click on its right-hand button and page
2 is displayed, showing now P-2/3. As a last illustration, we will delete the third staff. Go
back to page 1 and call the measures and staves dialog box on the
third staff of the first system. Check Nothing for the
measures and select Delete for the staves. Click OK
and the score becomes: Notice that the number of systems per page is automatically
adjusted by Pizzicato according to the number of systems which
can hold on one page. The page indicator displays P-1/2 now.
The resulting score has only two pages now, considering the
deleted staff. It is thus with the help of the measures and staves tool that
you can adjust the structure of your score. You will use it very
often. A contextual menu helps you to easily add or remove one
measure or staff. You can reach it with a right click on a
measure. This menu gives you the Measures and staves...
item that gives access to the following items: The operation is executed automatically, based on the measure
on which you clicked to reach that menu. Call the above dialog again. You may observe two areas in the
lower part of the dialog. For the versions of Pizzicato that
contain the page mode, they let you define how Pizzicato will
modify the page layout following the operation on measures and
staves. For the measures, Pizzicato may simply insert the added
measures or shift the deleted measures, up to the end of the last
page. Or it may limit the impact on the pages and leave the
following pages untouched while inserting new pages if necessary. Similarly for the staves, Pizzicato may shift the systems
(which sizes increase if staves are added), may add the staves
only to the current system, or may leave all the system untouched
so that you can manage the systems on the page. The linear mode [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist] In the upper part of the score view, you can observe the
following popup menu: This menu has three choices, Linear, Page
and Global. The global mode will be studied in another
lesson (see the lesson entitled The
global view), at least for the Pizzicato versions
displaying the global view. Until now, we only used the page
layout view. In this mode, the score is viewed as it will be
printed. Measures go from left to right and when you get to the
border of the page, you go to the next system, as for the
handwritten writing. When the page is complete, you go to the
next page. The linear mode offers another way of viewing and editing a
score, without being concerned with the way the score will be
printed on paper. Imagine a paper strip of an infinite width, on
which you can write from left to right without stopping or having
to go back to the beginning of the next line. Imagine that this
infinite paper strip is on a roller that you can scroll
horizontally in order to view and edit any passage you want. It
is the linear mode. Click on this menu and select the Linear item.
The score view becomes: According to the size of your screen, Pizzicato displays some
of the measures which are on the infinite paper strip. The left
lower display box which indicated the page now displays M-1/36
(1). It means that there are 36 measures in the full score
and that the first visible measure on the screen is measure 1.
The 1 in brackets indicates the absolute measure number (if for
example you start numbering measures with 15, see the lesson on
the measures parameters). By default, this number is the same as
the first number. This mode is sometimes more practical in the creation of a
score, especially for the orchestra scores or the scores that
contain measures with very different widths. The linear mode
allows you to encode the contents of the measures without being
worried on how much measures will hold on a page. When the score
is encoded, you switch into the page layout view (see the lesson
on page layout) and Pizzicato displays the measures in a balanced
way according to the contents of each measure. The large horizontal scroll bar located in the lower part of
the score lets you move along all measures. This can be done in
several ways: If you click on the arrow located at the
extreme right-hand side of the scroll bar, Pizzicato
displays M-2/36(2), and redraws the score
starting from measure 2. In a similar way, by clicking on
the arrow located at the extreme left, you move one
measure towards the left. You can go to a specific measure by clicking in the area that
displays the current measure number (for instance M-2/36, in the
bottom left corner). A dialog box will ask you the measure number
you want to reach. This is also applicable in page mode or global
mode. Creating a score in linear mode [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] We will create score of 8 staves of 10 measures on the basis
of a linear template of only one measure, with no page layout.
You can use this method each time you want to create a personal
score, not located in the templates of Pizzicato, or when you
want to work in linear mode for one of the reasons explained
above. Go in the File menu and select Open template...,
Templates, One linear measure. If your Pizzicato version
does not have that option, go in the Open
item of
the File menu, open the score named One linear
measure.piz located in the Templates folder of the Templates
folder itself inside the DataEN folder (but in that
case, save your score by giving it a new name, so that you do not
overwrite the original template). It contains one staff with only
one measure in linear mode, without a prepared page layout. You
can use this model to start a new score in linear mode. The score
displays: Place the mouse cursor on this measure and type "m"
with the keyboard. You get the measures and staves dialog box. We want to create a score of 10 measures and 8 staves. As
there is already one staff of one measure, add "9" in
the box of measures to add. In the same way, select the Add
operation for the staves and type "7" for the number of
staves to add. Click OK. The dialog box disappears and Pizzicato
redraws the score with the expected measures and staves.
According to the size of your screen, you will be able to see
more or less measures and staves than below. The screen looks
like: Notice the indication M-1/10 in the bottom left corner. It
tells you that the first visible measure on the screen is measure
1 and that the score has 10 measures. In a similar way as explained for the measures, the vertical
scroll bar located to the right of the score lets you reach all
the staves: Exercise In the last example score, move successively to the following
positions: Then close this document and start each time from the template
One linear measure to do the following: tool
by clicking on it. It is the measures and staves tool.