@node "Notat" Introduction Opened through the Display menu, the notation editor is an alternative method of displaying your song. It uses standard musical notation - notes, rests, time and key signatures and so on - rather than the more computer- friendly notation used in the Tracker editor. The music can also be printed out and played on a musical instrument. The notation editor is strongly bound to the Tracker editor. After all, the two editors are just two different ways of displaying the same song. So when you add a note to the song in the notation editor, the note is also added in the Tracker editor. Player commands, however, can only be entered in the Tracker editor. OctaMED is primarily a Tracker-based sequencer, and the notation editor exists as a different way of displaying and entering notes, rather than a comprehensive and professional musical notation system. That said, the Soundstudio's notation editor is much more powerful than the basic editor provided with versions up to OctaMED V5, and should be more than adequate for most of your needs. Improvements on the old notation editor Veteran OctaMED users may remember that a notation editor was introduced to OctaMED V2. Although it was certainly an editor, and it certainly displayed traditional notation, it was admittedly rather difficult to use. As one user pointed out, one good use of it was to imitate a "stylophone", that simple electronic instrument made famous by Rolf Harris, by dragging the mouse up and down the staffs! That user will be pleased to know that stylophones can still be imitated in this notation editor. Other slightly more important new features are: The ability to add and remove staffs. Previously, the number of staffs was fixed at 2, but there can now be up to 16 staffs - enough for a decent-sized orchestra! Any staff can have a treble, bass or alto clef. Much greater control over how notes are displayed on the staffs. Particular Tracker editor tracks are assigned to particular staffs. If more than one track is displayed on a particular staff, there is an easy way to select the track to be edited. The three rows of tiny track buttons have finally disappeared! Also, the stems of all notes on each track can be set to go up or down, if required. Print quality is vastly improved. Four different resolutions are available, three of which use a Compugraphic font for far superior quality. The notation editor is more measure-based. You can add and remove single measures from a block. The number of measures in the block, using the time signature as a guide, is shown. As the mouse pointer is moved across a staff, OctaMED displays the current beat and "part-of-beat" (usually 16th note) number of each measure. Several display options. The number of measures shown at once can be adjusted (previously, just one measure was always shown). Staffs can be named, and these names can be temporarily removed from the left side of staffs. The width of the staffs can be altered. Blocks can be scrolled in numerical order or in the order in which they appear in the playing sequence. All of these options affect printing. A wider variety of available time signatures. Common signatures like 4/4, 3/4, 2/2 and 6/8 are available, together with more obscure ones like 7/1! Plus many more smaller features. The editor should now be much easier to use. Overview By default, two staffs (treble and bass) are displayed, in the key of C major and in 4/4 time. You can change this using the Staff Setup (part 11.7) and Signatures (part 11.8) windows. Only one set of staffs is ever shown on the screen at once, but you can set the number of measures shown using the Notation Display Setup window (part 11.9). By default, only one measure is shown at any one time. Because the notation editor is closely bound to the Tracker editor, each Tracker editor track is shown on a particular staff. By default, a 4-channel setup is assumed, so tracks 0 and 3 are shown on the top staff (staff 1), tracks 1 and 2 on the bottom staff (number 2). Change this using the Assign Tracks window (part 11.6). Of course, it's rare that all the notes in the song are shown on the staffs at once. To move around the song, drag the left-hand vertical scroll bar. Unlike the Tracker editor, this scroll bar moves around the entire song, rather than just the current block; blocks are shown either in numerical order or in playing sequence order. The required order is chosen through the Notation Display Setup window. The basic procedure for editing is: Switch Edit mode on (Main Control) Click on the required note or rest, in the Tools window (part 11.5). The Tools window is opened with the main notation editor window If more than one track is displayed on the staff where the note or rest will be entered, choose the required track using the slider at the bottom- right of the Tools window Place this note or rest on the staff, by clicking at the required point A note is deleted by replacing it with an appropriate rest. Print the song through the Print Notation window (part 11.10). The notation editor, in common with several other major windows in OctaMED, has a separate menu bar. All windows are opened through the Windows menu on this bar, except Print Notation, which is opened through the Project menu. The main notation editor window On the notation editor's title bar, you'll see something like "Block 0/2 - Lines 0 - 15 (last 63)". This means "the editor is currently showing lines 000 to 015 of block 0, the last block being number 2 and the last line in the block, 063". One Tracker editor line is displayed in the notation editor as a 16th note. So, for example, a quarter note is four Tracker editor lines long. If the staffs are partially hidden, use the horizontal and right-hand scroll bars to show a different part of the staffs. Because only one set of staffs are shown at once, use the left-hand scroll bar to show a different part of the song on the staffs. The Tracker editor and notation editor are "in sync", so that whatever is currently showing in the notation editor is also showing in the Tracker editor, and vice-versa. To enter notes, make sure Edit is on (Main Control window), and select a note in the Tools window. Now click where you require the note to be on one of the staffs. If you hold down the mouse button and drag over the staffs, you can hear the note corresponding to its staff position: this note is shown in the Tools window. And yes, it can sound like a stylophone! The method of removing notes is to replace them with an appropriate rest. For example, to delete a quarter note, select a quarter note rest from the Tools window, then click on the offending note. More is said about editing in the next section. The Tools window Use this window to select a note or rest to add to a staff. It's opened automatically with the main notation editor, but you can close it using its close gadget, then reopen it through the notation editor's Windows menu. Note and rest boxes Starting from the left, there are 8 note boxes and 8 rest boxes. Select one of these notes or rests by clicking on the appropriate box. The length of the selection, in Tracker editor lines, is shown in the "Length" box. The notes available, together with their length, are: American name | British name | Length (in lines) ---------------------+-----------------+------------------- Whole note | Semibreve | 16 Dotted half-note | Dotted minim | 12 Half-note | Minim | 8 Dotted quarter-note | Dotted crotchet | 6 Quarter-note | Crotchet | 4 Dotted 8th-note | Dotted quaver | 3 8th-note | Quaver | 2 16th-note | Semiquaver | 1 If the note or rest you require is not shown in any box, you can type its length (in lines) directly into the Length box. As the above table shows, one Tracker editor line is equivalent to a 16th note. So notes shorter than a 16th note are not allowed. Now move the mouse pointer over one of the staffs. The selected note or rest appears. Next, hold down the left mouse button. The Tracker editor note corresponding to the pointer's position is shown, in the display box below Length. Release the mouse button to add that note. Mouse position display box To help you place notes accurately, OctaMED tells you exactly where you are on the staff as you move the mouse. This information is given below the Length box. The current Tracker editor line is shown after an L:, and the current beat and "part-of-beat" numbers in this measure after a B:. The number of beats in the measure is dictated by the time signature. In 3/4 time, for example, there are 3 beats per measure. Each beat in 3/4 time is four 16th notes in length; these are the "part-of-beats." For example, to add a note at the very start of a measure, ensure that B: 1-1 is shown. This means that the mouse pointer is currently over the first part-of-beat of the first beat of a measure (in other words, at the start of a measure). The smallest note value available is the 16th note. Sometimes, however, you know that your song will never use notes as short as 16th notes. Perhaps the song only ever uses 8th notes. You can set the part-of-beat value to an 8th note; this has the effect of moving (or "quantizing") notes that you enter to the nearest 8th note, instead of the usual 16th note. To do this, switch Space on (Main Control), and set the Space Value to 2 (Keyboard Options). This behaviour is quite sensible, because, like in the Tracker editor, you can now only enter notes on lines whose number is a multiple of two (000, 002, 004 and so on). Because one Tracker editor line is a 16th note, this has the effect of quantizing your song to the nearest 8th note. To quantize your song to the nearest quarter note, set the Space Value to 4. Try out other values too. Accidentals The key signature of the song dictates whether a particular note is sharp, flat or natural. A note can be forced to become sharp, flat or natural, irrespective of the key signature, by adding an appropriate sign just before the note. Such a note is called an "accidental". To enter an accidental note, enter the note as usual, then add a sharp, flat or natural using the # and b buttons in the Tools window. After clicking the # button, every time you click on a note, the note is made one halfstep sharper. After clicking the b button, a note can be made flatter in the same way. For example, to enter a G# in the key of C major (where G is usually natural), enter a G as usual. Now click on the # button, and click on the G that you have just entered. A sharp sign will be added to the note. In the key of Db major, however, G is usually flat. So after clicking the # button, clicking the Gb will add a natural sign to make the note G natural. Clicking it again will add a sharp sign, because every time you click on a note, the note is made one halfstep sharper. Similarly for the b button. Track selection Just the gadgets on the far right - a display box above a slider - are left. They tell you which staff, and more importantly which Tracker editor track, you are currently editing. This is particularly useful when more than one track is shown on one particular staff. For a demonstration, note that tracks 0 and 3 are automatically assigned to staff 1. Click on staff 1 (the top staff). Unless the setting has been changed, the display box should now show "S1 Trk 1/2: 0". This means that, on staff number 1, you are currently editing the 1st track shown out of 2, and this is track 0 in the Tracker editor. So to edit the other track shown on this staff, number 3, drag the slider to the right. The display should now be "S1 Trk 2/2: 3". Now, any notes you add will be entered into track 3. This solves the problem of which track notes should be entered into when adding notes to staffs showing more than one track. The Assign Tracks window This window is all about Tracker editor tracks. You can tell OctaMED which tracks should be displayed on which staff. You can also indicate the direction of the stems of each track's notes: up, down, or automatic. Each row in the window sets the staff and stem direction for one particular track, the number of which is shown on the left. OctaMED assumes a standard 4-channel setup. By default, tracks 0 and 3 (the left stereo channel) are shown on staff 1, tracks 1 and 2 (the right channel) on staff 2. If some of these tracks are empty in the Tracker editor, there will be rests on appropriate staffs. You can display as many tracks as you like on one particular staff, but it's best to stick to a maximum of 2, otherwise it might look a bit messy. If you find you've run out of staffs, add some more using the Staff Setup window. In the original notation editor, introduced in OctaMED V2, notes not belonging to the track currently being edited were ghosted. This is not the case in the new editor. If you miss the ghosting, try "hiding" the notes of tracks not being edited, by setting their sliders in this window to 0. Set the stem direction using the cycle gadgets on the far right. Up means that all the notes played on that track will have their stems going up, irrespective of their pitch. Similarly, Down forces all stems down. This is good for choral music, for example, as you could have all the sopranos' stems going up and the altos' going down. With Auto set, each individual stem goes up or down depending on that note's pitch. If the note is below the staff's middle line, the stem goes up; otherwise, it goes down. This is particularly useful when only one track is displayed on the staff. The Up and Down gadgets shift the eight track numbers up or down. Use these buttons if you have more than 8 tracks in your song. The Staff Setup window Use this window to add and remove staffs, and change their properties. The top region contains buttons to add and remove staffs, and to select a staff. "Current Staff:" shows the staff number currently selected, and the total number of staffs. Use the arrow buttons beside this display to select a staff. (The selection is used by other gadgets in this window). The name of the selected staff appears in the Staff Name box. Normally the staff is nameless; type a name into the box to name the staff. The name will appear on the staff's left in the notation editor. (To prevent the names appearing, switch off the Display Staff Names check box in the Notation Display Setup window). The next row of gadgets adds or removes a staff. Insert New Staff inserts a new staff before the selected one. Append New Staff adds a staff after the last one. Delete Staff removes the selected staff. The maximum number of staffs is 16. TIP: If you use a standard 640 x 256 screen, and you add more staffs, it can be annoying that only two staffs are displayed at any one time. So, try the following: 1) Outside the notation editor, select Screen Mode from the Screen section of the Settings menu. 2) Set the screen's height to, say, 350. Making sure AutoScroll is on, click Ok. 3) Drag the pointer to the bottom of the screen. You've got some extra space now! So use the notation editor's sizing gadget to enlarge the window as required, and move the windows below the notation editor (perhaps the Tools and Information windows) to the bottom of the screen. The bottom region contains the properties of the selected staff. Space Above and Space Below contain the vertical space, in pixels, above and below the selected staff. If you'd prefer the staffs to be closer together or further apart, try changing these values. Also, if you find high notes (using many "ledger lines") to be "cut off" in the notation editor, try increasing the Space Above value. Similarly with low notes and Space Below. Select the staff's clef - Treble, Bass or Alto - using the Clef cycle gadget. Middle C oct is the octave number of the note C corresponding to middle C on the staff. For example, if note C-3 in the Tracker editor should be displayed as middle C on the staff, set the slider to 3. So if you find that notes are consistently displayed too high or too low on a staff, try changing the staff's Middle C oct value. When using the notation editor, it's often best to stick to one instrument, played on one track, per staff. If the selected staff always uses the same instrument, set the Def. Instr (default instrument) slider to the instrument's number. Now when you click on that staff in the notation editor with a view to adding a note, the default instrument is automatically selected. This saves a bit of effort. The Signatures window Use this window to set the song's time and key signature, and to add and remove measures. Set the time signature using the two upper sliders, both initially set to 4 to represent 4/4 time. The top slider can have a value of 1 to 8, the bottom slider 1, 2, 4 or 8. So strange signatures like 5/8 and 7/1, as well as standard signatures like 3/4 and 2/2, are possible. Set the key signature using the bottom slider. The slider value is the number of sharps or flats; if the slider knob is right of center, the key is sharp, otherwise it's flat. The selected major key, and its relative minor, is shown below the slider. A reminder of the number of sharps or flats used in different keys: Number of | Sharps | Flats sharps/flats | Major key | Minor key | Major key | Minor key --------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- 0 | C | A | C | A 1 | G | E | F | D 2 | D | B | Bb | G 3 | A | F# | Eb | C 4 | E | C# | Ab | F 5 | B | G# | Db | Bb 6 | F# | D# | Gb | Eb So, for example, the major key containing 3 flats is Eb major. Always remember that the notation editor and Tracker editor are two different ways of editing and viewing the same song . So when you add a note to a staff, you are also adding a note to a Tracker editor block. The number of measures available in the current block, together with any extra ("leftover") lines after the final measure, is displayed in the middle of this window. These values are based on the number of lines in the block and the current time signature. Add Measure adds a measure to the end of the block. Rem Measure removes the final measure in the block. Ideally, the number of leftover lines should be 0; these buttons ensure that it is 0. So to make up leftover lines into a complete measure, click Add Measure. To remove the leftover lines, click Rem Measure. The Harmonic Minor Scale check box automatically sharpens the 7th note of the minor scale. So if you're in the key of E minor, trying to enter a D (the 7th note) in fact enters a D#. This gives a different sound to your music - try it! The Notation Display Setup window This window contains settings relevant to the general display. All settings also affect notation printouts. Display Width is the width, in pixels, of each staff. It's set up for a 640 pixel-wide screen by default. If your screen is wider than that, try increasing the value from 600. Alternatively, click Scale to set the width to a sensible value based on your screen width. Switch off Display Staff Names to remove the staff names from the notation editor. (Staff names are set in the Staff Setup window.) Measures/line is the number of measures (bars in Britain) shown on the screen at any one time. 1 is the usual setting, but 2, 3 and 4 are also good values. Positioning Mode affects the order in which the song's blocks are shown. In Block-Based mode, dragging the notation editor's left-hand scroll bar shows the blocks in numerical order: block 0, 1, 2 up until the final block. In Song linear mode, the order is taken from the playing sequence. For example, if the playing sequence were 002 003 002 000 001, dragging the scroll bar would show block 2, 3, 2 again, 0 then 1. So the blocks are shown in the order in which they're played when you click Play Song. This gadget affects printing, so to print the song in the order in which it's played, select Song linear mode. The Print Notation window Here you print out the song in standard musical notation. You could use the printout as sheet music for playing on a musical instrument. Firstly, set where the printout is to start and end. The numbers in Start and End are in "displayfuls" of measures, rather than actual measure numbers. To change the number of measures per displayful, use the Measures slider in Notation Display Setup (part 11.9). The Current buttons set the current displayful as the start or end of the printout. Next, choose the print quality using the Resolution cycle gadget. The first option prints using the standard Amiga font, the other three use the better-quality Compugraphic font. The higher the number, the better the quality, but the slower the print speed and the more memory required. It is important to consider the available memory, because 2x, 4x and 8x resolution consume 4, 16 and 64 times more memory than 1x resolution. The Preferences printer settings play an important role in determining the actual print resolution, especially the Density value. Use the Printer program in Workbench's Prefs directory to change your printer settings. Finally, click Print. In the requester which appears after a while, click Stop to interrupt printing if necessary. There is one difference between staffs displayed on the screen and printed staffs. Notes that extend above or below a staff's Space Below/Above settings are necessarily "clipped" on the screen. This clipping does not occur when printing. Saving notation information If you compose a song using the notation editor, you can save relevant notation information together with the song. This information can later be loaded with the song. To save notation information, make sure that Save Notation Data, in Save Options, is switched on when the song is saved. The precise information saved is: Key and time signatures Requested display width (when the song is reloaded, this width is only adopted if the current screen mode allows) Number of staffs Number of measures on-screen at once (Measure slider, Notation Display Setup) Harmonic Minor Scale state (Signatures window) All information in the Assign Tracks window For each staff: Space above/below, name, clef, middle C octave and default instrument (all in the Staff Setup window) @{" Contents " link "Main" 0} @endnode