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Polyphonic voicing
Voices and MIDI channels
Internally the program organizes the notes into voices by
changing their MIDI channel values. Normally you set it up
so that notes with MIDI channel 3 belong to voice 3 etc.
Most of the time the link between MIDI channels and
voices is totally transparent to you as a user. Sometimes
you can take advantage of this relationship, as described
later in this chapter.
There are also a few important things to note:
Ö When you make a note part of a voice, you are in fact
changing its MIDI channel value. However, when you
change the voice’s MIDI channel values in the setup dia
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log, this does not affect the notes’ MIDI channel setting.
This can lead to serious confusion, since the relationship
between the notes and the voices is affected. It might
even make notes disappear (the program warns if this
happens). In other words, do not change the MIDI chan
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nels on the Polyphonic tab of the Staff page in the Score
Settings dialog after you have put your notes into voices,
unless you are absolutely sure of what you are doing.
Ö When you open a part that contains notes on different
MIDI channels, these notes are in fact already assigned to
voices (since notes are assigned to voices using their
MIDI channel setting). While this fact can be put to good
use, it can also create confusion, and even disappearing
notes, as described above.
Setting up the voices
To set up your score for polyphonic voicing, proceed as
follows:
1. Make sure that the desired staff is active.
2. Open the Score Settings dialog and select the Staff
page.
3. Select the Polyphonic tab.
4. Pull down the Staff Mode pop-up menu and select
Polyphonic.
This makes the voice list in the lower part of the dialog available. It consists
of eight rows, one for each voice. They are numbered and therefore we re
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fer to them as voices 1 to 8.
5. To activate a voice, click in its “On” column, so that a
checkmark appears.
There are four voices on each staff, for a total of eight. If you activate one
“upper” voice and one “lower” voice, you get a split (piano) staff.
6. If you have particular reasons to use specific MIDI
channels, change the “Chan” settings for the voices.
The program automatically sets each voice to a different MIDI channel. If
you do not have good reasons to make changes, leave the settings as
they are.
7. Click in the “Rests–Show” column to decide for which
voices you want rests displayed.
A checkmark indicates that rests are shown for a voice. Often you only
want rests to be shown for one voice per staff, see below.
8. If you have activated “Rests–Show” for a voice, but do
not want rests to be shown in empty bars, click in the
“Rests–Reduce” column for that voice.
This is especially useful for cue voices, see “Cue notes” on page 614.
9. Click in the “Rests–Center” column to determine at
which vertical positions rests are shown (for voices with
“Rests–Show” activated).
When this option is activated for a voice, the rest is put in the vertical
center of the staff, when it is not, the rest gets a vertical position based
on the pitch of the notes.
!
Do not confuse the voice numbers with the MIDI
channel setting for each voice.
!
If two voices are set to the same MIDI channel, the
lower voice is treated as if it were turned off.