Arpege
Music

French

Europe (English)

Assigning virtual instruments anywhere in the score

A virtual instrument is a collection of information that a software (here Pizzicato) may use to produce directly the sound of an instrument, without the need of an external synthesizer or the synthesizer of the sound card.

The instrument may be the exact reproduction of a real instrument (violin, flute,...) or may be a purely artificial sound.

The software creates the audio signal directly and sends it to the sound card. This permits the exact reproduction of a sound on any computer, as opposed to the MIDI playback where the sound quality and final result depends on the external music material or the kind of sound card you have.

Pizzicato 3.4 offers a sound library called Papelmedia (under license) which is installed with any licensed version of Pizzicato.

By selecting the Edit menu, Assign virtual instruments to staves... Pizzicato will assign the virtual instruments corresponding to the instrument selection found in the instruments window. Pizzicato can then play the score by using the Papelmedia sound library. This is possible with all Pizzicato versions (Light, Beginner and Professional).

The virtual instruments are visible on the score if you enable the reference marks tool (its keyboard shortcut is ":"). When Pizzicato assigns a virtual instrument, it is visible at the beginning of the first measure.

With Pizzicato Professional, you can assign virtual instruments anywhere in the score, for instance to change the sound at any point in the score (legato strings, pizzicato strings, slow or fast strings,...). To assign an instrument, you just need to drag it inside the measure, where it should start to play.

You will find the Papelmedia library in the Conductor view. Open it from the Windows menu. In the upper left tree, open respectively the folders Music libraries / Virtual instruments / Papelmedia. You will find several folders sorted by family and types. Just click an instrument and drop it in the destination measure.

You may also import any SoundFont file in the My library folder. Click on this folder with the right mouse button and select Import a SoundFont file... Once imported, you can drag and drop the instruments it contains directly into the measures.