Dear
Musicians,
This is
issue #31 of the Pizzicato musical newsletter. It is intended to
help you to better know and use Pizzicato. You will find in it
various articles about Pizzicato, its use and aspects, but also
references to the music course and links to other music related
sites.
You may
send us any information to publish about music (performances,
festivals, exhibitions, CD publications, music training sessions,
Internet links,...). You may also tell us any difficulty you have
with Pizzicato so that we can explain the solutions in the next
issue. This letter is for you.
We hope
you will enjoy reading it.
Musically,
Dominique
Vandenneucker,
ARPEGE-Music
29, rue de l'Enseignement
B-4800 Verviers
Belgium
Phone/Fax ++32 - 87.26.80.10
info@arpegemusic.com
Visit our site: http://www.arpegemusic.com
Copyright
2004, Arpege Sprl, all rights reserved.
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Editorial
To contribute so that
people make more music. That is the goal of ARPEGE in term of
cultural contribution. I deeply believe in the aesthetic
power of music and what it can bring. To create is to live.
To compose is to express oneself. Each one should be able to
do it in one way or another.
Let us continue our
discussion about composition. We had seen last month that
music creation could be broken up into three phases, which
one could also regard as abilities to acquire to express
oneself creatively in music:
- The
methodical location of sound effects
- The
possibility of selectively reproducing them according
to what you want to express
- The
coherent construction of musical work
One
can also consider the time dimension, the duration of the
musical impression. One will find in particular in the
articles of Michel
Philippot on composition, three levels of approach and
appreciation of music, which I would express as:
- The
sound effect for itself (instantaneous effect)
- The
melody, the rhythm, the chords forming a structured
musical sentence (sound effect covering up to several
tens of seconds)
- The
structured development of a complete musical work
(sound effect covering a full piece of music)
With regard to the
first point, by using a synthetizer, you can spend some very
pleasant moments discovering the various sounds. These sounds
can generate by themselves pleasant and aesthetic musical
impressions. A chord of strings with a good reverberation.
Some notes of such or such instrument. Some sound effects of
a synthetic type. All that can contribute to express simple
but effective impressions. You can also combine several
sounds and the possibilities multiply, the atmospheres are
built and grown rich. However, we are yet only at the first
stage: considering the sound effects for themselves, apart
from a more elaborate structure.
You can make a
systematic exercise out of it. Discover the various sounds of
your synthetizer or sound card. With a musical keyboard, have
fun
selecting each sound, then listen to them in the lower,
middle and higher ranges of the keyboard. Locate the effects
they can create, the atmospheres they release, the thought
they generate. Try to play several notes one after the other,
slowly or quickly. Try to play several notes of the keyboard
at the same time. If you do not know about chords, test and
try. See while groping whether by playing two close notes,
far notes, intermediate notes, you can get a sound effect you
like. write it down. Again search, combine, play, test... Do
it again the next day, two days later... the repetitive side
will lead you to discover elements which you did not hear the
first time.
Do not neglect this
simple exercise. By practising it regularly, it will help you
to approach the next phase, because the various musical
effects will be added to your musical "memory" and
this as much as you practise it. Don't forget that this
musical "memory" will be the data base in which
your inspiration will try to find elements to express your
music. Fill in your data base!
An important point is
to be noted as of this moment. To get an interesting and
enriching effect, you need a sufficient and well balanced
volume level. And this independently to the quality of the
synthetizer or sound card you have. You must be able to feel
the low notes make you vibrate, the sound must really go
through your room. This is related to the distribution of
sounds in your surrounding space. Your balance should of
course be found, the level which is appropriate to you. But
with little experiment, you will note that a minimal volume
is required, without which the created effect is lost. The
nuance is of the same level as the difference there is to
listen to an orchestra during a concert or to listen to it as
a background music while waiting at the post office... If
post offices were equipped with a good sound system with a
sufficient volume, it could become a pleasure waiting at the
post office!
If you only have a
simple sound card, see that you to get a cable to connect it
to your hi-fi system with a sufficient volume. The generated
effect will be definitely more expressive than with a 10
centimeters table loudspeaker. You will gain in motivation
and musical pleasure. Of course, if you have the possibility,
a good quality sound card, or even a good synthetizer will
motivate you even more by considerably increasing sound
quality. It is a question of balance and means.
By working this
exercise regularly, without forcing yourself, at one moment
or another, by search and groping, you will find some notes
forming a melody, something which you like and which you
would like to be able to reproduce, memorize and develop. It
will be the beginning of the next phase: building a
structured cell, i.e. a time sequence of several notes and
sound effects. The use of a musical software will be highly
advised at this step. You will be able to record this small
melody on a staff, then while listening to it, you will be
able to continue the preceding exercise by changing
instrument and by seeking which other sound effect could
reinforce or supplement the first.
Once the main melody
is established and reinforced by some other instruments
(start with 1 or 2), you can then develop this element.
Developing is simply taking again the same element by
modifying it in various ways, by adding new effects to it,
while keeping a sufficient similarity so that the link
remains present with the original element. These
modifications can be of various natures: change of rhythm,
the pitches of the notes, transformation of the melody by
various formulas, time inversion, rhythmic division, change
of chords, sonorities, sound effects which accompany it...
Complementary themes can also be added, developed, as long as
a link of some nature can connect the whole as being part of
the same coordinated structure.
One
could in some way compare this method to a writer. Before
writing a book, he must initially know enough words and their
exact and various significances. He must be able to build
complete sentences and to connect them. Then, with practice
he can build a whole story. He keeps an overall picture, a
common link which enables him to design each chapter and in
each one of those he can align the sentences so that the
chapter expresses what it must express to contribute to the
full work. It is with this global idea of his book that he
can then align word after word to build his work.
ARPEGE
currently develops software modules making it possible to
apply this working method. They will be integrated in the
future versions of Pizzicato.
Dominique
Vandenneucker
Designer
of Pizzicato.
Aspects
and applications of Pizzicato...
Discover
the various aspects and applications of Pizzicato
Measures to count
When an instrument
does not play during several measures, it is common to write
only one measure with a rest sign and a number of measures to
count. Here is for example how to create 10 measures to
count:
- Select the
measure
- Call the measure
parameter dialog box (Edit menu)
- Check the Duration
of measure box
- Just below,
select Measures to count and fill in
"10" to the right
- Click OK.
- In the Graphic
symbols palette, select the tool
- Click in the
measure, the score becomes for example:
Figure 10 indicates
the number of measures to count and measure numbers go from 2
to 12 automatically in this example.
Tips and
advices for Pizzicato...
Frequently asked questions about
Pizzicato
Problems
while deleting a note or a symbol?
The procedure to
delete a symbol, a note, a rest... is simply to place the
mouse cursor on the element (the symbol, the note...) and
then, without clicking, to use the delete key
(backspace) and the symbol disappears.
Thanks to the remark
of an attentive user, we discovered a systematic crash of
Pizzicato if you click at the same time with the mouse button
and while holding down the mouse button you then use the
delete key. It is not the correct way to proceed, because it
is useless to click. But it is better to know this so as to
avoid an unexpected crash. We will of course correct this
problem for the following version of Pizzicato.
Access
help using Pizzicato on Windows
In certain rare
circumstances (still mysterious for us...), it happens that
by using the help menu of Pizzicato, the help window does not
appear, no matter what you do. You can correct that by
directly launching help from its location on the hard disk.
Here is how to do it: in the Windows explorer, open the file
C:\Program Files\Pizzicato\Misc\HelpEN and double click the
"Help" or "Help.chm" file. The help
window opens in an independent window. You may for example
create a shortcut to this file from the desktop of Windows.
The
beginner's corner...
Musical
basics and access to the Pizzicato music course
Transposition
Transposition
The idea is to
modify a melody or a whole passage of a musical work in
order to play it higher or lower in the sound scale. In
the lesson on key signatures, we had listened to a melody
starting with C and then to the same melody starting with
E. It is an example of transposition. The melody was
transposed two notes higher.
It is frequent to
use transposition when composing a musical work. You can
transpose a whole melody or some notes. It is a current
composition tool because you can express several times
the same thing while adding a change to it.
The simplest
transposition is an octave change. For example, all notes
are played one octave higher. They keep the same name.
Open Ex027.piz. The first two measures contain a
small melody which is transposed one octave higher in the
next two measures:
Listen to the
sound difference. The second melody is easily recognized
as being the same one as the first, but it is played
higher.
Intervals
To specify a
transposition, intervals are defined. The example above
is a transposition of one octave, because there are 8
notes on the patch from the original melody to the
transposed melody (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C). Here are the
names of intervals with the number of notes contained in
each:
| Unisson |
1 note |
| Second |
2 notes |
| Third |
3 notes |
| Fourth |
4 notes |
| Fifth |
5 notes |
| Sixth |
6 notes |
| Seventh |
7 notes |
| Octave |
8 notes |
| Ninth |
9 notes |
| Tenth |
10 notes |
| Eleventh |
11 notes |
| … |
… |
Speaking about a
third for example, one counts the note names contained in
the interval, without taking into account the number of
half tones. C and E form a third, because there are three
notes in the interval: C, D and E. By counting the black
and white keys, there are 4 half tones...
...To
read the full lesson, see the lesson
about transposition on our site...
Music on
the Web...
Links
related to music
The
commercial page...
You have
Pizzicato Light...
To
discover music in an interactive way, Pizzicato
Light is quite enough. With it, you can write
exercises and little scores. The main limit of the program is
the way you can structure the score and also the number of
measures and staves you can use.
If you
want to create and print custom scores, you may update to the
Beginner and/or Professional versions. Consult the 5 pages
which describe the possibilities added by those versions: www.arpegemusic.com/partition1.htm
You will also find a
table with the differences between the various versions of
Pizzicato, on page www.arpegemusic.com/differences.htm
Have a look at our new
order page, with updates at low prices. Click here to find out...
You have Pizzicato
Beginner...
The
professional version could bring you the following
advantages:
- Printing
may be done in all sizes (page layout zoom)
- Symbols
(nuances, tempo, trills, effects,...) are performed
through the sound card or synthesizer
- You
may easily extract the parts of an orchestral
conductor score. The page layout of parts, including
multimeasure rests, is much easier.
- Tools
to write and hear percussion instruments
- The
possibility to modify and create new graphic and MIDI
symbols
- Chord
analysis and chord finding on a melody
- Tools
to help you compose music
- C
and percussion clefs
- ...
Consult
the 5 pages which describe the possibilities added by this
version: www.arpegemusic.com/partition1.htm
There is also an
electronic upgrade for a very interesting
price. Click here to find out...
You have
Pizzicato Professional...
You
just need to wait for the next version... In the
meantime, a lot of things are still to be discovered in this
version and this letter will help you to do so. Ask us any
question so we can answer in the next issue of this letter.
You may also suggest us new functions to add in the next
release of Pizzicato. We listen to the users as best as we
can.
We are
at your disposal.
Our
purpose is to place music in everybody's hands
and to
bring people to more musical creativity
Use
Pizzicato and make music!