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Graphic options and automatisms

Subjects covered:

• Graphic options
• Automatisms

Graphic options [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

A dialog box is used to define a series of graphic parameters which influence the display of the score on the printer or on the screen.

• Start Pizzicato and select the Graphic options... item in the Options menu. The graphic options dialog box appears:

• The first 6 text boxes determine the thickness of various lines as the note stem, the staff lines… The values must be expressed in tenth of millimeter and are used during the printing of the score. These values are reduced or increased in ratio when you change the reduction/enlargement percentage for printing (Pizzicato Professional only).

• A text box lets you specify the maximum angle to use for the position of the notes beams. A 25 degrees angle for example will give a maximum slope corresponding to:

A 10 degrees angle would give as a maximum:

By selecting a 0 degree angle, you can force Pizzicato to draw all beams horizontally. This option may be useful when the score is printed on a printer with a low resolution (dot-matrix printer) because it eliminates the bad effect obtained with oblique lines.

• The 16 check boxes located below enable the visibility of the 8 rhythmic voices on the printer and on the screen. In 99 % of the cases, all boxes should remain checked. By disabling one of the boxes, the corresponding voice will become invisible in the score, on the printer and/or on the screen. It nevertheless remains present and one can listen to it with the synthesizer.

• The first menu located just below is entitled Use of colours and proposes four choices. The default choice is Black colour, which draws all notes and rests in black on the score. The second choice is Voice colour. In this case, notes are drawn in the colour of the rhythmic voice to which they belong. The next choice, Track colour, draws notes and rests in the colour associated with the staff. This colour may be selected in the instruments view. The last choice is Colour by scale/chord. This option is quite interesting to compose music. When the score has chords in it (encoded with the chord notation tool) the notes are then displayed in three colours:

  • Green: the note is part of the current chord.
  • Orange: the note is part of a scale deduced from the chord
  • Red: the note is not part of the chord neither of the scale

• The next menu is used to change the colour of various score elements. Select one of them with the menu:

and click on the button just right in front of it. A dialog box is displayed to associate a colour with the selected element. You may change the colour of clefs, measures, etc in order to personalize your score or to create non standard scores. Regarding the lyrics colors, the modification will be effective on all staves of all scores of the document.

• The next menu is used to change the font used for various text elements. Select an item of this menu:

and click on the button right in front of it. A dialog box appears to select a font, a size and a style. This font will be used to draw the selected elements in the score. Regarding the lyrics fonts, the modification will be effective on all staves of all scores of the document.

• Just below, a check box lets you see the invisible notes, rests and symbols. You can then find any item that is hidden in the score. This option is valid only on the screen because invisible symbols will not be printed on paper.

• The Print with colours box specifies that colours must be printed. You of course need to have a colour printer or a black and white printer with gray levels; otherwise this option will have no effect.

• The default character set may be used to specify which script will be used by default in text blocks. The default is Occidental, but you can for instance set it to Hebrew, Greek or Arabic.

Click OK to close the dialog box.

Automatisms [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

In the Options menu, select the Automatisms... item. The following dialog box appears:

The higher part of this dialog box specifies the distances between the various elements. These distances are represented by sliders and can vary between 0 and 12. To modify them, click on the cursor and drag it.

When you modify these values, the graphic result is directly visible in the upper area. Here is an example where all values are 0 (elements are the tightest):

and here is an example where all distances are set to 12 (elements are the most distant):

The four boxes of the Automatic positioning of frame enable or disable the automatic positioning of:

• accidentals in a chord,
• courtesy key signatures
• courtesy time signatures
• naturals in key signatures, when the key signature changes

The options specified here affect the current document.

Light

Beginner

Professional

Notation

Composition Light

Composition Pro

Drums and Percussion

Guitar

Choir

Keyboard

Soloist