Professional

Composition Light

Composition Pro

Composition tools - Using styles

Subjects covered:

• What is a style?
• Using the Pizzicato styles
• Interactive styles and chords exploration
• Importing styles from the Internet
• Extract the instrumental patterns
• Summary

Watch also the following video:

• Using styles to compose music (20'24) - Flash - Quicktime

What is a style? [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro]

Music is basically composed of notes and rhythms combined into innumerous possibilities. When you take some notes together, you have chords, which are little constructions done with notes. When you create a rhythmic pattern and some repeated melodic patterns played with specific instruments and chords, you have a style. So styles are a way to classify music.

A style is an association of several music characteristics that are specific to a mood, an atmosphere and that may then be recognized as having its own character and personality.

Practically, a style as used in most music software, arrangers and synthesizers is a set of predefined rhythmic patterns for percussion instruments and accompaniment instruments like the bass, piano, guitar,...

Each style has various patterns like an introduction, a main rhythmic pattern, a break or variation pattern and a final measure. You can assemble these building blocks into a full piece of music by disposing them one after the other and then by applying a chord progression to it that fits your melody.

In releases 1 and 2 of Pizzicato, we had created 20 styles with the first version of the library composition tools of Pizzicato. The way to use styles was quite complicated. We simplified it quite a bit with release 3.0, introducing the smart link function and the groups of scores, but there was still some specific and not so obvious operations to do to work with styles and chord progressions. It was still too complex. With the release 3.2, we have improved this process to the simplest possible way. You drag and drop styles and chord progressions into a score and you hear the result.

Even if most of the needed tools have already been explained in the previous lessons, here is a practical summary of how you can work with styles in Pizzicato.

Using the Pizzicato styles [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro]

In the Pizzicato libraries, you will find a folder that contains 35 prepared styles. Each style has at least the following elements:

• Intro - An introduction measure which can be used as the first measure of the composition
• Rhythm - The main rhythmic pattern, that is repeated in the main part of the composition
• Break - A break, which is a variation of the main rhythm. It can be played for instance at the end of a section, as a transition to another section of the composition
• End - A ending measure, which can be used as the last section of a composition.

Depending on the style, each one of these building blocks may have one or several measures. Some styles may have more than one of each of these blocks.

• Open a new document and open the conductor view. Locate the following folder in the library (configuration 3 area 1 or configuration 4 area 3):

Music libraries / Prepared styles

• Expand the node entitled Rock - 01 which displays the four above mentioned building blocks:

• By moving the mouse over the score icons, you can see the scores of this style displayed temporarily in the main conductor view. You can click on one of them to hear it and it will play until you mouve the mouse outside of the icon. You can do that now for a few styles so that you have an idea of the various styles.

Let us say that we want to create a rock composition based on that style. We will take a simple example of 10 measures. This style has a one measure building block. We will create it directly inside a score. We could also do it in a group of score, as seen in a previous example. Both ways are possible.

• The composition will first start with an introduction measure, so drag and drop the above Rock - 01 - Intro score on the musical desktop on the right, and then open the new created score. You get the following:

• You can listen to this first measure. We will now add 3 measures of the main rhythm. Drag the icon of the Rhythm score to the right of the above measure and before releasing the mouse button, hold down the CTRL key. In the dialog that appears, type in "3" to use the full rhythm 3 times. Click OK and the score extends to 4 measures in total. Resize the score view as needed.

• Now drag and drop the Break 1 score after the last measure.

• Now add again 3 times the Rhythm score icon after the last measure (resize or scroll the score view as needed).

• Then add the Break 2 and also the End, each time after the last measure. Listen to the result.

• As everything is written in the C chord, it is a bit monotone. We may now add one of the numerous chord progressions of the Pizzicato libraries. But of course if you have found one yourself, you can also use it. We will see in the next section how to design a chord progression in an intuitive way. For the moment, locate the following node in the library (configuration 3 area 1 or configuration 4 area 1):

Music libraries / Basic libraries / Measure 4-4 / C Major - 3 notes chords / 12 measures - 2 chords/measure / C Major / 1- 100

• and drag any one of these numerous chord progressions and drop it on the first measure of the score. You will see that the chord symbols have been added. Click on the "C" check box of the tool bar to see the arranged score and listen to it. You may then drag another chord progresion on it or just modify this one as you please. Then listen to it again. It is as easy as that.

This was a simple example, but you can in fact also mix various styles one after the other as well as use several little chord progressions (here we used a long 12 measure progression in one shot). Notice that you can also go in the basic chords library and drag and drop single chords at a time to replace a chord of the progression, or just to create your own chord progression. The possibilities are numerous.

Interactive styles and chords exploration [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro]

Until you know what composition or accompaniment you need, you may want to test and try a lot of them and also test and try chords. Here is the way to do that in an interactive way.

• Start with a new document and open the conductor view. Locate the following node of the library and drag and drop it on the musical desktop:

Instruments and templates / Harmonic spaces / C Major - 3 notes chords + dominant 7th

• Resize the group so that you can see most of the chords of the harmonic space:

• Now locate the style folder as above and select a style to start with. For instance, select the Rumba - 01 style so that the Rhythm node is selected in blue:

• Click on the yellow triangle of the tool bar of the conductor view (or press the space bar) to play that blue selected node. You hear the rumba style play in loop. For the moment, it is played exactly as written, in C major.

• Now that the playing has started, you can explore the library and select any score in blue by clicking on it. At the end of the current playing score, the next selected score will be played, still in loop. In this way you can just sequence any score of the library.

• Now double-click on the F chord rectangle (orange coloured) in the group of the conductor view. A fixed arranging point is displayed at that location and you immediately hear that the current playing score is now playing using that chord.

• You may now continue to explore both styles and chords. To change the current chord, just click on the new chord rectangle and to change the style pattern, just click on the one you want to hear next. You may continue doing so for hours if you want.

• Once you are oriented in what you want, you can then apply the principle explained in the previous section to create your final score by dragging and dropping the style blocks one after the other in a score. For the chord progression, you may use the method explained in the lesson on harmonic spaces and the real time arranger. You may then create your chord progression inside the group (using the little OK buttons present in the chord rectangles) and drag it inside the final score to have it arranged by the score arranger.

• If you create the chord progression inside the group, you may move the current fixed chord location by using the left and right arrows of the keyboard. In a similar way, you can use the up and down arrow keys to change the selected score in the style library. For instance by using the down key, you can play the break pattern and then using the up key, you can play the main rhythm again.

• To stop playing, just use the space bar again or unselect the current node by clicking inside the tree or on a node that is not a score.

Importing styles from the Internet [Professional] [Composition Pro]

You may object that presently Pizzicato has only 35 styles. Here comes the next new function of Pizzicato. Pizzicato can import all style files that have the Yamaha style format. You can find literally thousands of style files on the Internet, some that you must pay for but a lot of them for free.

The style files that Pizzicato can import are basically any MIDI file with marker in them that separate the various sections of Intro, rhythm, break and end. The Yamaha style file format uses this so Pizzicato can import that kind of file. Notice that Pizzicato does not use the specific Yamaha information blocks that you find in such a file. It only uses the MIDI section of such a file. The corresponding file extension is "*.STY".

To find and download such files, just go on your preferred search engine page (for instance www.google.com ) and type any combination of the following keywords: "free Yamaha style files". You will find thousands of them. Download them and put them inside a directory of your hard disk (not inside Pizzicato yet). Then start Pizzicato and open the conductor view. In the My library folder, add a new sub-folder (right-click the folder and select the New folder... menu item) where you will import the style files. Name it as you want, for instance "Imported styles". Then right-click on this folder and select either Import a style... or Import a folder of styles... and then select either one style file or the folder where you can have many style files. Pizzicato will then start working and import these files into your folder.

After this operation is done (if you have download some hundreds of style files, it may take some time), you will see each style as a Pizzicato document, with a few scores in it that you can use exactly as explained in the previous section. Notice that some imported styles will not sound very nice until you also use the real time arranger on them.

Notice that you can also import MIDI files and folders of MIDI files inside the library. Right-click a folder of the library and you will see the corresponding menu items.

Warning: be aware that the downloaded style or MIDI files may be copyrighted by their authors. According to the site where you download them, they may be available for private use only. Styles that you buy may have another type of licence. Consult the specific conditions of the site where you download them to know what you may or may not do with them. There are many free style and MIDI files that may be legally downloaded on the Internet but there are also sites that offer illegally "free" MIDI files to downloaded and by doing so, you act yourself illegally. So we can only invite you to act in an ethical way and only download the legally free MIDI or style files and respect the conditions stated on the site regarding the way you can use them (private or public use).