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Musical dictation with Pizzicato

Did you know that you can train yourself to musical dictation with Pizzicato Light ? As a reminder, the musical dictation principle is to listen to one or two measures without looking at the notes and then transcribe them into music notation. The practical application is the little melody you sing and you want to write down on paper.

Pizzicato contains an exercise generator used to learn note reading on a musical keyboard connected to the computer. But this function may also be used to generate musical dictations, exactly as in a music course. You may adapt the note and rhythm difficulty to your level. Here is how you do it:

Start Pizzicato and open the document named "Keyboard learning 44.piz" in the "Libraries" folder (Pizzicato 2) or the "DataEN / Music" folder (Pizzicato 3).

Double click the "Exercise" icon and the score window appears.

The lower window contains 16 melodic elements ("Melodies 1 to 15" + "Chromatic melodies") and 20 rhythmic elements (numbered from 1 to 20). To create a new exercise, drag a rhythmic element into the first measure of the score and do the same with a melodic element. A new exercise is created and appears in the score. By dragging again the same element, another exercise is created, because these elements are in fact levels of difficulty of rhythms and notes that the computer can combine in endless ways.

In the "Window" menu, select the "Sequencer..." item. Increase the size of this window so that it hides the score window. The sequencer window contains the same 12 measures, but visible as 12 little blocks so that you can not see the score notes.

You can drag a rhythmic and melodic element in the first block. Pizzicato creates an exercise.

In the "Window" menu, open the "Recorder".

Check the "Mtr" (Metronome) box. By pushing on the START button (yellow arrow), Pizzicato plays starting from measure one. You can stop it with the STOP button (blue) and try to transcribe on paper the notes you have heard. Listen several times to the measures.

To start playing from a given measure, click on it. It becomes black and you may click on START.

You may print music paper by simply printing the page that appears while starting the program. To do this you must be in the shareware mode (unless you have bought a license). You can select this mode in the "Options" menu, "Program version/updates..." item.

Once the exercise is done, close or move the sequencer window and the correct notes are displayed on the score. You may correct your version and start again. With the same difficulty level or by increasing it. Enjoy it!

To know more about these tools, consult the lesson on keyboard learning on our site.