Dear
Musicians,
This is
issue #86 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, 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
2010, Arpege Sprl, all rights reserved.
Editorial
Read all previous
editorials on page http://www.arpegemusic.com/editoriaux.htm
We are happy to
announce the release of Pizzicato 3.5!
The preparation of
this release, as well as our first presence at the
international MusicMesse in Frankfurt last month, have
somehow delayed our newsletter.
Pizzicato 3.5 has
several new features, whether you are already using Pizzicato
or if you are interested by Pizzicato. It is the result of
several surveys made in the past years, formally or
informally.
The page layout
function has been deeply improved and is much more efficient,
mainly when you modify the page layout and when you add
measures and staves. You can insert BMP images as well as
custom graphics. Printer and page setups may be customized
per page. You may define several printing areas to place
measures, which means you can create page layout for booklets
and many other custom formats. You can view many pages at
once on the screen. See the details at:
www.arpegemusic.com/manual35/EN470.htm
The document manager
makes the handling of scores much easier. No need to use the
Windows and Mac file opening and saving dialogs anymore. Your
documents are automatically saved and visible on the left
part of the screen, always available. Preview the content of
a score by dragging the mouse over its icon in Pizzicato.
This manager helps you to handle all the music composition
resources (harmonic spaces, vectors, virtual instruments,
libraries,...), whether in the conductor view or in the score
or global view. Several custom areas may be defined, which
helps you to handle the various composition resources more
efficiently. See the details at:
www.arpegemusic.com/manual35/EN110.htm#J2
www.arpegemusic.com/manual35/EN327.htm
Several improvements
have been made in the global view, to make it more user
friendly to edit all aspects of a score in the same window.
Markers have been added to locate passages more easily. You
can select the family and instrument directly in that window.
See the details at:
www.arpegemusic.com/manual35/EN569.htm
A specific window
displays a music typing keyboard. A real physical keyboard of
the same type will be developed in the future to be used with
Pizzicato. The idea is to be able to enter music very fast.
Presently, this window helps to understand how this future
keyboard will be working to fasten the process of entering a
music score into the computer. At this step, it is an
experimental tool with high potential. See the description of
this future keyboard at:
www.arpegemusic.com/manual35/EN255.htm
Pizzicato
3.5 has been presented at the Frankfurt MusicMesse. It was
the first presence of Pizzicato at this worldwide event of
music. We have been able to establish potential partnerships
to distribute Pizzicato in several countries. Translations
should start in the following weeks and months. We will keep
you informed on these new issues.
Strangely, our main
competitors Finale and Sibelius were not represented this
year at the MusicMesse. Some other notation software, mainly
German, as well as Notion, were present. Pizzicato and the
prototype of the Music Typing Keyboard, presented by his
inventor Marco Aragona, were well received by the public.
For this occasion, we
have published a new rapid presentation of Pizzicato 3.5. You
can watch it right now on our video page :
www.arpegemusic.com/videos.htm
as well as on the
Arpege Music video channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9zzoaXIiSg
Pizzicato 3.5 offers
now 11 different versions. The basic idea is that Pizzicato
may be used to satisfy many different usages. Up to now, Pizzicato
Professional has every features, Pizzicato
Beginner is more limited and for general use,
and Pizzicato Light is an
introduction to music software and score printing. These
three versions stay exactly the same, but 8 additional more
specific versions are now available, some with very
competitive prices. Here is a short description of them.
Pizzicato
Notation contains all the notation
features of Pizzicato Professional. The arranging and
composition features are not included. This version is
specifically targeted to users who only care about writing
and printing scores.
To the contrary, Pizzicato
Composition Pro contains all the tools to
arrange and compose, including all the intuitive composition
tools like the harmonic spaces, the music vectors, the chord
analysis tool,... The music composition can be exported into
MIDI, WAV and musicXML files, so that it can be further
edited by other music software, as this version does not
handle page layout and printing. This version is ideal for
Finale, Sibelius, Notion or other music software users, as
they may use the unique intuitive music composition tools of
Pizzicato and then go back to their preferred notation
program to edit the page layout or work the audio files.
Pizzicato
Composition Light contains the main tools for
composition. For a much lower price, you can use the main
composition tools on 8 staves.
Pizzicato
Guitar contains all the features to write
guitar sheet music, including TAB or tablatures, customized
chord diagrams, chord symbols. You can work up to 4 staves or
tablatures playing together, for fretted instruments like the
guitar, banjo, bass,...
Pizzicato
Choir lets you write up to 4 staves for the
choir. You will find in it most of the functions you need for
choir sheet music. The page layout is free (size) and you can
work with all clefs. As in all other Pizzicato versions, a
library of realistic sounds is provided and you can use it to
export the score into an audio WAV file.
Pizzicato
Drums and Percussion is a specific version of
Pizzicato for drums and percussion instruments. You can edit
up to 8 staves, each one having from 1 to 16 lines. You can
map the drum instruments to each line of the staff and hear
them play. The note heads may be customized and various
symbols help you manage the trills and other ornamentations.
Pizzicato
Keyboard gives you all you need for pianistic
notation or for the organ or synthesizer, including multiple
grace notes, free page layout and cross staff beaming.
Pizzicato
Soloist may be used to edit any score for one
instrument (one staff). The page layout is free and you can
add chords and most of the standard symbols found in a score.
You can use this version for instance to write exercise books
for solo instruments.
Upgrades are possible
between these versions, as your needs increase. Moreover,
several of these versions may coexist and run on the same
computer.
You can consult the
new detailed brochure, which contains a description of each
version as well as a full table of the features available in
each version:
www.arpegemusic.com/Pizzicato35Brochure8PagesEN.pdf
Each version exists as
a package (with a manual or installation instruction and DVD)
or as a downloadable version. You can consult the price list
on the order page at:
https://arpegemusique.com/acheteren.php
If you have Pizzicato
and if your license number is greater or equal to 15589
(original version 3.3 version), you can upgrade for free. Go
on the free upgrade page, in the Customer Services page on
our site and fill in your license number.
If
your license number is lower than 15589, upgrade prices are
available here:
https://arpegemusique.com/achetermajen.php
If you
do not have Pizzicato yet, you can download the 3.5
evaluation version and explore each one of the versions
explained above. When Pizzicato starts, select the version
you want to test.
We
wish you a nice discovery of Pizzicato 3.5!
Next month, we will go
back to our systematic study of music composition.
Dominique
Vandenneucker
Designer of Pizzicato
Pizzicato
in US and Canada
An article about
using Pizzicato in a real situation
By Blair Ashby, Pizzicato representative for US & Canada,
Denver, Colorado
"How do you write a
song" came the question from my customer. He is an
auctioneer in my studio to record a demo CD of his auctioning
skills. I suspected this was not the real question but
I also suspected he didn't have the lexicon to explain
himself musically. He was a new customer, referred to me by a
voice coach I have worked with for the past ten years.
I had recently written a song for the voice coach to use as
the musical theme to start and end all her spoken word
coaching CDs.
I answered his
question this way: "It's really quite easy to write a
song. One just has to know the musical parameters and
then write something which fit's inside those
parameters. Let's use Kathy's theme song as an
example. She wanted something Latin, she wanted it
happy or friendly, she wanted it upbeat and she wanted
something memorable enough to brand her but not so catchy
that it was distracting. Thus, I knew to eliminate
anything which wasn't Latin sounding, it also had to be
written in a Major scale to sound happy and fun. I knew
it would not be a Rumba because that would not be upbeat
enough and I knew it would only have a light or subtle melody
so as not to make it too distracting. Those were my
parameters."
I then used my midi
styles library and focused on the Latin section. I
entered into Pizzicato a simple I, IV, iv, V chord
progression and started with the Sambas. However, they
were not quite a good fit, too bouncy and engaging.
Remember, she wants this to be theme music to
"Brand" her talks not to distract from her
talks. I moved over to the ChaCha's and tried again and
soon found a groove which really seemed to work for her
parameters. I played it for her later that week and she
said close but she wanted something with a bit more sizzle in
it. I changed the pattern to a Salsa and she said yeah,
that's more like it.
At that point, I
repeated the chord loop several times to create a
"verse" sounding section and then I wrote a new
chord progression for the chorus starting on the V chord and
followed a standard predictable pattern. I added a horn
section which carried a subtle melody and I raised the groove
volume a bit in the chorus. After two hours I had a
nice song which met all of Kathy's parameters.
At this point I needed
to play the song for Kathy to see if it met with her
approval. She came over, liked everything but a few
small parts, which I changed on the spot, and after another
30 minutes She had a theme song which felt personal to her
and I had a happy customer. "It was really quite
easy." I told him.
Here is where his real
question came out, almost by accident. He said:
"Wow!, I wish I could get inspired that simply to write
a song" "Aaahhhhhhh," I said,
"inspiration is different. Writing a formula song inside
of set parameters is generally pretty easy. Writing a
song from my own inspiration is a much more difficult
endeavor." He looked at me quizzically and asked
"What do you mean? Why is finding your own
inspiration different?..."
This is a real
question I run into every day with music and artists in my
studio. Often times, when one is not a good musician or
an inexperienced composer, it is hard to find the musical
voice to speak from. Crafting music from
emotional or cognitive ideas can be difficult if the
vocabulary is not exercised. And conversely, when one
is well exercised in this area, then the problem becomes
boredom with the "same old" ideas. Thus, I
have learned some methods to try and spark the muse.
Here is some methods,
some work for me some do not but they work for others.
The most important thing is to keep trying. Thomas
Edison said there is 5000 ways to make a light bulb and 4999
of them don't work. The other cliche which is really
important is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent
perspiration. Often times, just the effort of
continually trying makes all the difference in the world.
Inspiration is frequently an effort at expression and rarely
an exercise in instantaneous satisfaction.
Whether I have a
starting emotional or cognitive idea or not, I generally
begin with midi style patterns. I am not a good
musician and thus, my lack of instrument practice makes it a
slow process to find expression in a particular instrument
like guitar or piano. However, with a midi style, I
have the instant gratification of a band or orchestra.
I start previewing styles until I find a spark of feeling in
something. An important thing to understand is
inspiration is a subjective experience. Your muse may
not work for someone else. Thus, when I work with styles I
frequently hear things I don't feel anything from.
However, if I keep trying, I almost always find something
which starts the muse moving in my mind. Maybe it's a
shaker, or a bass line or a simple piano run. It really
can be anything. If a spark happens I grab it and build
off it.
Another option (which
I like to use), is to find a sound you like. A harp, or
a guitar, or a synth sound maybe, any sound can start the
ball rolling. Once again it can be anything which
creates an expression in you. I remember working
on my Christmas CD in the fall of 2008. I was
stuck on the song What Child is This? I love
that song but I could not find anything which made me feel
like I was contributing my own interpretation to the vast
number of times that song had been recorded. One night
I was helping my wife do the dishes, and I dropped a bunch of
silverware into the sink. You can imagine the cacophony
of sounds. Well in this case, maybe because I was
looking for inspiration, I heard a pattern to the
clatter. I ran to my studio, found a sound library of
kitchen sounds, and ran all the sounds through a drum pattern
I which I liked. Bingo! The sound was perfect and
the muse took hold and didn't let go until the song was
finished.
If the object of your
song is expressible in words, try to find a word or sentence
which says exactly what you want to say. Say the phase
over and over until you have the enunciation the way you like
it and then write a rhythmic pattern of notes which mimics
that enunciation pattern. Start by using just the note
C to build your rhythmic pattern then, use Pizzicato's
Harmonic Spaces to generate a chord progression while your
listening to the note pattern you created repeated over and
over. See what happens. Many Jazz artists I know
love to use his method to start song ideas.
Try to copy a note
pattern or rhythmic pattern (or both) you hear in everyday
life. I have heard that Beethoven wrote the opening
notes to his 5th Symphony based on the song of a bird he
heard singing, outside his bedroom window, while staying in
the Black Forest.
Imagine a picture in
your mind, start to feel an emotion tied to that
picture. Write a few notes or patterns, or use the many
included in Pizzicato, and compare those musical ideas
against that "emotional snapshot" you built in your
mind. If the notes or patterns compliment the snapshot
keep it, if they don't, throw them away and keep
trying. Sometimes, you'll find something you like but
then, later, you'll find something else which
supersedes the earlier idea. Fine, throw the earlier
one away and build on the new one. Remember 5000 ways
to make a light bulb...
Use the musical
generators in Pizzicato to make up random ideas and then
listen to see if any of them spark something. Build a
fire from the spark.
These are just a few
ideas, keep what works for you and move on from what
doesn't. Cole Porter was once asked how he could just
keep writing hit song after hit song. What was his
inspiration? His reply was "If you write 40 or 50
musical ideas a day, one of them is bound to be good and the
rest, I throw away". In other words, keep trying.
I would love to hear
what methods for inspiration you have which work for
you. Write me and tell me about them. I am always
looking for new ideas for myself and for my customers.
In a future newsletter, I'll share some of the ideas with the
whole community of Pizzicato users so we can all benefit from
them. They call this paying it forward.
Have fun writing music
with Pizzicato and good luck with finding the muse. I
look forward to hearing from you and even hearing your music.
Blair Ashby - www.music-composing.com email: info@music-composing.com Phone 303-252-1270
Aspects
and applications of Pizzicato...
Discover
the various aspects and applications of Pizzicato
The
Pizzicato Document Manager
In the left part of
the score or conductor window, you can see the document
manager.
This part of the
window can be displayed or hidden, by using the small
"D" checkbox that is visible in the tool bar of the
window. It means "Document
manager". Click on that checkbox. You can now only see
the score. Click again on it and the document manager is
shown again. By hiding the document manager, you can have
more screen space to see the score you are working on.
The document manager
is an important part of Pizzicato. With it, you can manage
and organize your musical documents, without the need to use
the standard Windows or Mac open and save dialogs.
The blue buttons shown
on top of it are the various configurations. According to the
Pizzicato version you have, there may be more than two
configurations, but these two configurations are common to
all versions.
Configuration
"1" is the default document folder, named My
scores. It contains all the documents you create.
When you start
Pizzicato, a new document is created and is automatically
named with the date and time. If you do not modify this
document and exit Pizzicato, this document will be
automatically deleted by Pizzicato, but if you modify the
score, it will be saved and kept in the My scores
folder.
A Pizzicato document
is represented by a green icon. The document contains by
default one score, named Score 1.
You can rename the
document as well as the score, by clicking on the icon with
the right mouse button and selecting the menu entitled "Change
name..." which brings a small dialog to fill in the
new name you want to give it.
Click now on the blue
button of configuration "2". It contains 3 folders.
By clicking on a "+" icon, you can display what is
in the folder. For instance, click on the "+" in
front of the Examples folder. You see the list of
all the examples that are used throughout the Pizzicato
lessons.
To open an example,
click on the "+" in front of it and it will show
one or more score icon. Double click on that score icon name
and the score will appear in the main part of the window.
When you right-click
on a folder, for instance the Examples folder, you
can ask Pizzicato to open all the documents of that folder
and show their score icons, by selecting the menu entitled Open
documents and folders.
If you now drag the
mouse over the score icons (just drag, not click), you will
see that Pizzicato displays the content of that score in a
new, temporary window. You can browse many score just like
that and see what is in it. Moreover, if you click it and
keep the mouse inside the icon, you can hear the score play.
You can learn much
more about this document manager, in the lesson dedicated to
it. For instance, you can add other folders and organize them
on your hard disk. See the lesson entitled The document manager.
You can of course
still use the open dialogs of Windows and Mac. They are
available in the File menu, Open... item.
If you want to delete
a Pizzicato document, right click on its green icon and
select the Delete menu item. Pizzicato will ask to
confirm and delete the file.
Tips and
advices for Pizzicato...
Frequently asked
questions about Pizzicato
Adjusting
the frame of the graphic copy
With Pizzicato
Beginner, Professional and Notation, you can make a graphic
copy of a score section, a measure, a stave,... To select the
part you want to copy, you must adjust the window which
contains that part so that you see only this part. For that,
you can modify the zoom value, which will not modify the size
of the part you copy. If you need to print the image with
another program (Word, Corel, ClarisWorks,...), it is better
to use a 300 DPI resolution in the dialog box. If you want to
use the picture on the screen or on a website, 72 DPI will be
enough. You can either copy the picture in the clipboard or
to save it as a ".bmp" (Windows) or .pict (Mac)
file and then use it as you like it.
The
"P" and "S" boxes
The
"Instruments" view (Windows menu) includes 2 check
boxes named "P" and "S" for each staff.
By default, the "P" box is checked. It means
"Play". All the staves for which the "P"
box is checked will play their notes. Disabling an instrument
with this box, you can mute its notes, for example if you
disable the soloist of a score, you can play it yourself.
The
"S" box means "Solo". By default, this
box is not checked. If you activate it for one instrument,
all the others will be muted. If you activate it for some
instruments, they will play their part and the others will
not play. It is an alternative to the "P" box use.
For example, if you work with an orchestra score and want to
listen to some measures with one instrument only, check the
"S" box of this instrument. Using the "P"
box, you would have to disable all the other instruments to
obtain the same result.
French or international note/chord names
You may
select the way notes are named. Go in the Options menu,
Chords library... item. You will find in the upper right part
of that dialog a selection to name the notes "Do, Ré,
Mi,..." or "C, D, E,...". Select your choice
and click OK. The chords will then be displayed accordingly,
for all documents.
The
beginner's corner...
Musical
basics and access to the Pizzicato music course
Using
clefs
Octaves
numbering
As previously
explained, a clef is used as a reference mark to write
notes on the staff. Until now, we always used the treble
clef to locate the notes:
The number to the
right of each note name shows the number of the octave. Because there is only 7 different
note names, octaves are numbered to differentiate amongst
octaves. Remember that an octave is an interval between
two notes having the same name and thus comprising 6
other notes between them.
The 8 notes here
above cover the extent of an octave. This octave bears
number 3. The next octave starts with the C located in
the third line space and bears number 4. You can easily
write the notes of octave 4 in treble clef (the last C
already belongs to octave 5):
Using the bass
clef
The bass clef lets
you write lower notes covering octaves 1 and 2. Here is
the bass clef and the notes of octaves 1 and 2:
...to
read the full text, see the lesson
about using clefs on our site...
The
commercial page...
EarMaster
5 - Interactive Ear Training Software
Have
you ever thought about what might be the difference between a
good musician and a REALLY good musician?
The
answer is very likely to be Ear Training!
Ear
training is the process of connecting theory (notes,
intervals, chords, etc) with music (the sounds we hear). The
more you will exercise to recognize this connection, the more
you will appreciate playing music, because you will learn
to understand what you play.
For
more information, go to www.arpegemusic.com/earmaster.htm
You
can buy EarMaster at https://arpegemusique.com/acheteren.php
News,
links, ...
http://artslegacy.com - The need for
arts in our lives. Melanie Richards, sounding the alarm for
the arts, demonstrates how we are denying ourselves and our
children an artistic way of living, thinking, and learning,
thereby creating an artificial life for them and a legacy for
the future that is wanting in substance. If we ask some
difficult questions about where we are as a society today and
what legacy we are indeed creating for future generations, we
come up short on our understanding and living of the arts,
and how we expose our children to their influence. This book
brings up some hard truths about how we live today, and how a
true exposure to artistic living and its benefits, especially
that of using process as a tool for learning, would better
prepare our children for life.
Pizzicato
upgrades
With
the publication of Pizzicato 3.5, a series of updates are
available for Mac OS X and Windows, according to the version
you presently have.
If you bought
Pizzicato 3.3 or 3.4, you may download Pizzicato 3.5 for
free. The reference is the license number. All users whose
license number is greater or equal to 15589 can update for
free by going to the free update section on our website and
download version 3.5. See page www.arpegemusic.com/clients3.htm. Install it and validate it
with your original license/serial numbers.
Otherwise,
to know the prices and possibilities, see the update order
form on our site:
https://arpegemusique.com/achetermajen.php
In the
menu "You have", select the version you
presently have. The page will be redrawn and
will show the possible upgrades and their prices. To buy an
upgrade, fill in the form and validate it.
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!