User manual

533
Polyphonic voicing
Setting up the voices
This text describes the Polyphonic tab of the Score Set-
tings–Staff page in general. Below you will find more de-
tailed information on how to select from the multitude of
options.
1. Open the Score Settings–Staff page for the staff.
2. Select the Polyphonic tab.
3. Pull down the Staff Mode pop-up and select Poly-
phonic.
This makes the voice list in the lower part of the dialog available. It con-
sists of eight rows, one for each voice. They are numbered and therefore
we refer to them as voices 1 to 8.
4. To activate a voice, click in its “On” column, so that a
tick mark appears.
There are four voices on each staff, for a total of eight. If you activate at
least one “upper” voice and one “lower” voice, you will get a split (piano)
staff.
5. If you have particular reasons to use specific MIDI
channels, change the “Chan” settings for the voices.
The program automatically sets each voice to a different MIDI channel. If
you don’t have good reasons to make changes, leave the settings as they
are.
6. Click in the “Rests–Show” column to decide for which
voices you want rests displayed.
A tick mark indicates that rests will be shown for a voice. Often you will
only want rests to be shown for one voice per staff, see below.
!
When you make a note part of a voice, you are in fact
changing its MIDI channel value.
However, when you change the voice’s MIDI channel
values in the setup dialog, this does not affect the
notes’ MIDI channel setting. This can lead to serious
confusion, since the relationship between the notes
and the voices is affected. It might even make notes
disappear (the program will warn if this happens). In
other words, don’t change the MIDI channels on the
Polyphonic tab on the Score Settings–Staff page af-
ter you have put your notes into voices, unless you
are absolutely sure of what you are doing. Also
please note that when you open a part that contains
notes on different MIDI channels, these notes are in
fact already assigned to voices (since notes are as-
signed to voices using their MIDI channel setting).
While this fact can be put to good use, it can also
create confusion, and even disappearing notes, as
described above.
!
You can also convert existing tracks into polyphonic
voices automatically, using the Merge All Staves
function.
!
Do not confuse the voice numbers with the MIDI
channel setting for each voice.
!
Please note the warnings about changing the MIDI
channel settings in the section “Voices and MIDI
channels” on page 532. Also note that if two voices
are set to the same MIDI channel, the lower will be
treated as if it were turned off.