Composition libraries (1) |
What are the composition libraries ? [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] The principle of the composition libraries is probably the
main innovation introduced by Pizzicato. It is a musical building
set. It offers you a tool for composition assistance. It enables
the beginner to approach composition and the professional to
accelerate his work, to test and discover new musical
combinations easily. This lesson and the five next lessons present the composition
help system as it was developped for Pizzicato 1 and 2. Pizzicato
version 3 introduces another set of tools related to music
composition, that are more easy to use and more intuitive. You
can discover them in the composition help lessons. To follow these lessons correctly, check that the windows
management mode is will set to Free, in the Windows,
Windows management menu item. These old library system
is indeed not well adapted to the new document and windows
manager. Also open the example files directly from the File,
Open... menu item and not through the document manager.
They can be found in the DataEN / Examples folder. The idea is very simple. It consists in
breaking up music into basic elements and combining them in a
construction that may become very sophisticated. It is always possible to break up a piece
of music into a set of elements belonging to the 4 following
categories: The rhythmic aspect specifies how the
events proceed in time and one compared to the other. In the
score writing, they are represented by rhythmic values (quarter notes, eighth
notes
). The notes creates the melodies and the
chords of a piece. In musical notation, notes are located by
their vertical position on the staff. Sounds are represented by the instruments
playing the notes and rhythms. The choice of instruments or
synthetic sounds influences the sound result of the musical
work. Finally, a whole series of indications may
be written on the score in order to specify how the piece
must be played: nuances, accents, tempo variations, as well
as all effects which can modify sound (reverberation, balance, glissando, performance, durations of
notes
). We will group all this under performance. These
indications can be written explicitly on the score or
sometimes implicitly added by the musician in order to add
his personal feeling to the music. When composing with Pizzicato, the first
two aspects (notes and rhythms) can be dealt with by the
composition libraries. Sounds are selected with the instruments
view and the performance is modified by the various symbols
available in the Tools palettes and by the various
MIDI parameters of the instruments view. The conductor of
this set of tools is of course you, the composer! The composition libraries offer you a tool
to combine the basic notes and rhythms and build a musical
score. By selecting the instruments and adding performance
symbols, you can really compose a musical work. This lesson
and the following will mainly insist on the combinations of
rhythms and notes, these elements forming the basic structure
of a musical score.
Elements of the composition libraries [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] Four basic elements have been chosen to combine rhythms and
notes. These elements are the rhythm, the melody,
the theme and the chord. These elements form the
construction blocks of the composition libraries. Here is a
precise definition: It is a succession of conventional rhythmic
values (quarter note, eighth notes
) to play (for the
notes) or not to play (for the rests) one after the other.
The rhythm may contain only one rhythmic value or several of
identical or different values. The sum of the durations of
each value represents the total duration of the rhythm. In
the definition of a rhythm, notes pitches are not taken into
account. Here some examples of rhythms: 1 quarter note + 1 quarter rest = a 2
quarter notes duration: 1 quarter note + 2 eighth notes + 1 quarter
note + 4 16th notes = a 4 quarter notes duration: 1 16th note + 1 eighth note + 1 16th note +
1 quarter rest = a 2 quarter notes duration: 1 half note + 1 dotted quarter note + 2
16th notes + 1 eighth rest + 1 dotted eighth note = a 21 16th
notes duration: It is a succession of notes to play one
after the other. The melody can contain only one note or a
several notes. Each note is represented by its pitch on the
staff, possibly modified by an accidental. In the definition
of a melody, the rhythmic values is not taken into account.
Here are some examples of melodies: One note melody (A): 8 notes melody (C, D, E, F, G, F, E, D): 3 notes melody (C, E, B flat): Like the melody, it is a succession of
notes to play one after the other. But this time a rhythmic
value is associated with each note and there can be rests
between notes. It is a combination of a rhythm and a melody.
This association forms a fixed construction block. The
association between notes and rhythms is unique and will
always be done in the same manner. The theme may comprise
only one note or several notes. Each note is represented by
its rhythmic value and its pitch on the staff, possibly
modified by an accidental. Here are some examples of themes: 7 notes theme: 5 notes and 2 rests theme: It is a set of notes played at the same
time. The definition of a chord may contain one or several
notes. Each note is represented by its pitch on the staff,
possibly modified by an accidental. The various notes are
written one above the other to indicate that they are played
simultaneously. No rhythmic value is associated with the
definition of a chord. The lower note is regarded as the root
note of the chord. Here are two examples of chords: 4 notes chord (G 7): 6 notes chord (C Major): Composing with the libraries [Professional] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] Pizzicato lets you create elements of the 4 types above to
form composition libraries. They then contain the basic blocks to
create a piece of music. Several composition libraries are
provided as examples. You can find them in the DataEN / Music
directory. To compose with libraries, the first step is thus to have or
to build a library with a certain number of rhythms, melodies,
themes and chords. On the screen, these 4 elements are visible in
the main view, in the form of icons. The type of element
represented by the icon is indicated by the first letter: R for
the rhythm, M for the melody, T for the theme and C for the
chord. You will find two elements of each type. With each element,
there is an associated name drawn under the icon, in order to
recognize them. As we will see in the next lesson, melodies are represented
with all notes in quarter notes values. You see the two elements that we have dragged in the measure.
They are represented by small blocks with the type letter (R, M,
C or T) followed by the name of the element. This display option
lets you quickly visualize the library elements associated to the
measures. In the above dialog, notice the Only for selected measures
check box. When it is not checked, the measure display
option is valid for the full score. If you select (with the
selection tool) a set of measures and then check this box, only
the selected measures will be affected by the operation. This
lets you for example display one staff with the notes and another
with the library contents. We will see in the next lessons how to create new elements and
to combine them together in a lot of possibilities.