Alternative Notation music software - Music notation based on numbers - User Guide

7/27/2019 Alternative Notation music software - Music notation based on numbers - User Guide

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Alternative notation

Subjects covered:

What is alternative notation?

Displaying alternative notation in Pizzicato

Creating a new score

Entering the music

Lyrics

Adjusting the page layout

Text blocks

Music symbols

Defining the alternative notation configurations

What is alternative notation? [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [CompositionLight] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

Beside what we commonly call "StandardMusic Notation" or

"Traditional Music Notation", there are several other ways to

represent music on a sheet of paper. This lesson explains how you canwrite it with Pizzicato Alternative Notation.

Music notation has itself evolved through time to arrive today at aquite precise set of symbols that are agreed upon so that music can be

put into a written form understood by everyone. This does not mean

that the current system is the best system. Indeed, several notation

systems have evolved outside the mainstream of the standard notationsystem. As early as 1743, Jean-Jacques Rousseau presented a music

notation system that was more logical and easy to use. This system

has found its most common use today in China where it is calledJianpu or numbered notation and is based on seven numbers.

However, this principle can be taken one step further. The purpose isto represent the 12 notes (C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A# and B)

that correspond to one octave of the music keyboard (7 white keysand 5 black keys) in a different way than the standard notation, so asto make it more easy to learn, play and/or transpose.

Pizzicato Alternative Notation offers various combinations of symbols

to reach that purpose, as HMN (Hamburg Music Notation) and Jianpu

(a Chinese notation system). You can also design other

representations by defining the symbols and behaviour for the 12

notes.


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The Alternative Notation module ofPizzicato is not part of the

standard versions of Pizzicato. It can be purchased separately and will

then work with Pizzicato Choir, Light, Keyboard, Beginner, Notationor Professional. The type of score that can be created and edited is

dependent of the Pizzicato version.

By default, the Alternative Notation module can be purchased asitself, with no other versions of Pizzicato. In that case, the features of

Pizzicato are those of the Light version (combined with the

Alternative Notation features).

If you already have Pizzicato, you can simply buy the AlternativeNotation module. You then receive an additional license/serial

number. Go in theOptions menu and

select Program version/Upgrades... Then clickLicense

registration and enter the license/serial numbers and validate. TheAlternative Notation module is then activated.

If you don't have Pizzicato, you can buy the basic AlternativeNotation module as a stand alone program and it will offer the same

possibilities as Pizzicato Light.

You can also buy a bundle of one of the above Pizzicato versions with

the Alternative Notation module. The new features will be applicablewithin the possibilities of the Pizzicato version you choose.

The following sections of this lesson are written for users who do not

know how to use Pizzicato at all, so that they can start editing sheetmusic in alternative notation without the need to read and study many

of the other lessons of the Pizzicato user's manual. The main subjects

are explained with the purpose of working with the alternativenotation only. However, you will find below references to various

lessons of the Pizzicato user's manual, so that you can learn more

about a specific subject.

For Pizzicato users, here is a short summary on how you can accessthe features of the Alternative Notation module. If you don't knowPizzicato at all and simply want to edit music using the alternative

notation module, skip the following and go to the next section.

The Alternative Notation display is only accessible in the page

mode (not in linear or global mode).

Right-click the background of a page (not inside a measure) and

select the menu item Type of notation... By default, it is seton Standardnotation. You can display any existing score with


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alternative notation by selectingAlternative

notation orAlternative and standard notation. The second

choice will display the alternative notation on one page and thestandard notation on the next page, which enables you to edit

and see the display in both notation systems.

A new palette is available in the Tools menu,Alternativenotation. Its keyboard shortcut is CTRL+SHIFT+W, which can

be used to open or close it. When open, the shortcuts of this

new palette (as explained below) have the priority over anyother Pizzicato shortcuts. This palette is used to enter the music

directly in alternative notation. The details of the various tools

of this palette are explained below.

The Options... button found in the palette (or in the page

contextual menu) opens a dialog box giving the details of thealternative notation systems available. You can customize them

for experimental work. See below the section on how to definethe alternative notation options.

If you open the keyboard window

(Windows menu, Piano keyboarditem), each key will bedisplayed in the color assigned to the current alternative

notation system, as well as their corresponding symbol. You

can enter the notes using this keyboard.

Please note that you can also enter the music by using the standardPizzicato tools as explained elsewhere in the Pizzicato manual.

Pizzicato can display automatically the corresponding alternative

notation version of any existing score, whether for a solo instrumentor for a full orchestra (which is in fact something interesting to watch

!). So you can for instance import an existing MIDI fileor MusicXML file (according to the Pizzicato version you have) and

display it automatically in HMN, Jianpu or other cypher based

notation systems and print them or export them to PDF.

If you open the example file namedBACH2-1 (located intheMusic sub-directory of the sub-folderDataEN, or simply in the

document manager configuration 2 (blue buttons at the top left part of

the screen), you can display it as follows:


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In this dialog, you can specify:

Documentname - This is the name of the file as it will be

saved.

Title - The title will be displayed at the top of the first page.

Composer- Will be displayed to the right, lower than the title.

Copyright- Will be displayed in small letters at the bottom of

the page.

Margins - You can define the margins to use while adjusting

the systems inside the page.

Printing scale ( % ) - This factor will influence the final size ofthe music content on the printed page. Please note that

Pizzicato Light will only accept 100 % and Pizzicato Beginneronly 85 or 100 %. In the other versions, you can use any scale

factor you want to.

Number of instruments - Select here the number ofsimultaneous instruments playing together.

Time signature - Select the most common time signaturesavailable, or choose Other... to call a dialog box that lets you

define your own time signature.

Key signature - Select the key signature of the scale you want

to use. It is based on the numbers used in the alternativenotation system currently in use.

If you fill it in as follows:


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and if you click on Create the score, you will get the following page(you may need to increase the size of the window or to decrease the

zoom factor to see it all at once):

When you create a new score, Pizzicato will automatically display thepage in both alternative and standard notation.

You can use the right mouse button to click in the background of thescore (not inside a measure) and select the Type of notation item. You

have then 3 choices:

Standardnotation Alternative notation


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Alternative and standard notation

So you can decide how you display the music. In the default mode

(both), you can interact in both display systems. Note that the content

of the music is the same. Editing of the music in one display will

automatically adapt the other display.

Some Pizzicato versions can work with multiple scores open. In this

case, you can simply close the previous score before creating a newone, as otherwise the screen will be shared by the various scores

currently open.

In the rest of this lesson we will focus on the way to enter music with

the alternative notation palette. You will find in the Pizzicato user'smanual the other methods of entering notes by going in

theHelp menu and selecting one of the lessons of the Writingscores section.

Entering the music [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [CompositionPro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

You can use the zoom to increase the size of the music and have a

better precision while looking at the score. You will find the "+" and

"-" zoom buttons in the main tool bar above the score, on the left part.

To enter the notes directly in alternative notation, select one of therhythmic values on the palette, for instance the quarter note:

When one of the rhythmic icons is selected, you will see the current

entry point displayed in the score, as a blinking vertical line:

To enter the notes you can simply click on one of the 12 symbols ofthe second line of the palette:


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Clickfor instance on various note icons and you will get

something like this :

As you enter the notes, the blinking cursor progresses to the right andjumps to the next measure when the current measure is full.

Here are the actions that you can use while entering and editing themusic in alternative notation. While going through the list, use them

each time to see how they work in practice.

To enter a new note, you can use the shortcuts of the 12 notes.By default, it is the HMN alternative notation system that is

used. The shortcuts of the notes are from "1" to "9", "A", "B"and "0" (zero).

The left and right arrows of the keyboard can be used to movethe blinking cursor, so as to access the part of the score you

want to edit.

The TAB key can be used to jump to the beginning of the nextmeasure. SHIFT + TAB goes to the beginning of the previous

measure.

In the case of more than one instrument playing (two or more

staves attached for playing together), you can use the up anddown arrows of the keyboard to jump to the next (previous)staff.

To move the cursor to another place, you can also simply click

inside a measure and the cursor will immediately move to the

location of the next note that can be entered in this measure.


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The back space key is used to delete the note that is just left to

the cursor. Exactly as you use it to delete the previous letter

when you enter text, you use it to delete the last note entered.

TheDelete key acts similarly as for text. It will delete the note

that is to the right of the cursor.

Using the cursor, you can insert a note before another one. For

instance, if you go back to what you wrote before and delete anote, you can simply replace it with another one and the other

notes of the measure will shift automatically. However, trying

to enter a rhythmic value that would overflow the content of themeasure will not work.

You can use the keyboard window (in

the Windows menu, Piano keyboard) to enter the notes:

Simply click on any of the notes of the keyboard and it

will add a note at the position of the blinking cursor. If

you have a MIDI keyboard connectedto Pizzicato through a MIDI interface, you can also use itto enter the notes directly.

To change the current rhythmic value, you can either click on

the corresponding icon in the palette or use the "+" and "-"

keys. The "+" key will shift to longer values (from quarter note

to half note) and the "-" key will shift to the shorter values(from quarter note to eighth note).

You will notice that the eighth, 16th,...notes aredisplayed with horizontal lines showing the same

number of beams as in standard notation:


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For longer rhythmic values, this notation system uses the"-" sign to show that the duration of the note is extended:

To change the octave up or down, you can click on the "0"iconthat is at the end of the second line of icons. It gives the numberof the octave. "0" starts from the lower C note in G clef. By

clicking on this icon you have a choice from -4 to +4. You can

also use the shortcuts to shift the octave. They are "u"for Up and "d" forDown. Simply type the "u" or "d" key on the

keyboard. You will notice that the octave is displayed with dots

above or below the note symbols, so as to show that they areone or more octaves up or down. For instance:

For dotted notes, you can simply enable or disable thecorresponding icon on the palette (you can also use the "." keyof the keyboard as a shortcut to enable/disable the dot):


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The current rhythmic value will automatically be

affected by the dot, which is shown exactly as in

standard notation (just to the right of the note symbol):

To enter rests, click on the rest symbol and all the otherrhythmic values will be displayed as rest values (and the icon to

the right is now displayed as a note). You can use the "r" letter(forRest) of the keyboard to enable/disable the rest values. The

palette displays as follows:

To enter a rest, simply click on one of the note numbers

in the above palette or by using a keyboard shortcut of a

note. A rest is then added instead of a note. The rests aredisplayed with their conventional standard notation

symbols.

For rhythmic values lower than the quarter note, the beaming of

notes are adapted according to the time signature. You canbreak a beaming or force it by using the '/' key of the computerkeyboard. Doing that will break or force the beaming of the last

two notes (the two notes that are located before the blinkingcursor).

You can enter two voices in the same measure, using thealternative notation system. Switch between the two voices

with the "V1" (or "V2")icon of the palette, or use the keyboard

shortcut "v". You can then enter additional content in themeasure and the two voices are displayed at two different

levels, as follows:


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The content of the two voices will behave independentlyinside the measure.

You can also enter chords. The notes are displayed on top of

each other. In this case, it is considered as only one rhythmicvoice because all the notes of the chord have the same rhythmic

value (in the standard notation they are attached to the same

stem). To enter the chord mode, use the following icon or itsshortcut which is the letter "c":

In the chord mode, the cursor with add the note and not

move to the right. Each additional note is added to thatchord. To go to the next chord, simply use the right

arrow key on the keyboard. This will display as follows:

To enter a tied note, simply click on the last icon of the first line

in the palette. The current note is tied to the next one. This isonly for tied notes (with the same pitch). For slurs, see the

section about music symbols below.

Lyrics [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [Composition Pro] [Drums andPercussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

You can add lyrics to existing notes by selecting the lyrics tool fromthe alternative notation palette:


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The blinking cursor will automatically be positionned under theclosest note where the cursor was, for instance:

You can then enter the lyrics as follows:

Use the normal keyboard to type in the text

Use the TAB key to go to the next syllable

Use the "-" sign between the syllables of a word (use it a second

time to remove it)

Use the "_" sign to add an extension to a syllable (use it a

second time to remove it)

Use the left and right arrows of the keyboard to move thecurrent cursor or click on a note symbol directly

Use the backspace key to delete the last letter of the current

syllable You can use more than one line of text: use the down / up arrow

keys to move from one line to the other

Here is an example of it:

To adjust the vertical position of the lyrics, you can select the

following tool in the main tool palette (Tools menu,Main

palette):


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Then simply drag and drop the lyrics to adjust theirvertical position.

For more advanced use of the lyrics, like choosing the fonts, adjusting

extension lines or copying/pasting the full text of the lyrics fromanother program, you can refer to the lesson about lyrics in

the Pizzicato user's manual, in theHelp menu:

Help ==> Writing scores ==>Lyrics...

Adjusting the page layout [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [CompositionLight] [Composition Pro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

The page layout is how you organize the measures and systems inside

one or more pages ( a system is a set of one or more staves playedtogether).

Let's start a new score with 2 instruments, with theNew

score... button and the corresponding dialog filled as follows:

Let's fill it full of notes, simply to show how the general score will

look and how we can then adjust the page layout. We could get

something like this:


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There are two different operations to edit the page layout of a score.

1. Adding and/or deleting measures and/or staves

2. Rearranging the existing measures and staves

With the first operation, you determine the number of measures andinstruments you need for the music you want to write.

To add and/or remove measures and staves to an existing score, selectthe arrow tool in the main palette (or use the shortcut which is

the ESC key of the keyboard) and double-click inside the normalcontent of one of the measures (in standard notation, this corresponds

to the area inside the 5 lines of the staff). The following dialog boxappears:


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The left part can be used to add, insert or remove measures and the

right part is for adding, inserting or deleting staves. The

measures/staves are added/inserted/deleted in relation to themeasure/staff you double-clicked to call this dialog.

As a simple example, if you want to add 12 measures to the end of thescore:

Double-clickon the last measure

ClickAddin the left part of the dialog and fill in "12" in the text

box just to the right.

ClickOK. In the case of the above score, the result will be toadd a new page with 12 measures in it. If you shift the display

to the right with the horizontal scroll bar, you will see the new

page:

Note that Pizzicato Light may only handle scores that have a total of60 measures for one instrument (or 30 measures for 2 instruments, 20measure for 3,...). Other versions have no limitations in the number of

measures.

As another example, if you now only want 12 measure in the score,

you can do it as follows:

Double-click on measure 13


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In the left part of the dialog, selectDelete and fill in the text

box with "16" (in fact you can even set the number to "1000"

and it will delete all measures after mesure 13).

ClickOK. The resulting score is now:

Let's have a look now at the second type of operation, where you

adjust how the existing measures and staves are organized on one or

more page(s).

To determine the number of measures in a system and the number of

systems per page, enable the reference marks tool (shortcut is ":") on

the main palette:


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You will then see a set of "+" and "-" blue buttons appear to the right

of each system on the page, as well as one set in the lower left corner

of each page:

To use this buttons, be sure that the arrow tool is also selected in themain palette (shortcut is ESC).

By clicking a "+" button, you will add one measure to the

corresponding system. However, the measure is not created. It is onlyshifted from the following system into the current system, so that if asystem has 4 measures, when you click the "+" button it will have 5

measures.

By clicking the "-" button, you shift the last measure of the system to

the next system, so you decrease the number of measures in the

current system.

For instance, if you want to adjust the above page layout so that thereare 4 systems of 3 measures instead of 3 systems of 4 measures, youcan proceed as follows:

Click on the "-" button of the first system. The fourth measure

goes down and the other are shifted.

Click on the "-" button of the second system. The 7th measuregoes down and the other are shifted.


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Click on the "-" button of the third system. The 10th measure

goes down and the other are shifted.

As a result, there are 3 systems with one measure in the lowerpart of the score. At this step, Pizzicato does not organize them

automatically. So you can simply click two times on the "+"

button of the fourth system and the 3 measures will be backinto one system, so as to result in the following display:

The same principle applies to the lower left set of "+" and "-" buttons.They are used to shift a system to or from the next page, so that youcan adjust the number of systems in a given page.

Now you can also adjust the positions of the staves and systems aswell as the position of the barlines. Here is how you can do this:

If you click inside the first staff of a given system and drag itlower or higher, you can adjust the system's vertical position

If you click inside a staff (but not the first) and drag it lower or

higher, you can adjust the distance between the first staff andthe current staff

If you click just left to a middle barline, you can drag ithorizontally so as to make more space for a given measure for

instance.


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You can also adjust the width of the measures globally, taking into

account the existing content of the measures, as follows:

Editmenu, Select all

Editmenu,Justify

ESC key to disable the selection mode

For more advanced features of the page layout tools, you can refer to

the following lessons in the Pizzicato user's manual, intheHelp menu:

Adding and removing measures and staves:Help ==> Writing

scores ==> Measures and staves (1) and (2)

Working on the page layout:Help ==> Writing scores==> Page layout...

You can also change the bar lines, for instance to add repeats and the

double bar line at the end of the music. For details on this, see thelesson on bar lines and repeats:

Help ==> Writing scores ==> Bar lines and repeats...

Text blocks [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [CompositionPro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

By default, with the automatic creation of a new score, there is a title,the name of the composer and a copyright notice. These are text

blocks that are part of the page layout.

You can modify an existing text block simply by double-clicking on it(while the cursor tool is selected, the shortcut being the ESC key of

the computer keyboard). A dialog appears that gives you full control

of the text, font and positionning options:


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To remove a text block, place the mouse over it (without clicking) and

hit the DELETE key of the computer keyboard.

To add a new text block you can use the text block tool that is located

in the main palette :

Simply click in the page where you want to add it and the abovedialog box opens to create a new text block.

For more information about text blocks, see the Pizzicato user's

manual:


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Help ==> Writing scores ==> The text tool...

Music symbols [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [CompositionPro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar] [Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

You can add the most common symbols in the alternative part of thedisplay. You will find them in the standard palettes of the Tools menu.

They are located after theNotes and rests palette. The most importantsymbols are in theMain symbols palette, as shown here:

To add a symbol, select it in the palette and then clickon the note to

which it is related.

When the symbol is on the score, you can click it and drag it to adjust

its graphic position. For instance, placing a nuance mf, an accent andaDim. will show the following:

You can also place crescendo signs and slurs by clicking on the

starting note. However, according to the way Pizzicato works todisplay the alternative notation from the standard notation, it is often

more easier to adjust such symbols in the standard notation part of the

score. For instance, a crescendo and slur in the standard notation willthen be automatically readjusted to fit the alternative notation display:


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You can delete a symbol by placing the mouse over the symbol

(without clicking) and then using the DELETE key.

For more information about handling symbols, see the Pizzicato user'smanual:

Help ==> Writing scores ==> Graphic andMIDIsymbols...

Defining the alternative notation

configurations [Light] [Beginner] [Professional] [Notation] [Composition Light] [CompositionPro] [Drums and Percussion] [Guitar][Choir] [Keyboard] [Soloist]

By default, the HMN-Jianpu music notation system is

active. Pizzicato offers 10 possible alternative notation configurations.

You can modifiy them by clicking on the Options... button in thealternative notation palette. The following dialog box appears:


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The upper menu is used to select the configuration that is used to

display the music.

For each configuration you can define the following:

The color of each note symbol

The UNICODE decimal value that represents the symbol youwant to use for the note (you can find UNICODE tables onWikipedia)

The font used to display each symbol (click on

the Font... button to select it)

The character that can be used as a shortcut while entering the

note.

A check box specifies if the time and key signatures are placed

inside the staff or above it.

There are three modes available for handling the notes :

HMN Jianpu : the notes have absolute values ("1"is always the C note), they are displayed at the

same vertical position Jianpu standard: the notes have relative values

("1" is the tonic of the scale), they are displayed at

the same vertical position HMN Vertical Pitch : the notes have absolute

values, but they are displayed using a vertical

position that follows the natural pitch (up = higher

pitch)

Notice that when theHMN Vertical Pitch is active in a configuration,

it generally does not display chords and multiple voices adequately, as

the vertical positionning varies with pitches. Voices and chords wouldotherwise collide with each other. This mode must be used only with a

single melodic line.

The selection of the basic font is used for the time and key signatures.

TheDefaultvalues will set the HMN-Jianpu values to the currentconfiguration.

The right part of the dialog defines the shortcuts that you can use for

the tools of the alternative notation palette. You can see their defaultvalues here above.


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A check box specifies if the piano keyboard window will (or not)

display the colors and note symbols on each key.

The next check box, if enabled, will display the note symbols that

correspond to the black keys of the piano in bold style so as to give a

visual hint for the scale.

TheBack to original setup button, will reset the 10 default

configurations to their original values. Use this if you want to get backto the situation existing when you first installed the program.

Here is how a chromatic scale will look with each of the 7 predefinedconfigurations. The last 3 configurations are free for experimental

work.

Standard notation

HMN-Jianpu-USC

HMN-Jianpu-UKC

Standard Jianpu

HMN Vertical pitch

HMN-Jianpu-USC - Black & white


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HMN-Jianpu-UKC - Black & white

HMN Vertical pitch - Black & white

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Alternative Notation music software - Music notation based on numbers - User Guide

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