Rhapsody
APDL/ProAction
Editing a score
Load the score as described in chapter 1, or set up a new score as described in chapter 2. Click Menu over the score to bring up the Rhapsody menu. Before we do any editing, try following the 'Display' arrow which leads to...
The Display menu
The 'Normal' item is ticked. Choose one of the other items and see what happens to the score! 'Small' is useful if you are editing a very large score, though it can be difficult to use. 'Large' and 'Huge' are really for use in a classroom (or perhaps for those with less than perfect eyesight).
Normally the 'Beams' option is ticked. If you remove this tick, the score is displayed on the screen without any beams joining the quavers and semi-quavers. Screen redrawing works a lot faster in this mode. Whether or not this option is selected, beams are always printed when the score is formatted and printed on a printer. Incidentally, Rhapsody is fairly intelligent about which quavers and semi-quavers to group together and recognises the difference between 3/4 and 6/8 time, but if you write in odd rhythms like 7/8 etc, it will group the notes in crotchets from the beginning of the bar. You can, in fact, change the way the notes are beamed together but further explanation of this is deferred until the end of this chapter.
Select the display you like best and go back to the Rhapsody menu. This time choose the 'Show panels' option.
Two windows open: Panel-1 and Panel-2, which look like this:
Moving the cursor about
Before you use either of these new windows, click Select (not Menu) on the score window at the place where you wish to edit a note. A yellow rectangle with two red arrows appears on the score at the place where you clicked Select. This is known as the Cursor. The vertical slot in which the cursor finds itself on the system of staves is known as the Cursor Slot and the exact line or space where the red arrows sit is known as the Cursor Position.
Now experiment by clicking Select on any of the arrows in the Panel-2 window.
The two on the left shift the cursor up and down the cursor slot. The next four move the cursor left and right by either one slot or one bar. (Note that none of these alters the position of the red arrows on the stave.) The four on the right move the cursor position up and down by either one note or one octave.
You will find that it is possible to move the arrows beyond the limits of the yellow rectangle - 32 positions are available in all.
Of course, the cursor can also be moved by clicking Select over the score as before, but you cannot access the 'extended' positions in this way for obvious reasons. Try it!
The cursor keys on the keyboard can also be used to move the cursor about (provided that Rhapsody has what is known as the 'input focus' as shown by the highlighted title bar of the score you are editing). For more details on this see chapter 6.
Editing a score
Now lets add a few things to this score. First click Select on one of the white icons in the Panel-1 window. Lets choose the Rest icon, the second icon in the middle row. When you click on this icon it is highlighted in orange. Note that the cursor has not moved. Now click Select on the leftmost yellow arrow at the top of the Panel window.
This icon is called the Insert-Before icon and when you click on it the program attempts to insert your selected choice immediately to the left of the cursor. The cursor then moves onto the item you have just entered.
This is a fundamental operation. Clicking on any of the three Insert icons causes the contents of whatever icon is highlighted in orange to be inserted at the cursor - if at all possible.
The green icon is called the Insert-At icon and causes the program to attempt to insert your choice at the current cursor position. This can only be done if it makes sense to do so. Clearly, you cannot add a rest to a clef, but you can add a rest to a slot containing a note as Rhapsody can handle up to two independent parts on each stave.
The next yellow icon is called the Insert-After icon and attempts to insert your choice immediately after the cursor.
A wide variety of rests (and other musical symbols) are available using icons 1 to 7 on the middle row of Panel-1. The items are obtained by repeatedly clicking on the highlighted icon with either Select or Adjust. The following list shows all the symbols available within the seven icons. They are listed in the order in which they appear when cycling with Select.
- hemi-demi-semiquaver
demi-semiquaver
semiquaver
quaver
crotchet
minim
semi-breve
breve
- hemi-demi-semiquaver rest
demi-semiquaver rest
semi-quaver rest
quaver rest
crotchet rest
minim rest
semi-breve rest
breve rest
- sharp
flat
natural
double sharp
double flat
natural
sharp
natural flat
- single dot
double dot
triple dot
tie
triplet
- barline
1st time barline
2nd time barline
half barline
double barline
end barline
start repeat barline
end repeat barline
double repeat barline
- staccato note
marcato note
accented note
large trill
small trill
large mordent
small mordent
turn
trill
trill definitions
- block marker icon
pedal on
pedal off
text icon
voice change icon
Adding notes and clusters
Try inserting some notes. Be careful to position the cursor arrows accurately. If you click on the Insert icons with Select, the note has its tail pointing upwards (an Upstalk note); if you use Adjust, the tail points downwards (a Downstalk note).
If you add an upstalk note to a slot which already contains an upstalk note, the two will merge to form a note Cluster. If you add a downstalk note to a slot which contains an upstalk note, the notes remain quite independent.
Note that when you add a second note to make a cluster, the original note length is retained, even if the highlighted icon shows a different note. In order to change the note length, you must position the cursor over the note itself before clicking on the Insert-At icon. It follows that, to add a second note to a cluster and change the note length, just click the Insert-At icon twice.
You will gather from this that it is impossible to have a crotchet and a minim in the same cluster. While it is true that some pieces of music do mix note values in this way, it is better practice to use separate parts. Remember that, by using different tails, Rhapsody can cope with up to two totally independent parts on a single stave.
You can add attributes like dots, ties and triplets to notes, but all such attributes apply to ALL the notes in a cluster. It is not possible to have a crotchet and a dotted crotchet in the same cluster (though it is perfectly possible to have an upstalk crotchet and a downstalk dotted crotchet in the same slot on the same stave.)
In order to keep things as easy for the user as possible, Rhapsody automatically allows extra space for accidentals, dots, ties etc., and also, sensibly packs semi-quavers closer together than crotchets and minims. What Rhapsody does not do, however, is to ensure that you have aligned the notes on different staves sensibly; nor does it check to see that you put the right number of notes in every bar. That is up to you.
Deleting notes etc.
In general, in order to delete something, eg a note or a rest etc., you put the cursor in the relevant slot and click on the Delete icon, which is the pink X icon in Panel-1 .
If the slot contains two notes, however, or in any other case where there may be ambiguity about what is being deleted (accidentals for example) it is necessary to position the cursor line over the exact item which is to be deleted.
Use of icons and symbols
While it is assumed that the user has an elementary knowledge of musical notation, a number of points need to be made about the way Rhapsody uses the symbols in icons 1 to 7 as follows:
Notes - nothing unusual here.
Rests
Nothing particularly unusual here either except to point out that Rhapsody largely ignores rests when playing, except, of course, when they actually determine the rhythm. This means that you can usually put rests anywhere you like in a bar (but see the section on misalignment in chapter 11). It also means that you can put too many rests in a bar without causing problems. This may or may not be an advantage, but it is true that the semi-breve rest is often used to mean 'one bar rest' regardless of the actual length of the bar.
Accidentals
Note that the natural sharp and natural flat symbols are treated just like ordinary sharps and flats by Rhapsody.
Dotted notes
Dotted notes are conventional.
Tied notes
If you add a tie to a note, then when the note is played, the note length is calculated by adding the length of the next note on the stave which is at the same pitch. If this note is also tied, the next note will be added also etc. It is up to you to ensure that the note to which the first note is tied is at the same pitch. If it is not, then Rhapsody will only look as far as the next note with the same stalk and the tie will be ignored. This can lead, however, to rare problems. For more detail see chapter 11.
You can, of course, tie notes over a bar and if the first note has a trill, the trill will continue for the full length of the note. You cannot, I am afraid, tie a note over a repeat bar, though!
Triplets
The triplet symbol must be added to every note of the triplet, eg:
In this respect, Rhapsody is non-standard. If you wish to produce a printed score which looks more like the conventional method of indicating triplets, you can omit the first and last of the three symbols but the score will not play correctly.
Bar Lines
It is very important to understand that there are two different sorts of bar line in Rhapsody (and in musical scores too). The ordinary thin barline is the most important and signifies the measure of the piece (ie which notes are stressed etc.) There are also a host of other barlines (which I shall call Supplementary bar lines to distinguish them from Proper barlines). Supplementary barlines often coincide with proper barlines, but they do not have to. Repeat barlines can, and often do, occur in the middle of a bar. Proper barlines can always be distinguished from supplementary barlines in the 'edit score' window because they are numbered (in blue above the score) or are labelled 1st or 2nd. Supplementary barlines on their own are not numbered. The barlines available are listed in the order that they appear by clicking with Select on the bar line icon, the fifth icon in the middle row of Panel-1:
Proper barlines
- Ordinary barline
- First time barline
- Second time barline
- Supplementary bar lines
- Half barline. The half bar line is useful for dividing 7/8 bars into 3.2.2 or 2.2.3 etc. Also used to start a piece which has an anacrusis (a note or group of notes before the first bar). See chapter 10 for more details on this.
- Double barline - Useful for dividing sections of a work.
- End barline - Used at the end of a piece.
- Start repeat barline - Starts a repeated section.
- End repeat barline - Ends a repeated section.
- Double repeat barline - Both ends and starts a repeated section.
Staccato, marcato and accented notes
If you mark a note as being staccato or marcato, its length is shortened (or lengthened) by a fixed amount which you can set using the trill definition window (see below). By default, staccato notes are played at 50% of their full length and marcato notes at 80%.
Accented notes are played at 4 dynamic levels higher than the current dynamic level, (eg in a piano (p) passage, an accented note is played at mp'; in a forte (f) passage, at ff. See below for further details.)
Trills
The next six symbols refer to various trills. Six common trills are defined by default but you can add new trill definitions into the score at any point using the trill definition icon, td, which brings up the trill definition window. For more details on this see chapter 9. Altogether, over 100 different trills are possible.
Trill definition symbol
(TD) - See chapter 9.
Block marker
The block marker is not a musical symbol but two markers may be entered into a score in the usual way. For details of how to do this, see chapter 4.
Pedal on and Pedal off
The pedal on and pedal off symbols may be used to send pedal information to a MIDI instrument. They have no effect on the output to the internal sound channels.
Text
Text may be entered by selecting the text icon. The panel window extends to reveal a writable field into which you may write a short item of text (typically one word of a song lyric or a musical instruction such as 'cresc' or 'Andante'). This text is limited to 13 characters. When you insert this into the score (using the Insert-At icon in the usual way), the text is printed at the cursor position. It is important, therefore, to check the height of the red arrows before inserting text. Text is deleted by positioning the cursor over the text you wish to delete and clicking on the Delete icon.
In addition to the writable icon, the panel also shows a box which you may use to select the auto-spacing feature. Sometimes you may be prepared to allow the text to 'spill over' into the next slot. This will be true of most musical directions. When entering a lyric, however, you may need to widen the slot to accommodate the whole word. This can be done by first clicking on this box.
Voice change icon
The voice or channel number assigned to a stave may be changed at any point in a score. When this icon is selected the panel window extends to reveal two boxes. The upper one contains the name of the currently assigned Archimedes voice and the lower one the currently assigned MIDI channel number. Both of these can be changed in the usual way by clicking with the Select or Adjust buttons to cycle through the available options. When you have chosen the right voices etc, do not forget to click on the Insert-At icon in order to insert the data into the score. The presence of voice information in the score is indicated by the symbol VC above the score.
If you wish to read some voice data which is already present in the score, first position the cursor over the relevant slot and then select the voice icon.
Please note that, in the case of the Archimedes voices, it is the voice number which is stored, not the name. If, on a subsequent occasion, you load in some different voice modules, a different voice will of course be played at this point.
The facility to change MIDI channels is only of use if you have a multi- timbral instrument which can play different voices on different channels.
The six icons on the bottom line of Panel-1 contain the following features:
Clefs
Five clefs are available:
- treble clef
- alto clef (for viola parts)
- vocal tenor clef (an octave below the treble clef)
- instrumental tenor clef (for 'cello parts etc.)
- bass clef
Key signatures
The upper half of the icon contains key signatures from 7 flats (7b) to 7 sharps (7#). C major is not included specifically in the list because it is not needed at the start of a score. If you wish to change into C major in the course of a score, you can use the naturalised version of the key which you are moving out of. This is available by using the Adjust button when inserting the new key signature - ie when clicking on any of the three Insert icons. In some printed music, you may see key signatures with some naturals and some accidentals. These are not supported by Rhapsody. To change into a new key other than C major, just use the appropriate key signature. (You may, if you wish, naturalise it first but this is not necessary.)
Dynamics
The lower half of the icon contains the following dynamic markings in sixteen levels:
0 (silent)
1 ppp
2 ppp'
3 pp
4 pp'
5 p
6 p
7 mp
8 mp'
9 mf
10 mf
11 f
12 f
13 ff
14 ff
15 fff (the dashed marks are slightly louder than the normal ones.)
In the case of MIDI instruments, the dynamic marking is used to determine the 'key-on velocity' (ie how hard the note is played). This can sometimes be used to affect the quality of the note as well as its volume. Dynamic markings can be used in conjunction with (but quite independent of) the master volume control (see below). For example, one stave can be made to sound louder than the others.
When using the Archimedes internal voices, the dynamic level is combined with the master volume setting and will not achieve quite the same effect as with a MIDI instrument.
Time Signatures
The next icon is also divided into two and allows you to determine the time signature. The upper half is used to set the number of beats in a bar (from 1 to 16). The lower half is used to determine the type of beat -2= minim; 4 = crotchet; 8 = quaver; 16 = semi-quaver.
When using one of the Insert icons to insert or change a time signature, it makes no difference which half of the icon is highlighted. Note that Rhapsody assumes that all staves have the same time signature.
Note theat Rhapsody assumes that all staves have the same time signature.
Tempo markings
The fourth icon allows you to enter tempo markings. These can either be fixed or progressive and allow you to insert accelerandos and ritardandos. All tempo markings are in crotchets per minute (even when the music is in 6/8 or minims.)
The upper half of the icon is used to enter fixed tempo marks which take immediate effect. The range allowed is 10 to 500 in steps of 2. The selected tempo is shown in green above the score.
When you click on the lower half, the panel window extends to reveal two more fields;
The upper field contains the target tempo (ie the tempo you wish to reach eventually) in the range 10-500 crotchets per minute. The lower field contains the number of crotchet beats during which the accelerando or ritardando is to occur. Note that this field is always in crotchet beats (even when the music is in 6/8 or minims). The allowed range is 0-40 beats.
Volume markings
The last icon works in exactly the same way as the previous one and allows you to enter volume markings which are either fixed or progressive.
The volume scale is an arbitrary one in which 0 is silent and 126 is maximum volume. In the case of a MIDI instrument, this controls the 'master volume' of the instrument and is quite independent of the dynamic markings (which controls the 'key-on velocity'). It is a good idea to use a standard volume of about 100 so that you have some room for a crescendo. In the case of the Archimedes internal voices, this volume is combined with the dynamic marking to give an overall volume.
The upper half gives access to fixed volume markings which take immediate effect while the lower half opens up another extension to the panel window which allows you to enter crescendos and decrescendos. Note that, as before, the number of beats is specified in crotchets. The volume is written above the score in red.
Altering the appearance of the score
In addition to providing the cursor movement icons described earlier, the Panel-2 window provides four action icons which can improve the appearance of your printed score. These are dealt with in sequence from left to right and numbered 1 to 4 for convenience. See the diagram on page 20.
Swapping tails
It is often necessary to swap or invert the tail of a note. This can be done by placing the cursor in the relevant slot and clicking the Swap-Tails icon which is the green icon in the Panel-2 window. As with the Delete icon, ambiguity may exist and the rules are a little more complicated owing to the fact that there may be more than one cluster with more than one note in each cluster in the same slot.
The general rules are: if there are several notes in a cluster, or more than one cluster, you must position the cursor line over an actual note. Secondly, provided that there is only one cluster in the slot, if you use the Select button when you click on the Swap-Tails icon, The whole cluster will swap its tail; if, however, you use the Adjust button, only that note will have its tail swapped.
Forcing a beam
Sometimes you may find that Rhapsody breaks up the beaming of quavers in places which you want the notes beamed together. To force a beam, place the cursor over the note in question and click on the second (blue) icon in the Panel-2 window using the Select button.
To undo this effect, click on the icon with the Adjust button.
Breaking a beam
Sometimes, you may wish to do the exact opposite - ie break a beam where Rhapsody thinks there ought to be one. To do this use the third icon in the Panel-2 window. Again, Select breaks the beam and Adjust removes the 'break beam' instruction.
Changing the width of a slot
Rhapsody tries to space out the notes fairly intelligently but it does not always get it right, particularly when there are overlapping parts in minims. To change the width of a slot, click on the fourth (orange) icon in the Panel-2 window. Select increases the width, Adjust decreases it.
APDL/ProAction