Virtual Composer is a virtual music editor, designed for polyphonic music. It can be used to enter a whole musical score (and then execute it) or to create professional looking scores for printout. Use the pop-up menu above to locate a topic in this Help.
Pauses
To enter a pause, click on the Cursors window and then on the pause desired. The selected pause will be highlighted. Then click on the Music Window to activate it and to place the pause.
Notes
To enter a note, click on the Cursors window and then the note desired. The selected note will be highlighted. Then click on the Music Window to activate it and to place the note.
Accidentals
To place an accidental on a note, simply select the corresponding Accidentals cursor first from the Cursors window and then click on the Music window and on the desired note. The accidental will be placed left of the note and the window will be updated to reflect the fact that now the note has an accidental.
Dots
You can dot any pause or note, as long as its duration is greater than that of a thirty-secondth. You cannot dot thirty-secondth notes or pauses. To dot a symbol, just select the Dot cursor from the Cursors Window and click on the Music window and on the desired symbol. The bar width may be adjusted to reflect the fact, depending on its previous contents.
Fermatas
You can place a fermata on any symbol. The fermata causes the symbol’s duration to be multiplied by the corresponding number in the Preferences Dialog, when you execute the score. To place a fermata, select the Fermata cursor from the Cursors Window and then click on the Music window and on the desired note.
Ornaments
You can place an ornament on any note. To place an ornament, select the desired Ornament cursor from the Cursors Window and then click on the Music window and on the desired note.
Repeat Bars
You can place repeat bars anywhere on the score, by selecting a repeat bar cursor from the Cursors Window and clicking inside a bar.
Alternate Clefs
The Treble and Bass Clefs can be used to alter the regular document clefs. Select the Treble or Bass clef cursor and after activating the Music window, click between the treble or bass clef lines inside any bar. That bar will use the alternate clef of your choice on the lines indicated by your click.
Eraser Cursor
The Eraser cursor is used to erase symbols. You can erase an individual symbol, or you can erase a range of symbols. To erase an individual symbol, select the Eraser cursor and then click on the Music window and on the desired symbol. If you erase a symbol that has other symbols after it, the rest of the symbols will shift left to complete the bar. The process is automatic. To erase a range of notes, you have to select them first. To do that, select the Selection cursor and click on the Music window and click-drag to define a range of notes. Then go back to the Cursors window, select the Eraser cursor, reactivate the Music window and click anywhere inside the selected range. To erase an alternate clef, just click on the clef symbol. To erase a repeat bar, just click on the repeat bar, making sure the eraser intersects with the repeat line.
Selection Cursor
The Selection cursor is used to define a range of notes and to activate an Edited page. Select the cursor and click somewhere. A music editor caret, similar to the text caret will be placed at the location where you click. The page inside which you click, becomes the default Edited page. Holding the mouse button down, click-drag the cursor to define a range of notes. The contents of the range will be inverted, to reflect the fact that the symbols between the two insertion points are selected. By using the Selection cursor, you can, for example, substitute a whole range of symbols with a new symbol. To do that, first define a range and then select any symbol (pause or note) cursor and click inside the selection. The selection will be substituted for the new symbol or range.
Text Cursor
The Text cursor is similar to the Selection cursor, but acts on text instead and is used to create text fields. To create a text field, select the Text cursor, activate the Music window and click anywhere. A small default text field will be created, which can then be manipulated to your needs. The small text field will have a grey outline around it and a small black rectangle with which you can resize it. To erase a text field, select the Eraser cursor and click anywhere inside the text field.
Object Cursor
The Object cursor is used to resize and drag text fields. After you create a text field, you can resize it, by selecting the Object cursor and clicking on the little black square on its lower right corner. Then, click-drag to define the new size of the text field rectangle until it suits your needs. To drag a text field, click anywhere inside it and drag it to its new location.
Apple Menu
“About Virtual Composer...” displays the usual info about the program and its author.
“Register...” displays the registration dialog. Active only in the unregistered version. After you register this item will be permanently disabled.
File Menu
“New” opens a new Music Window. The default parameters in the “Preferences...” Dialog are used. To change those parameters, see the description of the Edit menu below.
“Open...” opens an existing file from the disk. If there is not enough memory you will be notified.
“Close” closes the front most window if different from the Cursors window. You will be asked if you want to save any pending changes.
“Save” saves your changes to the file that’s being manipulated.
“Save As...” presents you will the standard dialog for saving files. It applies to the front most window. You can save this text you are reading right now, by having the Help Window front most and selecting this item.
Saving Formats
The “Save As..” item, allows you to save the final file in different formats, using the pop up menu on the Save As dialog:
Virtual Composer: Saves score in internal Virtual Composer format. (Registered version only)
Abc: Saves score in an extended version of ‘abc’. Read the included file “abc ReadMe” for more info.
AIFF: Saves score as a standard AIFF file. You can then import this file into other music programs.
MIDI: Saves score as a standard MIDI file. You can then import this file into other music programs.
Debugging: Saves score as a text file dump, for debugging.
“Revert...” will discard all your changes and will revert your file to the last saved version.
“Page Setup...” and “Print...” control your printing, in the standard way all Macintosh applications do. “Print...” applies to the front most Window as well. If you want to print this text, leave the Help window front most and then select this item. See the section below on Printing for more information.
“Quit” terminates your editing session. You will be asked if you want to save any changes first.
Edit Menu
“Undo” undoes your last editing action, no matter what this action has been, except Metre and Scale change actions. To change those, select the appropriate items from the Edit Menu.
“Cut” cuts a range of notes that have been selected with the Selection Cursor, or your text selection if you are working with a text field and places it in temporary Clipboard memory.
“Copy” copies a range of notes that have been selected with the Selection Cursor, or your text selection if you are working with a text field and places it in temporary Clipboard memory.
“Paste” pastes a range of notes that have been selected with the Selection Cursor and have been copied, or your text selection if you are working with a text field. The pasted notes start at the location of the music caret, or replace your selection if there is one. To paste copied notes in a specific location, first select the Selection Cursor and click anywhere to place the music caret there. Then select this item. To substitute a range of notes with other copied notes, select this item while a selection is active. After you select this item, the pasted notes will again be selected, in case you need to delete them or copy them.
“Clear” clears a range of notes that have been selected with the Selection Cursor, or your text selection if you are working with a text field. The contents of the selection are not saved.
“Select All” selects all the symbols in a logical page, or all your text in an text edit field if one is active.
“Scale...” brings up a dialog with scale signatures that allows you to set the music scale. After you select the appropriate scale signature, click ok. The new scale will appear in your Music Window.
“Metre...” brings up a dialog with metre signatures that allows you to set the music metre. After you select the appropriate metre signature, click ok. The new metre will appear in your Music Window. Please note that by changing the metre of the score, major rearrangements will take place, so you will be asked first to confirm this. Certain changes are not supported, to avoid excessive calculations and nonsensical results.
“Channel” allows you to specify which channel is being edited and to associate an instrument with this particular channel. This channel will be drawn in the regular way, while the rest of the channels will be greyed out. If you select “None/Show All”, then all the channels are displayed, but you cannot edit any channel. This item is useful when you are done editing and want to print the document.
“Stem Direction...” brings up a dialog that allows you to specify the stem direction of the notes on a channel. Changes take effect immediately, and apply only to the logical page indicated on the Dialog.
“Goto Page...” brings up a dialog that allows you to specify which page you want to go to.
“Remove All Coloring” removes all colors and reverts all notes to black.
“Preferences...” brings up a dialog that allows you to specify the default editor settings for your scores.
“Number of Pages:” controls how many Logical Pages you want your new document to have. The default is one. Every Logical Page has sixteen bars. To set this number correctly, count the bars in your score, divide by 16 and add 1 to the result, to find out how many Logical Pages you need. The maximum number of pages is 400.
“Number of Channels:” controls how many channels you want your new document to have. The default is 4 channels. The maximum number of channels is 50.
“Note Distance:” controls how close the minimum duration notes are in your bars. The allowed values are 10-32. The default is 16 pixels.
“Stem Height:” controls how high the stems go. The allowed values are 10-20. The default is 17 pixels.
“Ornament Height:” controls how high above the note an ornament will be placed. The allowed values are 20-30. The default is 22 pixels.
“Display Invisible Staff Lines” controls whether the program shows you the entire MIDI range of additional lines, as a helpful grid guide when you enter the notes.
“Max Resolution Printout” controls whether your printouts will use the maximum resolution available on your printer. If unchecked, the default resolution is used, which is usually 72 dpi.
“Autosave Score:” controls whether automatic document saving is on. The program will prompt you every x minutes to save the document (where x is the value in the edit box) if no file exists with this name, or it will save it automatically if it has been saved previously. The allowed values (for x) are 1-30 minutes.
Selection Menu
“Tie” allows you to tie a range of notes. If you tie different notes, tying has no effect musically. If you tie same notes, they are treated as if they are the same note with a duration equal to the sum of durations. Same notes within a beat are collapsed to a single note of equivalent duration. Same notes on separate beats are not collapsed.
“Untie” reverses the effects of “Tie”.
“Tie As Tuplet” allows you to tie a range of notes with irregular durations. You can use this command to tie, for example, five sixteenths into a five tuplet, or three sixteenths into a triplet. The note positions will be adjusted accordingly, and a slur will connect them with a number above them that indicates the grouping. (See section on Tuplets below).
“Untie As Tuplet” reverses the effects of “Tie As Tuplet”.
“Shift” allows you to quickly shift note symbols up or down. If shifting is not possible for some notes, you will hear warning beeps.
“Transpose” allows you to quickly transpose note symbols up or down according to the number of semitones selected.
“Set Volume...” allows you to set the volume for a range of notes.
“Set Staccato...” allows you to set the staccato setting for a range of notes. Read the included file “Volume/Staccato” file for more info.
“Set Color...” brings up the Color Picker and allows you to specify the new color for your range of notes.
Text Menu
The Text Menu is activated whenever you are working with text fields. It allows you to change the text “Font”, “Size” and “Style” characteristics of the text field you are working with. See the section on the Text Cursor to see how to initiate a text field.
Play Menu
“All” calculates the final executables for the entire score and plays it through QuickTime Musical Instruments. You can interrupt the process at any time by pressing Control-period.
“Selection” calculates the final executables for the selected note range and plays it through QuickTime Musical Instruments. You can interrupt the process at any time by pressing Control-period.
“Stop” stops all sounds immediately. Pressing Control-period while a sound is playing has the same effect.
“Activate Channel” allows you to select which channels will be active on execution.
“QuickTime Instrument...” allows you to associate a QuickTime Instrument with the currently active channel.
“AIFF/AIFC..” allows you to select an executable AIFF or AIFC type file and execute it immediately. You can interrupt the sound at any time by pressing Control-period.
“Mix Mono to Stereo...” allows you to mix two mono AIFF files into a stereo AIFF file. The two files must be of the same size, sample rate and sample size. Read the included file “Creating a Stereo AIFF” for more info.
Preferences..” controls the Player’s preferences.
“Playing Speed:” controls the speed of execution. The default is the fastest. If you lower the value of the scroll bar, the resulting music will play slower.
“Global Volume:” controls the volume of all the notes in the score.
“Global Staccato:” controls the staccato setting for all the notes in the score.
“Ornaments:” controls how ornaments are calculated. If “Fit Timewise”, the duration of the notes in the ornament will be (Total duration of ornamented note)/(number of notes in ornament). If “Always 1/32”, the notes will be thirty-secondths.
“Fermata Multiplies by:” controls the extended duration of notes which have fermatas on them. If a note has a fermata on top of it, its duration will be this factor times its actual duration. The allowed values are 1 to 3.
“Echo Virtual Keyboard To Score” echoes any notes you play on the Virtual Keyboard to the Music window.
“Key Velocity:” controls the Virtual Keyboard’s key velocity when you press them. If you change it, the notes on the keyboard play softer or louder.
Read the included file “Virtual Keyboard” file for more info.
Window Menu
“Untitled” makes the Music Window front most. This item assumes the name of the active edited file.
“Cursors” brings up the Cursors Window or makes it front most if it is open.
“Virtual Keyboard” brings up the Virtual Keyboard Window or makes it front most if it is open, which emulates a small, three octave virtual keyboard, which you can use to play piano notes and to insert notes in the score. Read the included file “Virtual Keyboard” file for more info.
Help Menu
“Virtual Composer Help” brings up this Help Window or makes it front most if it is open.
Text Editing and Score
If you use text in your document, keep in mind that the music editor assumes some minimum consistency from your part about the placement of the actual text. While all text is drawn “above” the regular score, it can happen that some music editing operations may interfere with the extra text. You could conceivably cook up a situation, where the music editing may conflict with the text editing or vice versa. (Selecting music ranges that contain text fields, or initiating text fields inside a music range). As you can understand, it is impossible to predict all conflicting combinations. It is recommended therefore, that you move your text fields out of your editing positions, and when you are done with your music editing, bring them back in, repositioning them with the Arrow Cursor. Also, if you move text around on your document, the contents of the music selection range may not draw correctly.
Memory Usage and Logical Pages
A Logical Page on the Music window, is exactly 16 bars long, regardless of how long the individual bars are or how they are modified after input. The Music window will always show you which Logical Page you are on. The counters below the score show the absolute bar number, the Logical Page number and the relative bar number within the Logical Page. (The counter on the scroll bar, shows the same info and will help you navigate through the score if you move the scroll bar slider). All editing operations apply to the active Logical Page only.
If the program refuses to open a large document, or fails to extend a document’s number of Logical Pages or number of channels, quit it and increase its memory allocation in the Finder. A rough estimate on how much memory Virtual Composer requires, can be calculated using the following empirical rule: A new Logical Page with 4 channels, requires around 100K of memory. This should give you enough info to calculate how much memory you need for any number of logical pages. Virtual Composer is a “virtual” editor, meaning it can open very large documents and performance is dependent on memory usage and machine speed only. Only the Logical Page edited is drawn at any time (or one more if you are at a Logical Page boundary), so you can have a large number of pages in a document, yet the program’s speed in editing calculations will be almost equivalent to the document having had only one Logical Page. However, considerable delays may occur, when, for example, you move from page to page, or when you open a large document. This happens because the new pages must be recalculated and/or brought in from memory.
Entering Whole Scores
Before you enter a score’s symbols, you need to do two things: First, find out how many Logical Pages you will need, which is easy and is described on the “Editor Preferences” section above. Then you need to divide your score into voices and this is not so easy. With multi voice pieces, such as explicit 2, 3, 4 or more voices where the composer wrote them explicitly as such, it is easy, because the indications are already there by the composer or the Edition you are using. However, with cheaper Editions or with simpler melodies, the voices may not be immediately visible. You need thus, to logically divide the notes of the score into voices, and decide which symbols go in which voice. Usually, the upper melody is voice 1, so you can input it in Virtual Composer as channel 1. Then, for every lower voice (such as notes in a chord), place every note in channel number n, starting with channel 2, and going onto lower channels, until you exhaust all the notes in your score. If your score Edition is detailed and shows all the voices (including a voice’s implicit pauses) there will be no problems. There can be problems, if your score shows “incidental” notes, which are notes which do not have explicit voices associated with them. In such a case, you need to fill the empty spaces with pauses yourself.
Printing and Physical Pages
When you print a musical score, the program divides the score into Physical pages. A Physical page will be as much score as will fit in one Physical paper page. Since the length of the bars and logical pages is determined using strict Mathematical distancing, it is almost impossible to arrange the bars of a physical page to terminate exactly at the end of a line without altering the bar sizes explicitly contrary to their exact positioning. I may incorporate this feature in a later release, if I have time and I can figure out how to do it without much fuss. You cannot alter any printing positioning parameters, but you can alter the note stem height and the minimum distance between the notes. This should be enough to produce high quality printouts, barring exact bar termination, which, as I have already explained, is non trivial to do. However, you can experiment with the various features of your printer, such as reducing or enlarging the printout, printing in landscape mode, or in high resolution mode. Before printing, you might also want to remove all the extra colors which might have been used to accent certain notes. See the Edit Menu for this operation.
Manuscript Paper
You can of course use Virtual Composer to print out empty Manuscript Paper. Just select “New” from the File Menu and print the blank document, after you set the Metre and Scale parameters. You can either set the number of Logical Pages to and arbitrary large number, or repeatedly chose the “Print...” command, until you get the desired number of Physical Pages on your printer.
Limitations-Features
The program needs the extensions “QuickTime” and “QuickTime Musical Instruments”. If you don’t have them, you can’t play the music through QuickTime, but can still edit scores. If you need to use the latest versions see the included QuickTime FAQ (by Phil Taylor) for more info.
The program also needs the extension “Color Picker”. If it’s not installed, you cannot color any notes.
Finally it needs the font Petrucci (both the TrueType and Postcript files) as is provided in the distribution package, to be in your Fonts folder. Without the Postcript version of Petrucci, the program will run but your printouts may not show correctly.
Score editing requires the Cursors Window to be open. You cannot edit a document if the Cursors Window is closed.
Symbol placement is automatic. This means that the horizontal position of a symbol is calculated internally. In order to preserve bar and score space, the bar initially assumes a width that can accommodate exactly as many notes as are described in the score’s Metre signature. If you enter a pause or a note with a duration smaller than the smallest default duration in the bar, the bar will expand to accommodate the new durations. Conversely, if you delete the last note that has a smaller duration than the smallest default duration in the bar, the bar will shrink again to its previous size, to preserve space.
You can enter symbols at the end of the score or between other notes. If you enter a symbol at the end, it is simply appended there. If you enter a symbol between other symbols or in a bar that is complete timewise, the rest of the notes right of the entered note will shift right to accommodate the new symbol. This will cause major recalculations in the edited Logical Page. (See CAUTION about tuplets below).
Accidentals are explicit. You need to place accidentals on all same notes within a bar. (Anaereses have no effect if the note has no accidentals in the score Scale Signature).
Ornaments are ignored when the music plays, if the group of notes the ornament represents cannot fit timewise within the duration of the note which contains the ornament. For example, any ornament on top of a 32dth will naturally be ignored since the note durations of the ornament will be less that 32ndths.
Alternate Clef modifications are active only for the bar indicated by the alteration. Alternate Clefs on a bar take effect when the bar is completed time-wise. If the bar is incomplete, the altered Clef does not reflect the status of the bar.
If your score has more than one channel you have to place fermatas on all the notes in a chord. (since the notes of a chord necessarily belong to different channels). Otherwise the fermata will affect only the note in the channel that was active at the time of editing, desynchronising thus the music. Note that placing a fermata on a tied note, might also cause erroneous durations, since the fermata counts the duration of the note correctly only if the note beforeis not tied to it.
To speed up editing operations, recalculation of bars takes place when a bar is completed time-wise (i.e. when the sum of all the symbol durations in a bar equals the Metre time). However, recalculation may happen at any time that the program considers appropriate.
Stem direction changes apply to the whole Logical Page and not to single notes.
In previous versions, color changes could be applied only to groups of symbols that contained whole beats and started exactly on the beat. From this version on, you can color any range of symbols. This allows for greater flexibility, however it can give nonsensical color results, if you color off-beat ranges.
When you scroll the Music window, a small delay may take place when a new Logical Page is swapped in view.
Only the internal file format is fully re-editable later. (The Abc format can be edited using a music program that imports Abc, such as BarFly)
The memory that the Sound Manager needs in order to play a score, is allocated dynamically just after you select the appropriate commands from the “Play” menu. This memory is disposed of, as soon as the sound stops. As such, when you edit a score, you have more available memory.
Repeat bars have no effect musically. They are provided for aesthetic reasons only.
Transpositions are atonal, since the main key signature is always preserved.
Metre changes on a non-empty score are not supported, if the denominator of the new Metre is different from the denominator of the old Metre, or if the new Metre is of less total time than the old Metre. All Metre changes are supported on empty scores, however.
Since only one active Logical Page can be edited at any time, all editing operations apply only to the Logical Page you are editing. In particular, you cannot select a range that crosses Logical Page boundaries. Neither can you tie notes if the tie crosses Logical Page boundaries. Cutting, Pasting and Deleting of note ranges happens only within one Logical Page. If you want to remove notes from a specific Logical Page, the contents of the Logical Pages right of the affected Page will not shift right or left to complete the bars. You will have to manually copy the desired contents there.
Editing operations are enabled only if the edited page is “In View”. That is, if at least some part of the edited page is visible. If you move onto another page (through scrolling) where the original edited page is out of view, all editing operations will become disabled. All editing operations also will become disabled, if you select “None/Show All” from the “Channels” menu. (To activate a page for Editing, select the Selection Cursor and click inside it once).
Changes to the settings “Global Volume” or “Global Staccato” in the Play Preferences dialog, will bypass any local changes from “Set Volume...” and “Set Staccato...” that had been applied to individual notes.
You can use the Virtual Keyboard to insert notes into the score, only if all the corresponding windows are open, the Virtual Keyboard window is active, if the active cursor is set to a valid note and if the music caret is at a valid location. The echoed note is then defined based on the active cursor, and is either appended at the end of the active channel, or inserted at the caret position. Read the included file “Virtual Keyboard” for more information.
The Problem of Tuplets
Virtual Composer was designed to principally deal with symbols that have integral numerators in their fractional time value, such as wholes (32/32), halves (16/32), quarters (8/32), eighths (4/32), sixteenths (2/32), thirty secondths (1/32) and their dotted equivalents. (Except dotted thirty secondths). However, in order to allow for occasional irregular groups, symbols with non-integral numerators may be accommodated, provided certain conditions are met. You can tie a range of notes as a tuplet provided:
1) The number of symbols in the range is odd. (i.e. 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc.)
2) All symbols are of the same duration.
3) All symbols are in the same bar.
4) All symbols are in the LAST edited bar.
5) The first symbol in the range STARTS ON the beat OR the last symbol in the range COMPLETES the beat.
6) No symbol in the range is already part of another tuplet group.
The item “Tie As Tuplet”, internally observes these conditions, and will not activate on a selection range, unless they are met.
CAUTION: All operations that involve editing of symbols IN BETWEEN other symbols, force the removal of ALL tuplet groups. I.e., if you Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear, insert or remove in any way symbols that have other symbols right of them, all tuplet groups will dissolve. In particular, copying any range of notes from within a tuplet, will force the copied notes to dissolve into regular notes. Tuplets are NOT removed if your editing operations take place at the end of the Edited Logical Page’s channel. The reason for this removal is that the internal duration calculator can deal only with symbols that have integral numerator values when it recalculates the score. Otherwise non-sensical results might occur.
Registration
Virtual Composer is shareware. If you like it, please register it. The unregistered version cannot save files in its internal format, but can still save in the other supported formats, which are non-editable. Otherwise the program is fully functional and you can edit and play to your heart’s content. The shareware price of Virtual Composer is $25. When you register, you will receive a registration number that activates the program’s saving capabilities. If you want to register the program, send a check for $25 payable to me (Ioannis Galidakis), or the equivallent of $25 CASH in your local currency wrapped in Carbon paper inside a regular postal letter to my address:
Ioannis Galidakis
Agiou Alexandrou 40,
Palaio Faliro, 17561
Athens, Greece
email: jgal@ath.forthnet.gr
If you are interested in site licensing Virtual Composer, contact me by email.
Other Programs
Check my site below for some other cool Mac programs.
Credits
Thanks to Myriad Software for letting me use some of their excellent instrument samples. Read more about their programs at <www.myriad-online.com>.
Thanks to Thomas Kiffe for letting me use his excellent printing emulator MacGhostView. Read more about it at <www.kiffe.com>.
Thanks to the makers of Finale (Coda Music), for allowing me to use their Petrucci Font.
Many thanks to Phil Taylor for his valuable advice and help. Phil has created an excellent abc music program, BarFly. You can read more about it on <http://rbu01.ed-rbu.mrc.ac.uk/barflystuff/barflypage.html>. (BarFly, accepts the abc output of Virtual Composer).
Many thanks to the entire comp.sys.mac.programmer.help group and especially to Michael Kluev and Ian Ollmann for helping me fine tune the music synchronisation.
Many thanks go also to Gary Ewer and his excellent and precise musical theory pages. Read more about it on <http://www.musictheory.halifax.ns.ca>.
Thanks to Ken Pledger for solving one of the most annoying problems in the program.
Many thanks go to my friend and coworker Paris Pamfilos, assistant professor in the department of Mathematics, here at the University of Crete. If Paris was not around, the program would be much slower and possibly very buggy. If you are doing any heavy duty geometry on the Mac, try Paris’ program “Isoptikon” at your usual Info-Mac archives.
