Steinberg Cubase 6 Manual

591
Staff settings
Display Transpose
This is used when preparing parts for instruments that are 
not scored at the actual concert key. For example, if you 
want the note C3 to be played by an alto sax, you have to 
score it as an A3 – nine semitones up. Luckily, the Display 
Transpose setting takes care of this for you:
•Use the pop-up menu to select the instrument for which 
you are scoring.
•If the pop-up menu does not list your instrument, you can 
set the desired transposition with the Semitones...

592
Staff settings
System Sizes
This section allows you to set the number of system lines 
and to control spacing between the lines:
Score Drum Map
These settings are described in the chapter “Scoring for 
drums” on page 676.
Fixed Stems
Activate this if you want all note stems to end at the same 
vertical position. This feature is perhaps most often used 
when scoring for drums (see 
“Setting up a staff for drum 
scoring” on page 679).
A drum pattern with Fixed Stem length activated
The Up and Down...

6
Polyphonic voicing 

594
Polyphonic voicing
About this chapter
In this chapter you will learn:
• How to decide when to use polyphonic voicing.
• How to set up voices.
• How to automatically convert your score to polyphonic voicing.
• How to enter and move notes into voices.
Background: Polyphonic voicing
Polyphonic voicing allows you to resolve a number of situ-
ations impossible to score properly otherwise:
•Notes starting at the same position, but with different 
lengths. Without polyphonic voicing you get unnecessary...

595
Polyphonic voicing
Voices and MIDI channels
Internally the program organizes the notes into voices by 
changing their MIDI channel values. Normally you set it up 
so that notes with MIDI channel 3 belong to voice 3 etc. 
Most of the time the link between MIDI channels and 
voices is totally transparent to you as a user. Sometimes 
you can take advantage of this relationship, as described 
later in this chapter. 
There are also a few important things to note:
ÖWhen you make a note part of a voice, you...

596
Polyphonic voicing
10.Decide on a stem direction for each voice, by select-
ing from the pop-up menu in the Stems column.
If you select Auto, the program makes decisions about which stems go in 
which direction (just as when not using polyphonic voices). You can al
-
ways force stem direction for individual notes by using the Flip Stem 
function, see “Flipping the stem of one or several notes” on page 604.
11.If you want the notes in a voice to be smaller than regu-
lar notes, put a checkmark in the...

597
Polyphonic voicing
Strategies: How many voices do I 
need?
Well, it depends…
• If you are scoring for vocals, you simply need one voice for 
each voice, so to speak.
• If you use voices for resolving the problem of overlapping 
notes (see 
“Overlapping notes” on page 594), for example 
when scoring for piano, you need two voices each time two 
notes overlap. If three notes overlap, you need three voices. In 
other words you need to check for the “worst case” (largest 
number of overlapping notes at a...

598
Polyphonic voicing
Moving notes between voices
Manually
To manually move notes to another voice, proceed as fol-
lows:
1.Select the note(s) you want to move to a particular 
voice.
2.Right-click on one of the notes and select “Move to 
Voice” from the context menu.
3.On the submenu, select the voice to which you want 
to move the notes.
Only the activated voices are available on the menu.
•You can also press [Ctrl]/[Command] and click a voice 
Insert button on the extended toolbar to move the...

599
Polyphonic voicing
Alternative ways of handling voices
Below we suggest further “advanced” ways of putting 
notes into voices. This is based on the relation between 
voices and MIDI channels, so please make sure that you 
understand how this connection works.
• Cubase only: You can use the Logical Editor (see the chapter 
“The Logical Editor, Transformer, and Input Transformer” on 
page 440) to put notes into voices, based on other more com-
plex criteria, like for example their pitch and length....

600
Polyphonic voicing
3.Select the Display Quantize tool.
4.Click at the position at which you want to insert the 
event.
The Display Quantize dialog appears.
5.Fill out the dialog as described in the section “Display 
Quantize and Interpretation Options” on page 588. 
6.Click Apply.
Creating crossed voicings
Often, for example in vocal scoring, you have crossed 
voicings on one system. You can of course move notes 
manually into voices to get the stem direction and other 
note properties right, but...