Steinberg Cubase 7 User Manual

781
Polyphonic voicingSetting up the voices
Setting up the voices
To set up your score for polyphonic voicing, proceed as follows:
1.Make sure that the desired staff is active.
2.Open the Score Settings dialog and select the Staff page.
3.Select the Polyphonic tab.
4.Open the Staff Mode pop-up menu and select Polyphonic.
This makes the voice list in the lower part of the dialog available. It consists of eight 
rows, one for each voice. They are numbered and therefore we refer to them as 
voices 1 to 8....

782
Polyphonic voicingSetting up the voices
10.Decide on a stem direction for each voice, by selecting 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 always force stem 
direction for individual notes by using the Flip Stem function, see 
“Flipping the 
stem of one or several notes” on page 791.
11.If you want the notes in a voice to be smaller than regular notes, put a...

783
Polyphonic voicingStrategies: How many voices do I need?
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 780), 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...

784
Polyphonic voicingChecking which voice a note belongs to
Checking which voice a note belongs to
When you select one single note, the corresponding voice button on the extended 
toolbar is selected. This allows you to quickly find out which voice a certain note is in 
(after you have used the Move To Voice function, for example).
•When you step through the notes using the arrow keys, you only step through the 
notes in one voice at a time. 
This can be used as a quick way to check which notes belong...

785
Polyphonic voicingHandling rests
3.Use the options in the lower half of the dialog to set up the criteria for the split.
Choose from the following options:
4.Click OK.
The notes are distributed to different voices.
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...

786
Polyphonic voicingVoices and Display Quantize
•You can use the Object Selection tool to manually move rests up/down or 
sideways to adjust the “picture”.
•If needed you can add “rest symbols” (rests that do not affect the playback data in 
any way) by using the symbols.
Voices and Display Quantize
When you insert Display Quantize changes (see “Inserting Display Quantize changes” 
on page 750), you can either apply the settings to all voices (by [Alt]/[Option]-clicking 
with the tool) or to the...

787
Polyphonic voicingCreating crossed voicings
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 there is a quicker way. Let’s explain how to do this by 
example. Without using polyphonic voicing, you have entered this:
1.Open the Score Settings dialog on the Staff page and select the Polyphonic tab.
2.From the Staff Mode pop-up menu,...

788
Polyphonic voicingAutomatic polyphonic voicing – Merge All Staves
10.Select the two notes that you want to be moved to voice 1 and move them, too.
All notes in 
the right 
voices.
The voicing is now correct, as you can tell from the stem directions. However, there is 
still some work to do on the notes graphical positions (see 
“Graphic moving of notes” 
on page 805) and the display of stems and beams for some of the notes (see “Manual 
adjustment of beams” on page 802). When you have made those...

789
Polyphonic voicingConverting voices to tracks – Extract Voices
Converting voices to tracks – Extract Voices
This function does the opposite of “Merge All Staves” – it extracts polyphonic voices 
from an existing track and creates new tracks, one for each voice. Proceed as follows:
1.Open a track containing 2 to 8 polyphonic voices in the Score Editor.
2.Open the Scores menu and select “Extract Voices” from the Functions submenu.
A number of new tracks is created and added to the display of the Score...

790
Additional note and rest formatting
About this chapter
In this chapter you will learn:
- How to control stem direction.
- How to control beaming, and create cross-staff beaming.
- How to make detailed adjustments to note appearance.
- How to perform “graphic moving” of notes.
- How to create grace notes.
- How to create tuplets.
Background: Note stems
The direction of stems is governed by five things:
- How notes are grouped under beams.
- Any manual manipulation of beams.
- The Flip Stems function....