Steinberg Cubase 8 Manual

Staff settings
The Options tab
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No Beams
Activate this when you do not want any beaming at all on the staff (for example 
for vocal scoring).
Beam Subgroups
Use this when you want sixteenth notes displayed under a beam to be divided 
into groups of four notes.
Without and with Beam Subgroups.
16th Subgroups
Use this when you want even smaller subgroups of sixteenth notes. This 
setting has no effect if Beam Subgroups is deactivated.
As above, but with 16th Subgroups activated.
RELATED LINKS
Beam...

Staff settings
The Polyphonic tab
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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.
A drum pattern with Fixed Stem length activated
The Up and Down parameters determine which position (relative to the top of the 
staff) is used for up and down stems, respectively. The graphical display helps you 
get your settings right.
RELATED LINKS
Setting up a staff for drum scoring on page 1307
Note Limits...

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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 situations impossible to score 
properly otherwise:
• Notes starting at the same position, but with different lengths. Without 
polyphonic voicing you get unnecessary...

Polyphonic voicing
Background: Polyphonic voicing
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With a split system and with polyphonic voicing
How voices are created
Cubase allows for up to eight voices. The first thing you do is to set them up. This 
includes “telling” the program which voices belong to the upper clef and which 
belong to the lower, how you want rests displayed for each voice, etc.
The second thing you do is to move or enter notes into the voices. If you have a 
recording done already, the program can do much of this work for...

Polyphonic voicing
Setting up the voices
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There are also a few important things to note:
NOTE
When you make a note part of a voice, you are in fact changing its MIDI channel 
value. However, when you change the voice’s MIDI channel values in the setup 
dialog, this does not affect the notes’ MIDI channel setting. This can lead to serious 
confusion, since the relationship between the notes and the voices is affected. It 
might even make notes disappear (the program warns if this happens). In other...

Polyphonic voicing
Setting up the voices
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5. To activate a voice, click in its “On” column, so that a checkmark appears.
There are four voices on each staff, for a total of eight. If you activate one “upper” 
voice and one “lower” voice, you get a split (piano) staff.
6. If you have particular reasons to use specific MIDI channels, change the 
“Chan” settings for the voices.
The program automatically sets each voice to a different MIDI channel. If you do not 
have good reasons to make changes, leave...

Polyphonic voicing
Setting up the voices
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If the “Some Notes Do Not Belong To Voices…” dialog appears
When you click Apply, a warning may appear saying “Some notes do not belong to 
any voice and may be hidden. Correct these notes?”.
This warning appears when the staff contains notes with MIDI channel settings 
which do not match any of the active voices.
If you click the “Correct” button, these notes are moved to active voices. If you click 
“Ignore”, nothing is changed, and some notes are hidden....

Polyphonic voicing
Strategies: How many voices do I need?
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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, 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...

Polyphonic voicing
Checking which voice a note belongs to
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Voice 3 activated for insertion
6. Insert the notes as usual.
7. To switch to another voice, click the corresponding button.
8. To insert notes into a voice on the other clef, click on that clef and then select 
a voice using the buttons.
RELATED LINKS
Adding and editing notes on page 1132
Symbols and voices
Later in this manual you will learn about symbols that can be added to the score. 
Many of these symbols must also be put into a...

Polyphonic voicing
Moving notes between voices
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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 selected notes to the corresponding voice.
You can also assign key commands for this in the Score Functions category of the 
Key Commands dialog on the File menu.
Automatically – the Explode function
The Explode function...