Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Score Layout And Printing Manual

6
Polyphonic voicing 

CUBASE SX6 – 102 Polyphonic voicing
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 im-
possible to score properly otherwise:
• Notes starting at the same position, but with different lengths. Without poly-
phonic voicing you get unnecessary amounts...

CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 103
How voices are created
There are eight voices. The first thing you do is to set them up. This in-
cludes “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 you, automatically. You might then want to fine tune by mov-
ing one or more...

CUBASE SX6 – 104 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 be-
tween MIDI channels and voices will be totally transparent to you as a 
user. Sometimes you can take advantage of this relationship, as de-
scribed later in this chapter. There are also a few other important 
things to note:
❐When you make a...

CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 105
Setting up the voices
This text describes the Polyphonic tab of the Staff Settings dialog in 
general. Below you will find more detailed explanations on how to se-
lect from the multitude of options.
❐You can also convert existing tracks into polyphonic voices automati-
cally, using the Merge All Staves function.
1.Open the Staff Settings dialog for the staff.
2.Select the Polyphonic tab.
3.Pull down the Staff Mode pop-up and select Polyphonic.
This makes the voice...

CUBASE SX6 – 106 Polyphonic voicing
4.To activate a voice, click in its “On” column, so that a tick mark appears.
There are four voices on each staff, for a total of eight. If you activate at least one 
“upper” voice and one “lower” voice, you will get a split (piano) staff.
5.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 don’t 
have good reasons to make changes, leave...

CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 107
11.Click Apply.
The staff is changed to polyphonic voicing, and the program distributes the existing 
notes into voices according to their MIDI channel values.
•At this point you may want to use the Explode function to automati-
cally move notes into the proper voices. See page 112.
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...

CUBASE SX6 – 108 Polyphonic voicing
About the polyphonic presets
The Presets pop-up menu on the Polyphonic tab (above the list of 
voices) contains three very useful setups. Instead of making settings 
by hand, you can select one of the presets, saving some time. The 
presets are:
Variable Split
This sets up the dialog for two voices, one on each staff, each with 
auto stem direction. This is a good starting point for a piano staff when 
the fixed split option doesn’t suffice.
Optimize two voices
In this...

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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.
• Often you will use voices for resolving the problem of overlapping notes (see 
page 103), for example when scoring for piano. In this case, you will need two 
voices each time two notes overlap. If three notes overlap, you will need three 
voices. In other words you will need to check for the “worst case” (largest 
number...

CUBASE SX6 – 110 Polyphonic voicing
Entering notes into voices
When you add new notes, you need to decide which voice they go 
into:
1.Make sure the extended toolbar is visible.
2.Select the Object Selection tool.
3.If you have a split system, check the voice Insert buttons.
These are displayed after the text “Insert” on the left side to the extended toolbar. Only 
the voices that are activated on the Polyphonic tab are shown. If the upper staff is ac-
tive, the voice Insert buttons are numbered 1, 2,...