Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 Score Layout And Printing Manual

							CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 111
Checking which voice a note belongs to
When you select one (and only one) 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 will only 
step through the notes in one voice at a time. 
This can be used as a quick way to check which notes belong to the same voice as 
some other note.
Moving notes between voices
Manually
To manually move notes to a particular voice, proceed as follows:
1.Select the note(s) you want to move to a particular voice.
2.Select Move to Voice from the Scores menu.
Move to Voice and the submenu it invokes.
3.On the submenu, select the voice to which you want to move the notes.
Voices not activated are shown in grey.
•Alternatively, you can press [Ctrl]/[Command] and click a voice Insert 
button on the extended toolbar to move the selected notes to the cor-
responding voice.
You can also assign key commands for this in the Score Functions category of the Key 
Commands dialog on the File menu. 
						

							CUBASE SX6 – 112 Polyphonic voicing
Automatically – the Explode function
The Explode function distributes notes, either into new tracks (see 
page 57) or into polyphonic voices:
1.Pull down the Scores menu and select “Explode…” from the Global 
Functions submenu.
The Explode dialog, set to create polyphonic voices.
2.Make sure “To Polyphonic Voices” is selected at the top of the dialog.
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.
Option Description
Split Note Use this to move all notes below a certain pitch to another voice.
Lines To Tracks Use this when you want all musical “lines” to be put in one voice 
each. The notes with the highest pitch will go to the first voice, the 
notes with the second highest pitch will go to the second, and so on.
Bass To Lowest 
VoiceWhen this is activated, the lowest notes will always end up in the 
lowest voice. 
						

							CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 113
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 chan-
nels, so please make sure you understand how this connection works.
• You can use the Logical Editor (described in its own chapter in the Operation 
Manual) to put notes into voices, based on other more complex criteria, like for 
example their pitch and length. This is done by setting up the Logical Editor so 
that the notes that meet the criteria get their MIDI channel changed to that of 
their voice.
• When you enter notes using step input you can change the MIDI channel on 
your input device and directly enter notes into separate voices.
• You can play back each voice on a different MIDI channel, simply by setting 
the track to Any. This can be used as a convenient way of “proof-hearing” 
each voice separately.
• You can use the Input Transformer to assign a certain key range to a MIDI 
channel, and thereby automatically put notes into voices when recording.
• For brass and vocals, you might record each voice on its own track, and use 
the “Merge All Staves” function to automatically copy each recording to a sep-
arate voice on a new track (see page 119).
• When you have assigned parts to voices, you can use the Extract Voices func-
tion to create one track out of each voice (see page 120). 
						

							CUBASE SX6 – 114 Polyphonic voicing
Handling rests
With polyphonic voices you often get more rest symbols than desired.
•If a voice doesn’t need any rests at all, you can turn off rests for each 
voice individually in the Staff Settings dialog on the Polyphonic tab.
•If you only need rests from one voice on a staff, turn Rests–Center on 
for that voice (this is done in the same dialog). If two or more voices 
have rests, turn Rests–Center off. The program then automatically 
makes sure the rests don’t “collide” in the score, by adjusting their 
vertical position.
•To avoid having several rests displayed in empty bars, you can acti-
vate the Rests–Reduce option for all voices (that have rests) except 
one. This option causes the program to hide rests in empty bars.
•You can use the Hide feature (see page 250) to totally remove individ-
ual superfluous rests from the score.
•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 don’t affect the play-
back data in any way) by using the symbol palette. 
						

							CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 115
Voices and display quantize
When you insert display quantize changes (see page 55), you can ei-
ther apply the settings to all voices (by [Alt]/[Option]-clicking with the 
tool) or to the current voice only.
❐If the option “Display Quantize tool affects all Voices” is activated in the 
Notation Style–Switches dialog (Scores–Global Settings submenu), the 
display quantize settings will always affect all voices (even if you don’t 
press [Alt]/[Option] and click).
Making display quantize settings affect one voice only (by clicking 
without pressing [Alt]/[Option]) allows you to do two things:
• Make each voice have its own display quantize settings by inserting a display 
quantize event for each voice, at the beginning of the staff. This will then be 
valid for the entire staff, until another display quantize event is inserted.
• Insert display quantize “exceptions” anywhere in the score, independently for 
each voice. Proceed as follows:
1.Make sure the option “Display Quantize tool affects all Voices” is de-
activated in the Notation Style–Switches dialog.
2.Select the voice for which you wish to insert a display quantize event.
This is done by clicking at the corresponding voice button on the extended toolbar as 
described above, or by selecting a note that belongs to this voice.
3.Select the Display Quantize tool. 
						

							CUBASE SX6 – 116 Polyphonic voicing
4.Click at the position you want to insert the event.
The Display Quantize dialog appears.
5.Fill out the dialog as described on page 46. 
6.Click Apply. 
						

							CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 117
Creating crossed voicings
Often, for example in vocal scoring, you will 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’s a quicker 
way. Let’s explain how to do this by example. Without using polyphonic 
voicing, you have entered this:
1.Open the Staff Settings dialog and select the Polyphonic tab.
2.From the Staff Mode pop-up menu, select Polyphonic.
3.Activate voice 1 and 2 only, and make settings for them as in the pic-
ture below.
4.Click Apply.
The staff is in Polyphonic staff mode, but all notes are still in the same voice.
5.Pull down the Scores menu and select “Explode” from the Global 
Functions submenu.
6.In the dialog that appears, select the “To Polyphonic Voices” option 
and activate “Lines To Tracks”.
Leave the other options off.
7.Click OK.
The notes have now been split in two “lines”, each in a separate voice. However, from 
the middle of the bar, notes that are in voice 1 should be in voice 2 and vice versa. 
						

							CUBASE SX6 – 118 Polyphonic voicing
8.Select the two notes that should be moved from voice 1 to voice 2.
Two notes in voice 1 selected.
9.Move the notes to voice 2.
The quickest way to do this is to press [Ctrl]/[Command] and click the voice Insert [2] 
button on the extended toolbar.
Two notes moved to the right voice.
10.Select the two notes that should 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, theres still some work to do on the notes graphical positions 
(see page 147) and the display of stems and beams for some of the 
notes (see page 142). When you have made those adjustments, the 
score may look like this:
After graphical adjustments. 
						

							CUBASE SXPolyphonic voicing 6 – 119
Automatic polyphonic voicing – Merge All 
Staves
If you have already created some tracks which look and play back as 
they should, and you want to combine these into one track with poly-
phonic voices, there is a special function on the Scores menu for this:
1.Open the tracks (up to four) in the Score Editor.
2.Pull down the Scores menu and select “Merge All Staves” from the 
Global Functions submenu.
Now a new track is created and shown in the score. The track will have polyphonic 
voices activated, and the four original tracks will be assigned to one voice each (voices 
1, 2, 5 and 6 will be used).
Furthermore, all non-linked symbols that belong to the staff that will become the first 
polyphonic voice in the merged staff will be copied. They will have the same positions 
as the original symbols. 
❐When you later play back the music, you need to mute the four original 
tracks, or you will get double notes.  
						

							CUBASE SX6 – 120 Polyphonic voicing
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 2-8 polyphonic voices in the Score Editor.
2.Pull down the Scores menu and select “Extract Voices” from the Glo-
bal Functions submenu.
A number of new tracks is created and added to the display of the Score Editor. Each 
track will contain the music from one polyphonic voice. If there were non-linked sym-
bols in the original track, each new track will get a copy of these symbols. 
Each new track will also automatically get a layout (a copy of the original layout for the 
polyphonic voicing track, with Size set to 100% and Multi Rests set to 1). For more 
info on layouts, see page 240.
❐When you later play back the music, you need to mute the original track 
(the one with polyphonic voices), or you will get double notes.