Steinberg Nuendo 3 Score Layout And Printing Manual
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NUENDO How the Score Editor works 1 – 11 Display quantize Let’s say you used the project window to record a figure with some staccato eighth notes. When you open the Score Editor it displays it like this: This doesn’t look anything like what you intended. Let’s start with the timing – obviously, you were off at a couple of places (the third, fourth and last note all seem to be a 32nd note late). You can solve this by quantizing the figure, but this would make the passage sound too “stiff”, and not fit in the musical context. To resolve this problem the Score Editor employs something called “display quantize”. Display quantize is a setting which is used to tell the program two things: • How precise the Score Editor should be when displaying the note positions. • The smallest note values (lengths) you want displayed in the score. In the example above, the display quantize value seems to be set to 32nd notes (or a smaller note value). When reading the following chapters you will find out how to set the display quantize value your- self. Let’s say we change the display quantize value to sixteenth notes in the example: With display quantize set to sixteenth notes.
NUENDO 1 – 12 How the Score Editor works OK, now the timing looks right, but the notes still don’t look like what you intended. Maybe you can understand that from a computer’s point of view, you did play sixteenth notes, which is why there is a lot of pauses. But that’s not how you meant it. You still want the track to play back short notes, because it is a staccato part, but you want something else “displayed”. Try setting the display quantize value to eighth notes instead: With display quantize set to eighth notes. Now we have eighth notes, as we wanted. All we have to do now is to add staccato articulation which can be done with one simple mouse click using the Pencil tool (you will find out about this in the chapter “Working with symbols”). How did this work? By setting the display quantize value to eighth notes you give the program two instructions, that would sound some- thing like this in English: “Please, display all notes as if they were on exact eighth note positions, regardless of their actual positions” and “Please, don’t display any notes smaller than eighth notes, regardless of how short they are”. Please note that we used the word display, which leads us to one of the most important messages of this chapter: Setting a display quantize value does not alter the MIDI notes of your re- cording in any way, as regular quantizing does. It only affects how the notes are displayed in the Score Editor (and nowhere else)!
NUENDO How the Score Editor works 1 – 13 Choose your display quantize values with care As explained above, the display quantize value for notes puts a restric- tion on the “smallest” note value that can be displayed. Let’s for a sec- ond look what happens if we set it to quarter notes: With display quantize set to quarter notes. Oops, this doesn’t look too good. Well of course it doesn’t! We have now instructed the program that the “smallest” note that occurs in the piece is a quarter note. We have explicitly told it that there are no eighth notes, no sixteenths, etc. So when the program draws the score on screen (and on paper) it quantizes the display of all our eighth notes to quarter note positions, which makes it look like above. But again, please note that when you hit Play, the passage will still play as it originally did. The display quantize setting only affects the score image of the record- ing. One last important note: Even if you enter notes using the mouse and input perfect note values, it is very important that you have your display quantize settings right! These values are not just used for MIDI recordings! If you for example set the display quantize value for notes to quarter notes and start click- ing in eighth notes, you will get eighth notes in the track (as MIDI data), but still only quarter notes in the display!
NUENDO 1 – 14 How the Score Editor works Using Rests display quantize Above we used display quantize for notes. There is a similar setting called “Rests” display quantize which is used to set the smallest rest to be displayed. Often, this setting is very effective: What if the original note example looked like this: As you see, the first note is moved and appears one sixteenth note later. If we change the display quantize value for notes to eighth notes, the score will be displayed like this: With Notes display quantize set to eighth notes. Unfortunately, this moves the first note to the same position as the second, since sixteenth note positions aren’t allowed. We can solve this by inserting extra display quantize values within the bar with the Display Quantize tool (“Q”), but there is a much easier way: Change the display quantize value for notes back to sixteenths, but set the dis- play quantize value for rests to eighth notes! This tells the program not to display any rests smaller than eighth notes, except when necessary. The result looks like this: With Notes display quantize set to sixteenth notes, but Rests display quantize set to eighth notes. How did this work? Well, you instructed the program not to display any rests smaller than eighth notes, except when “necessary”. Since the first note appeared on the second sixteenth note position, it was necessary to put a sixteenth rest at the beginning of the figure. All other rests, however, can be hidden by displaying the notes as eighth notes, and were therefore not “necessary”.
NUENDO How the Score Editor works 1 – 15 This leads us to the following general guidelines: •Set the Notes display quantize value according to the “smallest note po- sition” you want to be shown in the score. For example, if you have notes on odd sixteenth note positions, the Notes display quantize value should be set to sixteenth notes. •Set the Rests display quantize value according to the smallest note value (length) you want to be displayed for a single note, positioned on a beat. A common setting would be to have Notes display quantize set to 16 (sixteenth notes) and Rests display quantize set to 4 (quarter notes). Handling exceptions Unfortunately, the guidelines above won’t work perfectly in every situa- tion. You may for example have a mix of straight notes and tuplets of dif- ferent types, or you may wish to display equally long notes with different note values depending on the context. There are several methods you can try: Automatic display quantize If your score contains both straight notes and triplets, you can use au- tomatic display quantize. When this is activated, Nuendo tries to “un- derstand” whether the notes should be display quantized to straight notes or triplets. See page 45. Using the Display Quantize tool With the “Q” tool, you can insert new display quantize values any- where in the score. Inserted display quantize values affect the staff from the insertion point onwards. See page 53. Permanent alteration of MIDI data As a last resort, you can resize, quantize or move the actual note events. However, this would result in the music not playing back like it originally did. Often it is possible to get the score to look like what you want without altering any MIDI data.
NUENDO 1 – 16 How the Score Editor works Summary This closes our discussion on the basic concept of display quantizing. There are a number of other special situations which require more ad- vanced techniques, which you will find out about in the next chapters. You will also read about other settings which work along the same lines as display quantize but each with its own application. These are called “interpretation flags”. Entering notes by hand vs. recording notes Sometimes you will enter and edit notes by hand (or rather using the mouse and computer keyboard) and at other times you will record them from a MIDI keyboard. Most of the time, you will do a combination of both. In the chapter “Transcribing MIDI recordings” you will find out how to make a recorded score as legible as possible without perform- ing any permanent changes to the MIDI data. The chapter “Entering and editing notes using the mouse” shows you how to enter and edit notes using the mouse. In real life, even if you have recorded the piece perfectly, you will often have to do some permanent editing to your re- cording before printing. Which leads to this conclusion: You will have to read both chapters in order to understand how to pro- duce legible scores!
NUENDO 2 – 18 The basics In this chapter you will learn: •How to open the Score Editor. •How to set up the page size and margins. •How to switch between Page Mode and Edit Mode. •How to hide and show the symbol palettes, the toolbar and extended toolbar. •How to set up the ruler. •How to set a zoom factor. Preparations 1. In the project window, create a MIDI track for each instrument. Please note that you can prepare a piano (split) staff from a single track, there’s no need to create one track for the bass clef and one for the treble clef. 2. If you like, name each track after the instrument. This name can later be used in the score if you like. 3. Record into the tracks or create empty parts on all tracks. You can make very long parts that cover the entire piece, or you can start out with shorter parts to begin with. If you choose the latter option, you can always go back later and add new parts or copy existing parts. Opening the Score Editor Editing one or several parts To open one or several parts in the Score Editor, select the parts (on the same or different tracks) and select “Open Score Editor” from the MIDI menu or “Open Selection” from the Scores menu. The default key command for this is [Ctrl]/[Command]-[R]. • You can also select the Score Editor as your default editor, allowing you to open it by double clicking parts. This is done with the Default Edit Action pop-up menu in the Preferences dialog (event Display – MIDI page).
NUENDO The basics 2 – 19 Editing whole tracks When you are preparing a score for printing, you probably want to open the whole MIDI tracks in the Score Editor. To do this, select the track(s) in the track list and make sure no parts are selected – then open the Score Editor as usual. About editing parts on different tracks If you have selected parts on two or more tracks (or several whole tracks – no parts) and open the Score Editor, you will get one staff for each track (although you can split a staff in two, e.g. when scoring for piano). Think of the project windows as an overview of your entire score and the tracks as representing one instrument each. Editing predefined combinations of tracks On page 242 you will find out how to open the Score Editor with a certain combination of tracks that you edited before. The project cursor The project cursor appears as a vertical line across the staff. When you open the Score Editor, the view is automatically scrolled so that the project cursor is visible in the window. This means you don’t al- ways see the beginning of the edited part when you first open the Score Editor. • Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and [Shift] and click anywhere in the score to move the project cursor there. This is handy if the project cursor pointer isn’t visible.
NUENDO 2 – 20 The basics Page Mode When you are preparing a score for printout, you should set the Score Editor to Page Mode. This is done by selecting Page Mode from the Scores menu (if the menu item is called “Edit Mode”, you are already in Page Mode). Selecting Page Mode. When you do this, the window switches to show you one page at a time, as it will appear on printout. Page Mode vs. Edit Mode All you can do in Edit Mode, you can also do in Page Mode. But Page Mode offers lots of additional features that are not available in Edit Mode, typically because they are directly related to how the score is displayed and printed. This section of the manual assumes you are in Page Mode. It will be mentioned explicitly if something in this text specifically relates to Edit Mode. Using the scroll bars in Page Mode In Page Mode, the scroll bars are used to scroll the image of the page inside the window.