User manual

783
Polyphonic voicing
Strategies: 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 number of overlapping
notes at a certain position) and activate that many. If you do not know how many
notes you need when starting out to prepare a score, do not worry, you can add
more voices later.
- Voices 1 and 2 on the upper staff and 5 and 6 on the lower are special. These
handle “collisions” (notes with small intervals, accidentals that otherwise would
come too close, etc.) automatically which the other voices do not. Always use
these voices first!
An example: in the situation below, three voices are required. The lowest note
overlaps both the “melody” and the chords, so it cannot share a voice with the chords.
The chords overlap the melody, so they cannot share a voice either.
Entering notes into voices
When you add new notes, you need to decide which voice they go into:
1. Make sure that 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 on the extended toolbar.
Only the voices that are activated on the Polyphonic tab are shown. If the upper
staff is active, the voice Insert buttons are numbered 1, 2, etc., otherwise they are
numbered 5, 6, etc.
4. If you need to switch the voice icons to the right “clef”, click somewhere in the
system you want to insert notes in.
5. Select one of the voices by clicking on the corresponding button.
Any notes you enter from now on are inserted into that voice.
Voice 3 activated for insertion
6. Insert the notes as usual, see “Adding and editing notes” on page 756.
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.
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 particular voice, see
“Important! – Symbols,
staves, and voices” on page 815.