This chapter presents an overview of Nightingale’s MIDI functions. Once you have properly hooked up MIDI equipment to your Macintosh, you can use Nightingale’s playback commands to audibly “proof” your score, or Nightingale’s recording commands to enter new music.
Complete information on each of Nightingale’s tools and functions can be found in the Reference section of this manual, and you’ll find detailed information on each individual command in the Commands section of this manual.
Chapter Contents:
Overview of Nightingale’s playback and recording functions
MIDI playback testing
Playback commands
Setting up your score for multi-timbral MIDI Playback
Recording options
Step Time Recording
Adding more parts to a score
Real Time Recording
Quantizing and Transcribing Recording
Adjusting the duration of selected notes with Set Duration
Nightingale’s Playback and Recording functions:
Nightingale’s Play/Rec menu contains commands that let you:
• Playback through a MIDI instrument all notes, letter dynamic markings, tempo changes, key changes, instrument assignments, or MIDI channel assignments you place into your musical score
• Record or “play in” notes from a MIDI instrument in Real Time (with a steady beat), then tell Nightingale to automatically notate those notes on your Mac screen
• Record notes from a MIDI instrument in Step Time, allowing you to take your time, try out various notes before telling Nightingale to “listen” to what you play, and move on at your own pace
• Select metronome settings for recording. The metronome can be sent through your MIDI instrument, or be heard over your Mac’s internal speaker
Note: At this time, you cannot hear music that is already in your score while you are recording music.
MIDI Playback Testing:
If you do not have the file “Nightingale Demo Score” open on your screen (or one of the numerous other demo scores supplied on your original floppy disks), go to the File menu and select Open. When the list of selections appears, click on an individual file and then on the [Open] button (pressing the Return key will automatically “push” the Open button for you), and wait for the score to appear on the screen.
• To Playback at any time, go to the Score menu and select “Play Entire” (or type Cmd-1)
You should be able to hear playback immediately. If not, be sure all steps described under “MIDI Setup and Playback test” in Chapter 1, Getting Started, have been properly completed.
Even if you didn't hear anything, you will notice the dark vertical marker moving across your score, indicating that Nightingale is reading the notes for playback (if you don’t see it, press Command-1 again and watch for the marker).
MIDI Channel Testing:
If you cannot hear playback of the Nightingale Demo Score, and you have made certain that all installation and hookup procedures described in Chapter 1 and in the Installation Guide Sheet have been followed, then you may have a MIDI instrument that receives MIDI signals only on a specific channel other than channel 1. Unless you have specified otherwise, Nightingale sends MIDI playback data to your MIDI instrument over channel 1 (the default channel setting).
To test which MIDI channel(s) will work for you MIDI instrument, follow these steps:
1) Go to the Play/Rec menu
2) Select the MIDI Preferences command
3) Turn on the “Play from Parts’ Settings” option (by clicking in the box)
4) Type the desired MIDI channel (in the “Record Channel” box) over which MIDI playback data should be sent.
If you don’t know the correct channel number, try experimenting with various numbers between 1 and 16 (your MIDI instrument’s documentation should tell you which channels can be used).
Using the Test MIDI Channels file
You can also open the Nightingale score called “Test MIDI Channels” which is a demo score included on the original Nightingale floppy disks. A test playback of this score will identify for you which playback channel is the correct one, by running through all 16 channels one after another.
If you are certain all installations and settings have been made correctly, and you still cannot here MIDI playback, you may have a malfunctioning MIDI interface unit (see Appendix A, Troubleshooting for information on interface testing).
Complete MIDI hookup Instructions
For complete instructions on hooking up your MIDI equipment to work with Nightingale, refer to the section titled MIDI Setup and Playback test in Chapter 1, Getting Started, and to the section titled MIDI Setup and Hookup Troubleshooting on the enclosed Installation Guide Sheet.
MIDI Playback Commands:
Nightingale gives you three instant playback options that you can
select with the mouse from the Play/Rec menu, or by typing a key command:
• Play Entire (Cmd-1) — Playback starts at the beginning of your score
• Continue Play (Cmd-2) — Playback begins with any selected material and continues to the end, or begins wherever the blinking “insertion point” currently lies in your score
• Play Selection (Cmd-4) — Plays only material you have selected with the mouse by clicking on notes or dragging across several notes
Nightingale gives you three hidden commands to interrupt or halt playback:
• Interrupt Play at any point by clicking the mouse — this command also leaves selected/highlighted the last note or chord heard before clicking. Any time you click the mouse during playback, the last note or chord you heard will be selected. This is designed so that you can immediately Play Selection (Cmd-4) or Continue Play beginning at the notes that are selected (Cmd-2).
• Interrupt Play at any point by typing Cmd-/ — this is eqivalent to clicking the mouse
• Stop Play (Cmd - . ) — Playback is halted, and the insertion point is left where you originally placed it, or if any material had been selected prior to playback, the selection remains unchanged.
Actions:
Try out these various playback options with the demo score:
• Click the insertion point anywhere in the demo score
• Select “Continue Play” from the Play/Rec menu (or type Cmd-2) to begin play at the insertion point
• Click the mouse button to stop playback, and then drag across a number of notes to select/highlight them — then choose “Play Selection” from the Play/Rec menu (or type Cmd-4)
Special tip: As stated in Chapter 1, you can “shift-click” to select an entire region of material — simply click the insertion point anywhere into your score, then while holding down the Shift key, click anywhere else in the score. Everything between your two clicks is selected and highlighted. Command-4 plays only what is selected. This includes material selected in only one part or staff.
• Select “Play Entire” from the Play/Rec menu (or type Cmd-1), then stop playback by typing Cmd-period
• Select “Play Entire” again, and make playback “Pause” by simply clicking the mouse button (or typing Cmd-/) then resume playback with “Continue Play” (Cmd-2)
Using Master Page to set up a score for multi-timbral MIDI playback:
The MIDI playback channels, patches, and velocity/volume used in a Nightingale score are ultimately controlled by the part assignments you make in Master Page . Each part in your score can be assigned its own instrument sound or “timbre,” provided you have a MIDI instrument capable of multi-timbral playback.
To change the settings for the parts in your score, follow these steps:
1) Go to the Score menu and select the Master Page command (the Master Page menu will be displayed to the right in the menu bar, and the score appears as empty staves)
2) Click on the part for which you wish to assign MIDI instrument settings
3) Go to the Master Page menu and select Instrument (or you can double-click in the part/staff you are adjusting)
4) Select the desired instrument or voice from the list displayed in the Instrument dialog (The “General MIDI Spec” patch number is automatically assigned for any instrument you choose from the list*)
5) Assign an individual channel number (between 1 and 16) and patch number (between 1 and 127) for each part in your score (you can “double-up” parts using the same MIDI patch onto a single channel)
6) Click on the [OK] button to close the Instrument dialog
7) Go to the Score menu and select the Master Page command to “exit” Master Page, and return to the normal score view.
(For more information, see the entries titled Master Page and Instruments in the Commands section of this manual)
*See Appendix C, Using NightCustomizer, (under “Instruments”) for information on altering the default “master list” of instrument settings.
Recording Options:
You can play music directly from your MIDI instrument and Nightingale will record whatever you play and notate it on your screen. There are three different ways you can record:
• Record Insert (Cmd-5) — Real Time Recording with a steady metronome.
When you finish recording, noteheads of unknown value are displayed in the staff, which are then quantized and transcribed using the Transcribe Recording command. Barlines are entered automatically according to the time signature in effect, and, if you wish, notes are automatically beamed.
• Step Record Insert (Cmd-6) — In step time recording you control the advance of the clock and designate note values before playing a note or chord.
• Step Time Recording Merge (Cmd-7) — This step time recording command lets you to layer new music above or below music already in the score.
With Step Record Insert or Step Record Merge, you indicate rhythmic values before entering a note or chord, by typing a shortcut key (such as “q” for quarter notes). Each note you play instantly appears on the screen.
Special Tip: Using the Split Point and playing an octave higher
When recording into a piano grand staff, it is recommended that you insure complete separation between the left and right hand by playing the right hand one octave higher than intended. Before doing this, try setting the Split Point to a number that your right hand is sure not to cross (e.g. MIDI note 70 is equal to ‘Bb’ four ledger lines above the bass staff). This method ensures that material played in the left hand is recorded exclusively into voice 2, and the right hand into voice 1 of the piano part.
After you have finished recording (and, if you recorded using Record Insert, after you have finished transcribing) a passage, you can select the material in the right hand and transpose it back down into the octave you originally intended (see the entry titled Transcribe Chromatic in the Commands section).
Barlines and Meter in Step Recording:
Using Step Record Insert, what you play will be placed in front of the insertion point, and previous material in your score will shift to the right. Barlines are not automatically placed.
Using Step Record Merge, what you play into your score will follow along in the meter and measure spacing already set by other music in your score.
After either form of step time recording, you can “tap in” barlines by pressing the Tab key during playback (see below). You can also insert barlines by hand using the barline tool from the Tool Palette.
MIDI Listening On/Off:
Step Record Insert and Step Record Merge let you turn on/off MIDI listening with a touch of the Escape key, telling Nightingale when to place notes on the screen and when to ignore what you play while you experiment.
Setting a MIDI Record Channel:
Nightingale will accept MIDI information from any MIDI instrument. However, some instruments send their signal over a channel other than channel 1. Nightingale’s “default” MIDI channel setting for recording is channel 1.
If you experience trouble recording any kind of signal, you can select the MIDI Preferences command from the Play/Rec menu, and choose a different setting for the MIDI channel. The user’s guide for your MIDI instrument can tell you which MIDI channel it uses. If you are not sure, try experimenting with each number between 1 and 16.
Note: You must repeat this procedure each time you wish to use MIDI recording with a new document, unless you tell Nightingale to remember a different “default” MIDI channel setting for new documents, using the NightCustomizer utility (see Appendix C).
Step Record Insert:
1) Open a new “Untitled” document
Go up to File and select New. A new “Untitled-1” document appears. Notice that the blinking insertion point is at the beginning of staff 1.
2) Go to the Play/Rec menu and select “Step Record Insert”
3) Play a few notes on your MIDI instrument
Nightingale’s “step time recording box” appears and instantly shows you what notes you are entering into your score. When you are recording into a piano grand staff, any notes you play below middle ‘c’ they will be automatically placed in the bass clef staff (unless you alter the “split point” setting in the Record Insert dialog). These notes may not appear in the small step time recording box, but they will be on the score (in the bass clef) when you finish recording.
4) Type “q”, “w”, “e”, “s”, etc. to change rhythmic values
The mouse pointer will change automatically as an indicator of the current rhythmic value to be entered when you play notes on your MIDI instrument.
5) Augment the rhythmic value of a note with the Space bar
Increase the rhythmic value of the last note entered by simply pressing the space bar on your Mac keyboard. The value is increased by increments of the original note’s value (for example, if you enter a quarter note by playing your MIDI instrument, then pressing the space bar augments its value to a half note, then a dotted half, then a whole, etc.). By selecting a small note value, such as an 8th or 16th, you can develop a rhythmic method of “advancing the clock” while you play (see Step Record in the Commands section of this manual).
7) Type Shift-q, Shift-w, etc. to enter rests
Press any key on your MIDI instrument to place a rest into your score.
8) Click the mouse to stop Recording
The notes you have played will appear in the score.
Step Record Merge:
1) Place the “insertion point” in the lower staff
As stated in Chapter 1, the insertion point indicates where new material will be placed during recording. For Step Record Merge, you must click the mouse in the staff to indicate where the newly-recorded music is to be placed. We will step record into the lower, bass voice of the piano grand staff (it is also possible for you to record additional material into the upper/treble staff, but then you must tell Nightingale you wish to record in a new voice within that staff. (For information on layering multiple voices into one staff, see Look at One Voice in the Commands section of this manual).
2) Go to the Play/Rec menu and select Step Record Merge
3) Play a few low notes (below middle ‘c’) on your MIDI instrument
You will notice the brief appearance of a sync line each time you strike a new note that is rhythmically aligned with another note already in the score.
Use the same procedures as above for selecting rhythmic values for whatever notes you are recording, and for turning MIDI listening on/off.
4) Click the mouse to stop Recording
Nightingale has automatically assigned the new notes created with Step Record Merge to voice number 2 of the piano grand staff.
To add a third voice within a part/staff (or even as many as 31 voices per part), see instructions on layering multiple voices into one staff in the entry titled Look at One Voice in the Commands section of this manual).
Adding new staves above/below for Step Merge Recording:
You can layer more and more parts into your score by adding new staves above or below the original piano grand staff, and then recording new material into them:
1) Go to Score menu and select “Master Page”
(or type Command - ;). A new Master Page menu appears on the right side of the menu bar.
2) Move over to the Master Page menu and select the “Add Part/Staff at Bottom” command
To add parts above a staff, select that staff (by clicking on it with the mouse) and then the Add Part/Staff Below command automatically changes to Add Part/Staff Above.
To add a part below, don’t click on any of the staves shown in Master Page. To “unselect” a highlighted staff, click anywhere outside the page.
When you select the Add Part/Staff command from the menu, the dialog box shown below appears on your screen:
3) Type the number 8 in Add Parts box, and click on the [OK] button
Your score can contain up to 64 staves, but the page size and staff size used in new “untitled” documents limits you for the time being to adding only 8.
4) Go back to the Score menu and select Master Page (Command - ;)
Selecting Master Page (or typing the key command) “releases” the command.
A dialog box appears asking if you wish to apply to the score any Master Page changes you made.
5) Press [Yes] in the dialog box to OK changes
6) Record music in the new staff using “Step Record Merge”
You can now click in an insertion point anywhere in your score (to do so, you may need to get back the selection arrow by pressing Enter or selecting the black arrow icon from the palette) and then repeat the Step Record Merge or Step Record Insert procedures described above.
Placing Barlines into your recorded music
The next step in Nightingale’s Step Time recording process is to tell Nightingale where the barlines ought to go in the music you have recorded. Notice that Nightingale is not dependent at this point on any meter or time signature, but is waiting for you, the creative musician, to tell it what various meters and measure lengths you want.
You can place barlines in two ways:
• Click them in with the mouse (press “i” to select the barline tool)
• Tap in the barlines during Playback (using the Tab key)
To try the second method,
• Select “Play Entire” (or type -1) and then press the Tab key where you would like each new measure to begin.
Each time you press the Tab key (while listening to playback), Nightingale remembers where you tapped. When playback finishes, Nightingale will place a barline between notes at each point in the score where you tapped.
You can also place barlines one at a time by typing “i” and then clicking on the staff to place barlines wherever you like in your score.
User Note: The sensitivity/tolerance of how Nightingale places barlines with the Tab key can be adjusted to suit the user by changing its setting with NightCustomizer Utility.
Real Time Recording:
1) Open a new “Untitled” document by going to the File menu and selecting “New” (or type Cmd-N)
As before, be sure Nightingale is listening to the correct MIDI channel (in MIDI Preferences)
2) Go to the Play/Rec menu and then to Record Insert
The Record Insert dialog box appears.
The Record Insert dialog contains:
• The name of the part in which you are recording (where the insertion point is)
• The Record MIDI Channel (controlled in MIDI Preferences)
• The “buffer” of available memory for recording
• The transposition to be used when recording (determined by the instrument settings created in Master Page)
• The split point between the staff 1 and staff 2 (for use with a piano grand staff). The default setting of MIDI note number 60 corresponds to middle ‘c’ (see Appendix D, MIDI Note Numbers).
• The metronome tempo (controlled by inserting a tempo marking into the score– otherwise, the default tempo of 100 beats/minute is used)
3) To Begin recording, click on the [Record] button
The metronome begins playing a beat, and a “recording activity window” appears.
Note: The metronome can be played over the internal speaker of the Macintosh, or through your MIDI instrument as you are recording.
3) Play any notes you like on your MIDI instrument
You can begin playing any time you like. Though the metronome is running, the actual recording does not start until you play your first note.
The rectangular [Recording] sign blinks each time you enter a note
4) When finished, press the mouse button to stop
Nightingale stops recording at the last note you played, so there is no “hurry” to press the mouse button.
5) Click on [Done] in the Recording dialog
(or simply press the Return key)
Nightingale displays the noteheads of every note you played, but only as “raw pitches” with no notated rhythmic values
The notes you have just recorded will be automatically selected/highlighted (If you accidentally click the mouse an extra time after you stop recording, this will “release” all the notes from the selection—re-select them by pressing the Shift key, and clicking on the first and last notes in the string of newly-recorded “raw” notes).
Quantizing and Transcribing Recording:
The string of newly-recorded pitches can now be transcribed into notes with conventional rhythmic values.
1) Go to the Notes/Rests menu and select “Transcribe Recording”
(If the notes are not still highlighted, the Transcribe Recording command is dimmed — drag across the notes or shift-click to select them)
The Transcribe Recording dialog appears.
2) Select a quantization level
You can type the shortcut key equivalent (i.e. “q” for quarter notes), or click on the popup menu to select from a list to designate the rhythmic value you want. The rhythmic value that you enter in the “Grid” popup menu should be equal to the shortest note value you used in the recorded material. Nightingale will notate your recording using multiples of the note value you choose.
If, for example, you played a combination of 8th notes, half notes, and quarter notes, you should choose a grid of 8th notes as your smallest value for quantization. Nightingale will transcribe your recorded notes to the nearest multiple of an 8th note — 8ths, quarters, dotted quarters, halves, dotted halves, double dotted halves, wholes, and so on.
3) Click on the [OK] button to start Transcribing
Once you have specified the parameters for Transcribe Recording, Nightingale will convert your recorded material into notated music.
Undo Transcribe Recording with the “Undo” command (Edit menu)
.i.Transcribe recording: Undo command;If the quantization setting you chose did not yield what you wanted, you can go to the Edit menu and select the Undo Transcribe Recording (or type Cmd-Z), and then try again. You must then shift-click to re-select the original recorded material again, before returning to the Transcribe Recording command to try some different settings.
Recognizing Triplets in Transcribe Recording:
If your recorded material included any triplets, press the Command and Option keys as you select Transcribe Recording from the Play/Rec menu. The check the box for Recognize triplets appears in the dialog. Nightingale will consider triplets down to the level you choose for your quantization grid. In other words, if you quantize to an 8th note grid, Nightingale will include 8th note triplets when it transcribes what you recorded.
Automatic Beaming in Transcribe Recording:
If you check the box for Guess beams by beat, Nightingale will also beam into groups any notes (8th notes or smaller) to correctly reflect the time signature in effect where you placed the insertion point for recording.
Automatic Barline Entry in Transcribe Recording
Nightingale will automatically place barlines into your recorded music according to the time signature in effect where you placed the insertion point for recording.
Adjusting the Duration of selected notes in your transcribed recording with Set Duration:
You can select one or several notes in the newly transcribed material and quickly change their rhythmic values by going to the Notes/Rests menu and selecting the Set Duration command (or by typing Cmd-D).(For more information about this command, see its entry in the Commands section of this manual).
Continuing This Tutorial:
You have now finished Chapter 3 of your Nightingale Tutorial.
All topics in Chapter 3 are covered in detail in the Reference section and/or the Commands section of this manual—see the index for a listing of topics.
Before continuing onto Chapter 4, Techniques for Editing, you should close all documents you have been using for experiments.
To close any document, go the File menu and select Close (or type -W). If you made any changes to the demo score, Nightingale will ask if you want to save the changes made. You probably don’t want to save the changes. Click on [Don't Save] and then press [OK].
Review
You may wish to take a moment to review what you‘ve learned about MIDI Playback and MIDI Recording with Nightingale:
• Playback the entire score (Go to Score menu and select Play Entire)
• Shift-clicking to select a region
• Playback only the selection (Go to Score menu and select Play Selection)
• Placement of the insertion point
• Continue playback from any point in the score (Go to Score menu and select Continue Play )
• Step Record choosing rhythmic values or rests by key command “shortcut”
• Press the Space Bar to “augment” rhythmic values during step recording
• Turning MIDI listening off/on during step recording with Escape key
• Add a Part/Staff in Master Page (above/below)
• Tap in barlines with the Tab key during Playback
• Real Time Record with a Metronome
• Transcribe Recording will quantize your music, automatically enter barlines and beam by beat
• Set Duration lets you assign specific rhythmic values to any selected notes/rest
