SongTrellis
Music and Musical Know-how For You

Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  1/28/06; 4:40:56 AM Msg#:  4717 (top msg in thread) Prev/Next:  4716/4718 Reads:  2973

If you are a member of the SongTrellis site and use a Workscore (one is provided for free to any member) you can compose new music using one of the SongTrellis Workscore pages. I wanted to have a way for folks to play even when they don't own Macs or don't yet have a copy of the SongTrellis Music Editor for Macintosh.

When you first view your Workscore, you'll see that it displays an empty sheetmusic page. There is a two-step recipe for writing new music using SongTrellis Workscores:

1) First, you need to write or copy one or more chords into your score. There are three ways to get this done:

a) If you have written sheet music that provides chord symbols, you can type those into your score using Workscore Chord Entry (http://www.songtrellis.com/workscore). Using the left panel of that page you can type chords into the Workscore that displays in the right panel.

 b) If you want to invent your own chord sequence, you can use the Chord Entry By Grid page (http://www.songtrellis.com.chordGrid3). There, the left panel provides a Chord Grid, a rectangular grid of 44 rows. Each row in the grid is labelled with the name of a different chord type and contains 12 squares which present the names of the 12 possible pitches upon which you could build a chord of that type.

When you press one of the grid squares, the SongTrellis server builds an instance of the chord you've chosen and plays it for you in about a second in your browser, and displays it's notation in the audition panel that shows up in the center panel of the page. If you like what you hear, you can use the button labelled "Send Chord To>>" that appears in the audition panel to copy that chord into your Workscore which is displayed in the right panel of the page.

 c) If you want to copy chord from an existing chord sequence, you can visit a tune page that listed in the section of SongTrellis called The Changes (http://www.songtrellis.com/changesPage). Nearly all tune listing include a link to the SongTrellis Excerpt Service. This Excerpt Service lets you listen to excerpts, small sub-sections of the entire chord arrangement score that the SongTrellis site provides in The Changes listings. If you press the "Add Excerpt Chords" button on an excerpt page, the currently selected excerpt is copied to the end of your workscore.

2) Second, invent or type the notes of the melody of your piece. The control groups provided in the left panel of the Workscore Composer page (http://www.songtrellis.com/workscoreComposer2) help you find the notes of the new melody you are inventing with your Workscore, which appears in the right panel of the page .

 In that left tool panel, the top control group provides the rule that specifies the durations of the next notes you'll enter into your score.

The second control group in the left panel, provides an Improvise New Idea button that tells the server to improvise a new melody phrase to add to add to the end of your Workscore and play the score so you can hear how the new idea sounds. If you like what you hear, you press Improvise New Idea again and add another new idea to your score. If the entire improvised idea doesn't fit, you press Delete New Idea and try again. If the early part of a phrase fits your melody and then goes astray, you count the number of bad notes at the end of a phrase, delete only those using the Delete button and do Improvise New Idea again.

The third control group specifies what part of the score should be played whenever you do an action that adds or deletes notes from your melody. It's cool to hear the entire score as you add notes, but after awhile it gets tedious to listen to your ever longer score, so the radio button selection here let you restrict the playback to smaller sections at the tail of your score (last idea, last four bars, last eight bars).

The fourth control group provides four different rules for adding pleasing notes to your melody, one note at a time, a type-in box that lets you name the pitches of the next notes that you'll enter (if you are quoting existing music or know tons of music theory), and two transpose controls that let you revise the pitch of the last note you typed if it doesn't sound right to you.

The fifth and last control left panel group, lets you change your selection so that you can touch notes in the middle of the melody you're composing and revise their pitch, if you decide that's necessary.

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