Editing or creating activities
Practica Musica allows an instructor to modify the contents or
behavior of any activity, and even to create new activities of your own design. The title of any
activity file kept in the Activities folder will be displayed in the Activities menu when
the program is launched, and the students can choose that activity as they would any other.
Create New or Edit Existing?
The Activity Editing Window
'Done' boxes
Test
Save
Save as...
Choices that apply to an entire activity
Description
Name and menu titles
Action buttons
Template
Scoring
Keyboard controls
Activity Info or Help
Password
Alternate Activity
Next Activity
Choices that can vary with each level/sublevel
Materials
Multiple choice
Clef/Key/Meter
Messages
Edit tools
Range
Prerequisite
Subactivity
Making activities available to your students
Internet transfer of activities
Create New or Edit Existing?
Because the activity designer has a great deal of control
over the design and conduct of the activity, creating one from scratch
can be an intricate process. The easiest way to get the activity you
want is to pick an existing one that is near to what you are after, and
change it. For instance, you could pick a dictation activity that uses
library examples and simply change the examples provided. Or you
could change the scoring plan of an activity that otherwise was what
you needed, or change just the messages that appear, or the type of
keyboard displayed. A large number of activities are supplied
with Practica Musica, and the complete collection of the latest activities
is always available for download at Ars Nova's
online Activity Library.
Very Important: If you use an existing activity as the basis of
a new one, be sure to use the "Save As" button to create the new
activity file. Do not simply duplicate the activity file! This is because
each activity contains a unique identifier that Practica Musica uses to
keep track of scores earned by students using that activity. If you
duplicate an activity file it will have the same identifier as its original, and
the two will then be confused with each other in the student
progress reports. But if you use the Save As... button in the main Activity
editing window, the new file will be given its own unique number.
The Activity Editing Window.
The activity editing window contains a number of buttons
that can be used to define an activity. Some are essential to any
activity, others are optional. For example, every activity needs to have a
name, but a password is not required.
When creating an activity, start with the first button at the
top, Description, and then proceed through the other buttons in any
order. As you press each button a window
will appear that displays the default settings for the new activity; you can click OK if these are
satisfactory, or make whatever changes you desire.
These are the choices that you can't do without:
Description. This is always the first thing to fill out.
Name and menu titles
Materials
Messages
The
"done" boxes
When information has been entered under a certain
category, the "done" button to its right will be checkmarked. You can
still change the information, but you can tell by the checkmark that
you've made some choices for that category. You can uncheck the
"done" button by clicking on it, which will remove the changes you've
made and restore the default choices (you'll be asked if this is really
what you want to do).
Buttons
Test
Test the activity you're working on. Test will enter the
activity at the chosen sublevel, but if there are several levels you will still
need to choose the level after starting the test. To quit the test and return to
the activity editor, use the "quit" item in the activity's own menu.
Save
Save changes to the activity.
Save As
Very Important: again, be sure to use "Save As" if you want
to create a new activity based on an existing one. That gives it a
new internal identifying number, and it is these unique i.d. numbers
that Practica Musica uses to tell the activities apart. Windows users
will need to pay attention to characters allowed in file names under
Windows. Don't use commas, slashes, or hyphens; keep to plain text
characters to avoid unexpected Windows behavior. (Macintosh
users should observe the same rules the same activity file will then
run on either platform.)
Note that activity file names must end with the extension
.act, even on the Macintosh, if they are to appear in the Activities menu.
To ensure cross-platform compatibility of the activity files, even
the Macintosh version of Practica Musica pays attention to that
Windows-style file name. That way you can take a file created on a
Windows machine and it will be recognized as an activity by the
Macintosh version of the program.
Choices that apply to the entire activity
Description
This category provides an overall view of what your activity
is designed to do. Choices made here can effect the behavior of
other buttons, so it's best to do this one first. Not all questions on this
page will make sense in every activity: just ignore questions that
don't apply.
Source material can either be generated by Practica Musica,
for example a generated melody or chord progression, or can be drawn from precomposed
library examples. See below under Materials for instructions on importing library examples into
an activity. If you have chosen Generated, the Materials button
will display rules for example generation; if you have chosen
Library Source here, the Materials button will put up a window in which
you can import Library Examples. You are also asked to specify the
nature of the material: whether the program should expect to deal with
intervals, chords, melody, etc.
Goal. The student will be asked to... The items in this list, which
is still expanding, should be self-explanatory.
Presentation. When the activity begins, what is to be displayed,
the whole example, nothing, a first note...? Should the program play
the example, start recording input, wait for further requests from the
user, or what?
Hints: If student will be entering melody notes or chords, should
the program provide the first note of the answer ?
Expected response: Wait for the student to...choose a button? Ask
for evaluation? Play a note? etc.
Enharmonics. Should student input be adjusted enharmonically
to match the example material? For example, if the problem
involves playing an Eb triad, should the program automatically convert a D#
on the keyboard to Eb? Or will the choice of enharmonic be part of
the problem?
Acceptable pitch equivalents: If the work involves pitches, will
a note be correct if it is the correct pitch class but the wrong octave,
and does the enharmonic spelling need to be correct?
Real-time marking: If the student is playing a series of notes on
the screen, should the place in the music simply be marked, or should
the program mark correct and incorrect notes as they are played?
Should the corresponding claves be highlighted as notes on
a staff are played?
Should the sounding notes be marked, or just the beat, or
neither?
If sounding notes are to be marked as they are heard, what
sort of mark should be used?
Response to answers: What should PM do if the answer is
incorrect? What if it's correct? What should happen next?
Will the student be allowed to use the PlayFrom and PlayTo
tools to isolate a portion of the music for playback?
The description page ends with buttons that let you pick
the initial tempo and the initial cursor, if appropriate. Note that the
tempo affects more than just melodies and chord progressions; it also
affects the speed of arpeggiated single chords or melodic intervals.
Name and menu titles
The activity title is what will be displayed in the Activity
Menu. The same title will appear in student reports.
This is not necessarily the same as the file name of the activity. For example, the title
might be "Diatonic Intervals" but the file name could be "1.B.DiatonicIntervals.act."
Caution:
On both Macintosh and Windows computers there are
certain text characters that should not be used in a menu item. These
may include parentheses, slashes, and some other special characters; if present
the computer may interpret them as special commands. The best course
is to use only letters and numbers in your folder names and menu titles.
In addition to a title, each activity should have at least
two menu items: one to provide some instructions or other
information about the activity, and one for the Quit command. Regardless
of whether there are any menu items, command-Q will always quit
the current activity. You can have up to six menu items in all. Each
must be assigned a function from the same list used for Action Buttons.
If your activity is to have more than one level of
difficulty, menu items should be used to choose the desired level. Menu
items can, however, be used for any purpose you choose among those in
the list of functions.
Remember to avoid "special" characters in menus, as they
can affect the way that the computer's operating system displays the
menu, which can produce confusing results.
Do not leave gaps in the menu. If you are only using some
of the items, use the first ones.
Action Buttons
Up to six action buttons can appear across the top of the
keyboard tools window. You can give them any title that will fit the
available space (naturally there is more space for each if you use
fewer buttons) , and assign each a function from the popup list below
each button. You can also choose which function, if any, will be
invoked when the student presses the Return key. If none is chosen, the
Return key will play a note, like other keys of the middle row of letters.
If you don't want to have action buttons visible, choose
"No buttons."
Template
It's usually a good idea to create a template window, which
tells Practica Musica what your main exercise window will look like.
When you are finished forming the template window, choose
"Store" from the action buttons in the template edit window, and the
template will be added to your activity. If you quit without storing the
template, no changes will be made.
The main decision is whether to display a
"short staff" or a full-length scrollable staff. The short staff is the one to choose if you
are dealing with single tones, single intervals, or single chords. When
in the short staff mode up to 6 simultaneous notes played by the user
can be displayed on the staff and optionally analyzed by the
program. There is also space in the short staff for an example to be displayed.
If you have chosen the short staff and are using single
pitches, intervals, or chords, the examples will be displayed in the first part
of the short staff, unless you have indicated in the activity
description that the example is not to be shown.
Details. The "Details" button in the template edit window gives
you access to a large number of options that affect either the entire
music window or the currently selected staff in that window.
Editing method: Continuous automatic positioning is
generally the best. The option to turn that off is really only needed when dealing
with a very large piece of music that is slow to edit otherwise.
Connections: The chosen staff can begin or end a bracket
or brace. If it is an inner staff, choose "neither start nor end a bracket
or brace at this staff."
Chord symbols and beats: The chordline guides the
placement of chord symbols, which can also be used for Roman numerals.
In many activities you don't want this tool present. Similarly, you
can display or hide the triangular beat markers that would guide the
placement of chord symbols. You can also choose to have the
metronome turn on when this window is frontmost, so that the music will
automatically play with a metronome tick.
Student input/Example staff: If a staff is marked as an
example staff, your example music (either generated or from a
library example) will be copied into that staff. If there are more
example staves they will be filled in order as long as there are additional
staves in the example. If you want the student to also be able to change things in
the example staff, check the box "staff can be edited." If you want to make changes in
the staff yourself you should at least temporarily check that box in order to make changes.
Lines. Any staff can be a normal 5 lines, or just 1
(the centerline), or can be without lines.
A staff can be drawn in blue. This is a good convention
for example staves.
A staff and its contents can be
hidden while still being audible.
A staff can be designated as a rhythm
guide. A rhythm guide staff will automatically determine the rhythmic content of the
stave immediately below. Typically the guide staff would hold the
example, perhaps with the pitches concealed (all notes drawn on
the centerline)and the next staff down would be a student staff. Any
notes entered in the student staff would automatically take on the
rhythmic value of the corresponding item in the guide. This is useful for a
pitch dictation activity in which the rhythms are "given."
A staff can be a Pitch Guide. A pitch guide will
automatically control the pitches of a student staff below it. This is useful in
rhythm dictation activities where the pitches are "given."
A staff's pitches can be concealed by drawing all of the
notes on the centerline. They still sound at the correct pitches,
however. This can be used in conjunction with the rhythm guide option.
A staff's sound button can be
hidden. The primary use of this is to prevent a student from isolating the sound of individual staves
in a polyphonic dictation exercise.
A staff's textline control can be
hidden, and usually is except in a composition exercise.
A staff's text can be hidden until evaluation. You can
include in a library example, for example, certain text such as the name of
the composer, and have that text appear only once the student's answer
is evaluated. This might be particularly useful in combination with
the "exam mode" option of the Scoring window, below.
Notes can be drawn with invisible heads
(stick notation), X heads (percussion), or as stemless
heads. If you designate an example staff this way, example music will convert to the desired
appearance when it is automatically copied into that staff.
A staff can be set to display key-appropriate Solfege syllables in the Moveable Do system.
You can also choose to hide those syllables until the exercise is completed, or to show the syllables
while hiding the notes. See also the Keyboard Controls: the screen piano can also be set to display solfege.
You can also set the note spacing for the entire music
window, the measure numbering convention, and the number of lyric lines,
if any, to be displayed when using the text tool.
You may see a "save changes?" dialog when you close a
template file. You don't need to save it unless you want a separate
file copy of the template; the original will be folded into the activity
file when you click the Store button.
Scoring
Practica Musica has traditionally used a proportional
scoring system for activities involving single items. The total points
required are few - usually 16 or 20 - but an error knocks the score down by
a fourth or a half. This system allows a person knowledgeable in
the topic to finish in a few minutes, while others will take time as
needed. However, you can use any scoring system you like, as described
in this window. You can also add a time penalty, which is appropriate
for some activities. Getting the time penalty to "feel right" will take
some experimenting; you probably will want to reward quick work
while not making it impossible to score without having speed.
Here you can also choose whether to use the
applause, the score column, error sounds, etc., and you can choose the rhythmic
precision required for real-time tapping exercises. A note about precision:
in most cases these exercises are concerned not with performance
skill but with knowledge. We take the position that an answer is correct if
it clearly demonstrates, for example, that the student understood
the notation was of 16th notes rather than 8ths. In a reading exercise
it generally will not be useful to require extreme precision in
rhythm, both because of the natural expressive demands of music and
because of the possible limitations of different types of computer keyboard
or processors. For most cases, "within a sixteenth" seems to work well;
it is well within the capabilities of most computers at most tempi.
The "exam mode" option is useful only for activities that
employ library examples. A student can evaluation any librar
example once and only once, which allows the creation of activities that
serve as exams.
The "Balloon drop" timer display can be useful if you've
specified a time penalty. The balloon falls at a rate that will cause it to
pop when the time is up and the penalty is applied. The animation is
most effective on fast computers.
Keyboard controls
Here you find all the buttons and controls available for use
in the onscreen piano's frame, which serves as a tool palette (the
note and symbol editing tools, however, are in a separate window
under Edit Controls, since you may want to change them at each
sublevel).
The clef, key, and meter choice buttons are included here, though
they might also be considered to be edit controls. You can choose to
remove the labels in the key boxes, if the key box is included.
You can choose to have no keyboard sound switch, and
simply have the sound automatically on or off. This might make sense
to avoid any possible confusion, and the "off" position could also
be useful if you didn't want students to be able to feel around for
the correct pitch on the screen keyboard.
The instrument choices should be displayed, but can be
removed if you have some reason to want them gone. The
instrument choices on the keyboard frame refer to output only, and consist
of MIDI, QT or Synth (the internal synthesizer on a Mac is
the QuickTime instrument), and a number of sampled-sound
instruments represented by pictures. The sampled sound instruments are
currently the only ones that can be microtonally tuned to do temperaments
or other adjustments to equal temperament.
The metronome tool can be present or absent, and the
metronome initially on or off. You can choose whether it will tick once
for each beat or if it will divide the beat.
You have a choice of keyboard design, from plain piano keys
to a fretboard, and you can choose whether the student will be allowed
to changed keyboards. The enharmonic keyboard is useful when
doing note-spelling exercises, since it allows the student to choose a flat or
a sharp from the keyboard itself.
The keyboard can be set to display key-appropriate Solfege syllables, and can also be
instructed to hide them until a student's answer has been evaluated.
The student can be forbidden to enter staff notes via the
keyboard. Sometimes this is desirable in dictation. Or, conversely,
the student can be required to enter notes only via the keyboard.
Activity info or help
Enter up to three paragraphs of any information you like.
We normally use this window for brief instructions, but it could
also contain such items as a professor name, email address, etc. If you use the
'traditional' three blocks of ordinary text each paragraph is limited to 240 characters,
so these must be efficient (that's might be about the limit of instructions that most people
will read in any event).
If you choose the 'Import HTML' option, however, you can include instructions
of any length. This option requires that you first create a file in HTML format, and
then import that file with the Import HTML button. There are some restrictions on what
you can do: because this file will be folded into the activity file itself it cannot reference
any external images or other files on the computer's disk. It can make reference to resources
located on the internet, but effective use of those links would of course require that your
audience is using the activity on a connected computer.
The advantage of using an HTML file for instructions, beyond the ability to make it of any
length, is that the text can be formatted and better organized visually. Links to internet resources
may also be useful.
Password
If your activity is to be used by others, you may want to
protect it from being altered. If you do enter a password, be sure to write
it down! There is no way to make further changes to the activity if
you forget the password. One safe option is to keep a copy of the
activity that is not protected by password, and send only the protected
version to other people.
Alternate Activity
You can specify an alternate activity that the program will automatically
switch to if the student appears not to be doing well with the material in the current activity. You
are able to specify the threshold for that decision. Combined with the "Next Activity" feature this
allows you to create activity sets that will guide a student through a curriculum.
Next Activity
This specifies an activity that will be launched next if a student attains
a passing score on the current activity. It's only needed if you're creating a guided curriculum. If
you want to use this you will usually want to also set the Description option "This activity quits automatically
when a level is passed."
Choices that can vary with each
level/sublevel
Activities can have up to four levels, and each level is
divided into six sublevels. It is not necessary to actually use all the
sublevels if you have entered choices only for "sublevel 1" in each case
then your activity will proceed as if it had only one sublevel in each level.
An activity will always use the last available material for each
sublevel, so that if one is in sublevel 4 and no choices were entered
since sublevel 2, the material for sublevel 2 will be used. The sublevels
give you a chance, though, to gradually increase difficulty or
simply change subject matter as the student works. If you have made
any sublevel changes, they will take effect when the student's score
passes one of the six division points in the "points required" for each
level. For example, if 240 points total are required, sublevel 2 will
begin when the score reaches 41.
If you want an activity to have one sublevel, fill in choices
for sublevel 1 only.
If you want it to have 2 sublevels, fill in choices for sublevels
1 and 4. That will make the second level kick in when the score
passes the halfway mark.
If you want 3 sublevels, fill in materials for sublevels 1, 3,
and 5, so that they are also evenly distributed.
Click the level and sublevel you want to work on, and
the "done" buttons for each category of information will tell you
whether material is entered for that level/sublevel (remember you can
click those done buttons to remove material, if desired). It is not
necessary to provide information under each category, though Materials
and Messages will almost always be needed.
Materials
When you click this button you'll see any of various
materials choice windows, depending on which topic you chose in the
Description window. If your choice of source material was "generated"
you see choices for the type of generated material. If your choice of
source was "library" you'll be presented with an activity window in
which you can select and alter example files, and store them in the list
of examples for the current level.
Materials for library-source activities
Library source materials should be prepared in advance
using either one of the writing activities provided with Practica Musica,
or our Songworks software, which includes more extensive
composition tools. Save each example file under the name you would like to
see appear in the activity menu, for example: "Example 1.1,"
"Example 1.2," and so on. It's not necessary to put a filename
extension on these - the name can be anything you like. It's most convenient to organize these by
keeping them in a folder so that you can later revise them if desired.
If your Description window has the Library Source
option chosen, clicking the Materials button will bring up the Example
Editor. This is a special activity in which you can make some
last-minute changes to examples and add them to the list of examples for
the chosen level.
Adding examples: use the Open button to open the next
example. Make any changes desired. Then click the Add to List
button to add that example to the menu list for the chosen level. The
new example will be appended to the list; there is currently no way
to insert it in the list.
Example files are folded into the activity file itself and
become part of the activity file. You do not need to distribute a folder of
examples with the activity; every activity file is complete and needs
no other files except for Practica Musica. The same activity files are
used for both Mac and Windows computers; they need no conversion.
Removing examples. To remove one example that is
already in the list, choose it in the Example Editor's examples menu for
the given level. That will open the example in a window. Click the
Remove button to remove it from the list.
Making changes to existing examples. You can open an example
that you added earlier by choosing it in the examples menu. Make any needed
alterations and then click the "save changes" button. That updates the internally
stored example with the changes you have made.
If you close a new example window you may see a
"save changes?" dialog. This is asking you if you want to save the
example as a file. It is not necessary to do so unless you want a separate
independent file copy, since the example is folded into the activity file.
Removing all examples for the level. This is needed if
you want to reorder the examples by entering them again in a
different order. Instead of taking the time to separately remove each one,
simply choose the desired level and then uncheck the "done" box
beside the Materials button. Then click the Materials button to add the
new list of examples one-by-one.
Materials for generated-source activities
Single Pitches. You can draw single pitches from one of
the traditional scales, or from an arbitrary set of pitches. If you've
chosen an arbitrary set you'll be presented with a window in which to
enter the desired notes. Just click in the staff or the screen piano with
the note tool to enter the desired pitches; standard editing rules apply.
A pitch set can contain as many as 24 pitches.
If you have specified that the pitch set is "fixed" it will be left
in its original form as entered. Otherwise it will be transposed by
octave to fill in the appropriate range for whatever clef and range limits
are chosen.
When you click "Finished" in the pitch edit window the
notes you've entered will be saved within the activity file.
You may also see a "save changes?" dialog
you don't need to save changes unless you want to keep a separate file copy of the notes you selected.
Intervals. The interval materials window lets you choose up
to 12 intervals from a list that includes diatonic and chromatic
intervals up to the augmented 13th. You can also specify whether the
intervals are to be presented melodically, harmonicall, ascending, or
descending. If you chose both alternatives for each option, the program
will randomly choose between the selected choices.
The interval materials window also has a Pitch Set button of
its own. If you specify a pitch set in an intervals activity the
chosen intervals will be built only the notes of the pitch set. Otherwise
they will be built on the scale notes of the current major or minor key.
As with other generated materials; Practica Musica will
randomly choose from the selected possibilities. If the list of
possibilities is long it is possible that some may not appear in a short exercise.
The order and the transposition will vary each time the student
attempts the activity.
Scales. The scale materials window lets you choose any or
all of the traditional scales, ascending or descending or both. The
scales window also includes a key signatures window; if you specify
key signatures, the activity will choose randomly from the key
signatures in the list (key signatures can also be specified in the
Clef/Key/Meter window).
Single chords. Choose up to 12 chord types (remember
these can vary with each sublevel). You can use the Chord Type button
to pick a known chord type, or modify a known type using the
Voice/Edit button, or start from scratch with the Customized Chord
chord type. You can use the supplied name for the chord, or name it
anything you like.
The Voice/Edit button allows you to describe any triadic
chord as far as the 13th. You can specify inversion, and you can specify the
included tones and the quality of each. You can also specify the
voicing as open, close, or both. The Hear buttons allow you to hear the
chord you are describing, either harmonically or arpeggiated.
Chord Progressions. Choose the chord pairs that are to
be included in the generated progressions, and specify how long
the progression is to be. If you don't see the changes you want in the
list, save an initial list, and then use the Choose/Edit chord list button
to modify the chord list.
The Chord List Editor assumes that chords are going to
be written out fully on the staff. The quickest and easiest way to
make custom chords is to alter existing ones. You can easily change
the pitches of existing notes by dragging them with the arrow tool,
and/or by selecting notes and choosing an accidental. If you need to
add additional notes to a chord, just click the note tool in the staff
where you want the new notes to go.
The number of notes in a chord should not exceed six, and
is normally four.
To alter the name of a chord in the list, first click on
the "handle" of the chord line in order to enter the chord layer. The
chord line's handle is the little circle to the left of the music, aligned
vertically with the chord symbols. When in the chord layer you can
select the chord name boxes and alter the text they contain. To do so, select
a chord box and click the "Info for selected item" box to see the
chord's information box appear. Don't specify notes in the chord
box, since they are best provided in the staff for exercises of this type, but fill
in the name as you would like it to appear.
To enter a new chord name box where is none, click the
Chord box tool above the screen piano, type the name as desired, and
then click in the music where you want that chord name to appear.
In most exercises of this type you'll use Roman numerals for
the chord name, but anything is possible.
Click the Store in Activity button to store the altered chord
list within the activity file.
Melody. Many different types of activities use melodies as
their raw material: dictation, sight-reading, and transposition are
examples. If you are using generated rather than library melodies your
activity will have the advantage of always being fresh, and you have
considerable control over the nature of the melody generated.
Pitch set. Choose any traditional scale, a fixed or
transposable arbitrary pitch set, or a one-note set for rhythm-only
exercises. You can chose to "Avoid Repeated Pitches," or to
"Exhaust all pitches in set before repeating a pitch." The latter
choice produces a serial effect.
Use Wrong key. If this is checked, PM will generated
the melody in a key that is not the one displayed, producing accidentals.
Rhythm. Pick a set of note values from which
the rhythm will be formed at random. You can choose also whether
to include rests, ties, triplets.
Movement. Conjunct, disjunct, etc. If you are using
the chromatic pitch set, you should increase the disjunctness setting
to avoid excessively conjunct melody.
Harmonic
implications. A melody that attempts to imply harmony will sound more sensible than one that does not,
but will have more repetition. Implying harmony makes no sense if
you're trying for an atonal melody, of course.
Example length. This is measured in beats.
Wrong-pitch settings. You can choose to have PM
randomly misnotate a certain number of pitches in each example
melody, as in our Pitch Errors activity. It's best to make these displace by 1
or 2 scale steps.
Choose Intervals... If you are making a
transposition exercise, you can use this button to add a set of specified intervals
for the transposition.
Multiple choice
For multiple-choice activities you can have up to 12
boxes available, and each can contain whatever text you desire that will
fit. After deciding on the text for each box, use the Assign Boxes
button to assign each of the possible "answers" to a box.
In Assign Boxes you'll see on the left a column of
example names that PM has drawn from your materials choices. On the right
of each is a popup menu with your box titles; pick the box that you
want to correspond to that example. Being able to correlate these
arbitrarily would allow you, for example, to assign various intervals to either
of two boxes labeled "diatonic" and "chromatic."
Be sure to carefully assign boxes for each possibility! It's
easy to set up an activity in which there is no right answer, or in which
the right answer is connected to the wrong box.
Clef/Key/Meter
Choose sets of clefs, sets of keys, sets of meter signatures.
If you choose more than one in any category, the program will choose
at random from the set when forming each problem.
An alternative is to let the student choose the clef, key, or
meter, by providing those tools (Keyboard Controls).
The minor/major mode buttons are for use in those cases
where you haven't need to pick particular scales in the melody
materials dialog, but want to control the mode of the key signatures you
have chosen.
You can create a custom meter set if you want to use
meter signatures not provided in the standard choices.
Messages
Each level and sublevel can have a different set of
messages that appear under different circumstances. Usually we just provide
one set for the whole activity, which of course is placed in level 1,
sublevel 1. However, if you want to do the work you can put
different messages in every sublevel of every level.
You can enter up to 24 messages in each set, and each can
have up to 4 variants, just for variety. If a message has variants,
Practica Musica will choose at random among them.
Messages can appear above the staff, in the keyboard
message window (one line only), or on either side of a short staff.
Messages appear when the given set of circumstances is
satisfied. This can be a tricky area: you'll want to set up
unambiguous circumstances, so that different messages don't end up being
chosen for the same situation (only the first will actually appear in that case).
Variables in messages
You can include variables such as the value of the
student's current score "[TotalPointsEarned]" by typing the variable name
in brackets within your message. Practica Musica will replace the
bracketed variable with a text version of the variable's value. For this
to work, you must type the variable name exactly as it is listed in
the variable list in the Edit Message window, including the correct
capitalization. An example: "Your score is [PointsEarnedForAnswer]
of [PointsPossibleForAnswer]."
Edit tools
Pick the editing tools, if any, required for the chosen
level/sublevel of your activity.
Range
Range is defined in terms of ledger lines, so the absolute
pitch range depends on the choice of clef. Since version 4.5 the
Range window also contains a choice for
tessitura the maximum distance between the lowest and highest notes in the example. Tessitura here
is measured in half steps; 7 would correspond to a perfect fifth.
Prerequisite
If desired, you can specify that the chosen level will not
run unless the student has previously passed a certain level of a
given activity. That could mean an earlier level of the same activity, or
any level of a completely different one. This allows you to set up an
ordered curriculum of activities that each are a requirement for the
next. It is not the way we have traditionally organized Practica
Musica activities, but it has some advantages in certain situations,
particularly for beginning students who might be tempted to skip to a more
advanced level without adequate preparation. There can also be a
certain satisfaction in completing a series of this type.
Subactivity
Before the introduction of this feature it was necessary for
a single activity to stick with one topic and mode of behavior. Now
you can change behaviors at given moments at changes of level or
even at changes of sublevel. This allows the creation of activities that
we haven't yet fully imagined at Ars Nova. For example, you could
begin with the reading of pitches on a staff, and if the student
acquired enough points you could switch to working on rhythm. Or you
could give each menu-selected level a different topic. When used with
library examples, the sublevel changes with each example (up to six
per level), so that you could also choose to define a different type
of behavior to accompany each example. Perhaps the same
example could first be presented as a reading problem, then as a rhythm
problem, then as a transposition problem.
Before you can specify a subactivity, you must first create
the subactivity file. You do that in the usual manner, either by using
the "Create New Activity" command or by finding an activity similar
to what you want and using the "Save As" command to give it a new
file name and new internal number. Then open the primary activity,
and choose the level/sublevel at which you want the subactivity to
take over. Use the "Subactivity" button to choose the subactivity file,
and its contents will be folded into the main activity.
The main activity no longer needs the subactivity file once
it has been adopted, because the subactivity becomes part of the
main file. But you'll probably want to keep your original subactivity
files somewhere in case you need to change them in the future. To
replace a subactivity with a newer one, just delete the Subactivity
by unchecking its "done" box, as you would for any other activity
editor choices, and then choose the subactivity again.
When the main activity reaches the specified
level/sublevel combination, it will adopt the features of the specified
subactivity, everything except for the subactivty menu, its "total points
required" setting, and of course its own subactivity or prerequisite
settings. Student progress reports will refer only to the main activity: it
will continue to have just one entry in the progress report. As with
other choices that apply to a level or sublevel, the subactivity will
then remain in effect either until the end of the activity or until it is
replaced by a new one.
Making activities available to your students
With Practica Musica 5 and WebStudents you can now post your customized activities to the class WebStudent account,
and your students anywhere in the world can run them directly. All the students need is
to use the activity menu's command, "Choose a class activity at WebStudents," which will display a list of the activities
the instructor has placed at WebStudents. Students can Open the one they want, and it will run. There is no need for
anyone to download a file, locate it, move it, etc., which makes this by far the most convenient way to distribute special materials.
WebStudents access is included in the cost of the Student Editions and is also available to site license holders at a small
yearly access fee.
Activity files (and music files and student files) can also be placed on portable memory devices such as USB Memory sticks.
Since Macintosh computers can read devices formated for PCs and the activity, music, or student files are identical on both platforms,
you could use a PC-formated memory device to move files between PCs and Macs.
Internet transfer of Activity Files
If you need to email an activity to someone you may find it necessary to
use a program such as Stuffit or one of the ZIP utilities to encode an activity before sending it via
the Internet or posting it at a web site. Without that step, browser or
server software might alter the data, treating it as a text file (this is less an issue than it used to be;
most often the file will transmit fine without encoding or stuffing). Stuffit Expander is
available free from Aladdin Systems for both the Mac and
Windows platforms, and we recommend it (at last word there was a charge
for DropStuff, which you would need to encode the file in the first
place).
The same holds true for Student Files and for music files
created by Practica Musica. The same files can be read by
either Macintosh or Windows versions of Practica Musica if they have
been transferred on the Internet using a suitable encoding method.
Email programs such as Outlook Express can generally transfer one of
these files as an attachment without any need to encode it, especially
if you are emailing to another person with the same email program.
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