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Instructional Movies
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Practica Musica 7 Overview |
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Practica Musica is a complete music theory and ear training tutor. It contains over 150 learning activities for both beginning and advanced students, plus a digital multimedia textbook, Exploring Theory. You can sample activities in any order you like, or follow the chapters of the book and try the activities suggested there. You'll find real-time rhythm tapping and pitch reading, exercises in all the harmonic and scale knowledge needed in a music fundamentals course, and lots of help from the program in commenting on your work. Progress reports can be printed out or viewed online by a teacher. The video shows how to choose and launch an activity in Practica Musica 7. |
Counterpointer 3 Overview |
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Counterpointer is software for the study of traditional counterpoint. It gives you tools to write music, whether "free" or in one of the traditional 5 species used for study, then analyzes your work and comments on any departures from the specified style. You can keep revising your composition until it gets approval. So far as we know, Counterpointer is the only software that can analyze all five species of counterpoint. Music can be printed and heard, progress reports can be printed out or viewed online by a teacher. The video shows how to launch a species exercise in Counterpointer 3. |
Songworks 4 Overview |
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Songworks is a notation tool particularly adapted to songs and choral or band arrangements. Among its unique features are audible chord symbols that play according to your choice of accompaniment pattern and endless tune ideas invented by the program to stimulate your imagination. Songworks includes a selection of transform tools (transposition real or tonal, inversion, retrograde, etc.), supports shape notes, stick notation, and liturgical (stemless) notation in addition to standard music notation, and can import ABCMusic, MIDI Files (if a consistent tempo) and MusicXML files. It saves in the SW4 format recognized by Practica Musica and Counterpointer and can also export MIDI files and MusicXML. The video demonstrates the use of a typical opening screen in Songworks 4. |
Editing music in Practica Musica, Counterpointer, or Songworks |
The Active Staff |
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Describes the "active staff," how to tell which staff is active, and how to change the active staff. |
Tie or untie notes |
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Selected notes can be tied by clicking the tie button. |
Adjusting ties |
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Ties can be flipped up or down by dragging. |
Slur or unslur notes |
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Selected notes can be slurred by clicking the slur button. |
Adjusting slurs |
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Hold down Shift to move the controls on a selected slur. |
Changing note pitches |
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Change the pitch of existing staff notes by dragging or using the up/down arrows. |
Entering text |
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How to enter a text item such as a title or composer or performance suggestion, etc. |
Entering lyric text |
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How to enter lyric text that aligns automatically with notes. |
:: More Practica Musica 7 videos can be found at
Ars Nova's YouTube channel.
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