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## Choosing an activity

When Counterpointer launches you'll see a series of columns offering various exercises or "activities." To launch one of these, click on its item and choose Launch.

### Species Exercises

When doing one of the species exercises the style rules will all be preset according to the species being studied. This doesn't stop you from doing species exercises with modified style rules, though - you can always set up a free counterpoint window to use whatever style you prefer. You can even customize the default species activity to use modified rules. The difference is that if you are doing this for a class, your "score" on the exercise will reflect your understanding of the rules built into the exercises. Your scores for a customized activity will carry a "customized" label.

Each species offers activities that have been set up in advance for 2, 3, or 4 parts, using your choice of a cantus invented by Counterpointer or one of those supplied in Fux's well-known guide, Gradus ad Parnassum.

### Composer styles

The activities in this section are pre-configured for the vocal styles of Palestrina or Bach. The most flexible of these are the Palestrina activities in 2, 3, or 4 parts, in which the program generates a cantus accordinging to your choice of complexity and then then you try to imitate that ideall 16th-century manner. You can also, if you prefer, enter an actual Palestrina cantus, and unlike in the species exercises you can even alter the cantus provided.

The Bach exercises are more limited since they use real basses and harmonies excerpted from Bach chorale harmonizations, and each is only a few measures long. One of these is Realizing Roman Numerals, probably the most familiar exercise to music students, and the other is Realizing Figured Bass - very similar except that instead of Roman numerals you are given a bass line with figures.

### Free Counterpoint

In Free Counterpoint you can set the rules according to your own preferences, without any need to customize one of the other activities. These are set up for 2, 3, or 4 parts for you convenience, but if you want to try additional parts you can add more staves by clicking the info button for any staff. There are options there to add another staff or remove this one, etc. And you can of course use any clefs you like.

The Free Counterpoint activities have a button that lets you choose the style rules, and another that lets you choose the nature of a generated cantus if you are not going to provide your own.

To make your own variation on, say, 5th species, you could choose the 5th Species style set as a starting point and then change particular rules as you like.

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