Editors

General Project Editor

The General Project Editor is the most versatile editor for managing composition projects. It provides a ‘component pane’ for adding, editing, arranging, and deleting components and a ‘data pane’ for adding, editing, and deleting component event data. Both component and data panes have popup menus for opening component property and instrument editors.

Component Pane

The Component Pane displays all the components in the composition project and can be used to rearrange the order of the components or edit their properties.

You can reposition a component in the list by left clicking and dragging the component to a new position. Algorithms can be dragged from the algorithm palette and dropped into the component pane to add them to a composition project.

Most components have a set of user specifiable parameters. Right-click in the component pane to open a popup menu.

Edit the name of a component by first selecting it (click on the component name) and then hold down the ‘alt’ or ‘ctrl’ key and clicking on the name again and the name will became ‘text box’ for changing the name.

Instrument Panel

The instrument panel contains the Instrument and/or Composition Mode buttons. Left clicking on the panel button will toggle the components through its potential compositional modes and is used to turn on/off individual components for composition.

Components with instruments will also display a ‘mute’, ‘solo’, and ‘record’ toggle button on the Instrument button; right clicking on the panel will open the Instrument editor.

Data Pane

Most components in ArtSong have associated data’; data that represents note events, chords, textures, or many other types of composition-time control information such as ‘base’ note durations, key signatures, meter, alternative scales, thematic sequences, etc.

The Data Pane displays and allows editing of individual component data; such as the individual chords of a chord progression or displays other data or displays editor-related data.

Single Note Editor

The Single Note Editor is used to directly enter and edit individual track note-data, which cannot be accomplished in the General Project Editor. Several algorithmic ‘pens’ and ‘brushes’ are also provided.

Like the General Project Editor the Note Editor provides a component pane for adding, editing, and deleting components. and a data pane. This latter however is only used for adding, editing, and deleting note data.

A summary of the composition tools follows:

• Draw – Use the Draw tool to add notes to the focused track.
• Line – The Line tool uses the composition engine to compose a series of notes with pitches that follow the line.
• Brush – The brush tool uses the composition engine to compose a series of notes; the position and brush size determine the local pitch range used by the pitch algorithm.
• Size - Right click to select a brush size from the menu. The brush size determines the local pitch range when using the composition brush.
• Erase – Use this tool to erase notes.
• Select – Selects a range of notes from the selected tracks.
• Zoom – Increases or Decreases the drawn size of note events.
• Click and drag in the Measures Bar at the top of the Data Pane to set the composition/editing times.