Re: Choice of pitch input mode

[Ralph Palmer]

On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 7:58 AM, Matt Hood <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi all,

I’ve got a non-technical question regarding mode of pitch input. What does everyone prefer? Relative, absolute, or a mix of both?

I always use relative.

 

I’ve always stuck to relative, but I feel like I’ve hit a brick wall as far as fluency goes. I’m still quite slow at it, and I spend half of my time trying to work out whether I need to change octave or not - usually getting it wrong, and watching half of a page disappear into ledger lines.

Fluency should come with use. I still make mistakes, but mine often come from copy and paste. That being said, it's usually not too hard to figure out where the mistake occurred.

 

Add in temporary polyphonic passages, chords, etc, and it all just becomes an exercise in trial and error. Any tips for keeping control?

Only tip : on chords, look first at the first note in each chord; those are the notes that determine the octave. The following notes within the chord are related *only* to the preceding note within that chord. So, I make sure the first note of a chord is correctly related to the preceding note (the last one before the chord) or the *first* note of the preceding chord.

Happy and rewarding engraving to you,

Ralph

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Ralph Palmer
Brattleboro, VT
USA
address@hidden