These control the display of a vertical (time) scale, measured in groups of bars, bars and beats, and the snapping of the sounds to precise time intervals. A choice of time scales is provided. Selecting Time Scale > Others... lets you access a dialog that lets you edit the existing scales or add your own scales. Do not forget to press "return" after each parameter change to validate your change. Press "Apply" to see the effect of your change. Pressing the "+" button in the bottom left corner of the dialog creates a new scale that you can edit and rename. Pressing the "-" button removes the current scale.
Hint: you can set up divisions of a non-musical nature (specifically, 24,
29.97 or 30 frames/second) to use of HighC in film scoring:
- define a time scale where the bpm is (your frame rate)*60. e.g.
24*60=1440bpm for scoring in 24 frames per sec.
- beats/per bar: (your frame rate, provided it's an integer, or the closest
integer to the framerate). e.g. 24.
- bars grouped by: 10*your frame rate if you want to see
one bar every 10 seconds
(that's your choice).
Each beat on the score corresponds to a single frame. Each bar corresponds to 1
second. Using snap to time helps you calibrate your piece precisely on a film
score.
Note that the current time scale and the current zoom level affect the way the "snap to time" function works: The snap to time function increases it resolution to 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16 of a beat as you zoom in. Sometimes, you may wish to subdivide a beat in 1/3, 1/5 or other prime subdivisions (for instance, to enter triolets). While this is not possible yet, there is a workaround. For instance, to subdivide in 3rds of a bit: define a scale whose bpm is 3 times of the natural bpm of your piece. The bar should contain 3 times the number of beats of your original scale. By switching between the 2 scales, you will be able to enter easily notes whose duration is measured as even portions of a bit or 1/3 portions of a beat.
Hint: changing the tempo of a piece: see this page: http://highc.org/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18&page=1#Item_1
They control the display of a horizontal (pitch) scale, measured as notes or Hz, and the snapping of sounds to precise heights. A choice of pitch scales is provided. Selecting Pitch Scale > Others... lets you access a dialog that lets you edit the existing scales or add your own. Do not forget to press "return" after each parameter change to validate it. Press "Apply" to see the effect of your change. After having edited the definition area, you may want to edit the "reference" value once to force the updating of the scale's values. Pressing the "+" button in the bottom left corner of the dialog creates a new scale that you can edit and rename. Pressing the "-" button removes the current scale.
To define your own values for a scale, enter a list of scale values in the form: "label: ratio, label: ratio..." (the scale values are separated by a comma (,), space and return characters are irrelevant). Each label is the label for this value that will be displayed at the left of the view. Using $f for a label shows the current frequency value. The ratio values are numeric values, usually between 1 and 2, that define the intervals of the steps of your scale. Those should be ordered in ascending order: 1, 4/3,1/2... and so forth. You can enter simple numeric expressions such as 1, or sqrt(2), pow(2,1/2)... Those will be interpreted as real numbers to define the steps of the scale. Finally, the reference value defines the central value of the scale, on which other steps are defined. If you want a non-octave based scale, you can set this reference to 0, and enter all the steps of your scale (from the lowest to the highest) in the definition's area. You may want to create your definition in a text editor and simply copy/paste the definition in this area.
Note: Scales are stored in the piece. If you want to reuse the same scale in several pieces, you should create a library to this effect, in which you'll store all the scales you want to reuse. Then you only need to import that library in your pieces.