vorige Seite                      nächste Seite  

---

Virtual Singer Rules for writing sung staves

Several sung staves can be included within a single document, each staff being sung by a given performer.
Thus, if you write a piece for bass, tenor and soprano, you will have to write three different staves.
Virtual Singer enables to define finely the voice of each performer.

If several notes in a staff are included in a chord, several performers with the same voice sing different notes at the same time. This feature can be used for rendering effects of choir.

In Japanese language you ought to enter the lyrics using the Romaji transcription.

Sung Staves

A sung staff is characterized by its melody. Each syllable is linked to one or several notes. Some parameters of the note are used to change the way the syllable is sung.

Note :  Virtual Singer can also sing even when no lyrics are written under a staff : in case of a Gospel staff (FaSoLa), Gregorian Staff, and when lyrics under a staff are left empty. These two modes enable you to make a staff be sung without having to enter any lyrics.

• Note pitch gives the frequency of the syllable.
• Note duration gives the syllable duration.

To extend a syllable, some rules of singing technique are applied in order to extend the most stretchable phoneme of the syllable.
When splitting the words, do not forget a syllable is stretchable if it contains at least one vowel.
• Note velocity has an effect upon the power of the sung syllable.
• Effects are interpreted too, especially bend effects. They will change the syllable frequency while it is sung.

When a syllable is extended upon several notes with different pitches, frequency of the sung syllable will move in order to follow this melody.
Volume effects are also interpreted. They enable to obtain smooth beginning or ending on a note.

• words are parted from each other with spaces
• syllables are parted with hyphens

punctuation (, ; . : ? !) must be entered
• lower case characters at the beginning of each verse and accented characters (especially in French) have to be typed. A correct spelling is needed to obtain a good pronunciation.

Note :  Within a single document, you can have several languages (for example, a women singing in English and a man in French). Depending on the language, Virtual Singer analyzes the lyrics and determines the phonemes to be sung. In the special case of French, liaisons are computed (sounding of the final consonant before initial vowel sound). For example, "les oiseaux" will generate "l ey Z w ah z ow" (the birds)

For example, if the word "D'Ar-ta-gnan" is pronunced "Dar-tay-gnan", the following change can be made : "D'Ar-ta[tah]-gnan[nyan]".

This method for amending the resulting phonetics is generally enough.

However, it is possible to define even more finely the pronunciation of a given syllable, by typing the SAMPA notation between brackets under the form [#xxxx]
(Do not forget the # character after the opening bracket)

For more information about the SAMPA notation, please consult the related chapter.

Above this, some lyrics mix several languages. To change language inside a single staff, a set of specific commands is available :

Insert :

[!frnord] to switch in North French
[!frsud] to switch in  Français du Sud
[!gb] to switch in U.K. English
[!us] to switch is U.S. English
[!latin] to switch in Latin
[!espa] to switch in Spanish
[!ita] to switch in Italian
[!fin] to switch in Finnish
[!jap] to switch in Japanese
[!de] to switch in German
[!oc] to switch in Occitan

in your lyrics to change language.

For example, if you read :
"D'Ar-ta-gnan on his horse."

Virtual Singer will pronounce something like "D ar / t ay / g n a n / o n  / h ee z / h o r s".

You can amend it by writing :

"[!frnord]D'Ar-ta-gnan [!gb]on his horse."
 

Spoken staves

A spoken staff is a staff with "Text" type. It include "Lyrics" but no musical symbol. In this case, text will be spoken and not sung.

---

  vorige Seite                      nächste Seite