Q. How would you ensure correct stemming when entering an SATB arrangement into Overture?
A. Use a different voice for each part (SATB) and manually change the direction of the stems.
Q. True or False: You cannot listen to music entered into Overture.
A. False. However, the music may sound very mechanical due to the way Overture quantizes the rhythms.
Q. How do you get a courtesy accidental in Overture?
A. With the desired accidental selected from the notes palette, hold down the option key and click directly on the notehead.
Q. What are three ways to change the pitch of an individual note in Overture?
A. (1) Click and drag the notehead with the mouse; (2) Select the notehead and use the up and down arrow keys; (3) Select the note and use the Transpose command from the Notes menu.
Q. Why is "CD-quality" sound better than 8-bit, 22.05 kHz sound?
A: Because CD-quality sound has a higher bit depth and sampling rate
(44.1 kHz, 16-bit), resulting in a more faithful reproduction of the original waveform.
Q: What are bit depth and sampling rate?
A: Bit depth refers to the number of available values on an amplitude scale. (That is, the number of values available to the ADC when it quantizes its measurements.) The more values, the better (higher fidelity) the sound. Sampling rate denotes how often measurements of amplitude are taken by the ADC. The higher the sampling rate, the better the fidelity.
Q: True or False: In Audioshop it is not possible to alter the playback speed while holding the pitch constant.
A: True. (Unfortunately!)
Q: In Assignment 2, we recorded your speaking voice; later, you were able to see the waveform of your voice. Describe how a "transducer" and a "converter" aided in this process.
A: The microphone you spoke into functioned as a transducer, converting pressure fluctuations into electrical energy. The ADC (analog to digital converter) then translated the electrical energy into binary numbers, which were displayed by Audioshop as a waveform.
Q: What's the difference between stereo and mono sound?
A: In stereo sound, there are two channels (left and right), whereas there is only a single channel in mono sound.
Q: What is the difference between stereo and dual mono sound?
A: True stereo has different information in the two channels, simulating the way our two ears perceive slightly different data due to their physical placement on the head. Dual mono is simply a duplication of a mono sound in both the left and right channels. Dual mono sound often lacks the "depth" of stereo sound.
Q: What is a waveform?
A: A waveform is a graph of amplitude vs. time.
Q. If you are setting your patches in Musicshop, how would you make sure
that they are set correctly?
A. Have the strip chart open.
Q. If you had a 5-track piece in Musicshop, how could you listen just to the second
and third tracks?
A. Use the mixer to solo those tracks. (Or mute the first, fourth, and fifth tracks.)
Q. The three ways to enter MIDI notes in Musicshop are __, __, and __.
A. Real time, step entry, mouse entry.
Q. True or False: Controllers (e.g. volume) are strictly MIDI data where
as the notes are digital audio data.
A. False. No MIDI events contain digital audio data.
Q. The most common message, Note-On, sends the following information:
__, __, and __.
A. Channel number, note number, velocity.
Frustrated? Need help? Look at the materials on reserve, software help pages, post a question on TechChat, or contact your T.A. ( Nicole Baugh, Adam Cross, or Geoff Mazeroff).