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Horizontal Zoom

Horizontal Zoom

Horizontal Zoom

Horizontal Zoom

Before you get started with the lyric text, set the horizontal zoom to 2x. Pressing the Horizontal Zoom button, you’ll see the menu shown in Fig. 3.14. Selecting the 2x item means the magnification will be twice the normal value.

After you zoom, scroll the Notes Area so that it displays the track notes and lyrics starting at measure 5. This is done using the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the window.

Fig 3.14

Set the horizontal magnification to 2x.

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Typing the Lyrics

Typing the LyricsTyping the Lyrics

Typing the Lyrics

Typing the Lyrics

As you move your mouse cursor around in the Control Data Area, notice the cursor changes from the arrow to an I-beam as you pass over a text string. If you click your mouse button while the cursor is an I-beam, you will enter the edit mode for the specified lyric text.

Once you’re editing the lyric text, the text edit behavior is the same as anywhere else in VocalWriter (see edit description under Track Name, page 2-13). A few highlights are:

• An active edit field has a blue background.

• Selected text characters are in white while unselected characters are drawn in black.

In addition, the lyric text edit mode has a special key command to make lyric editing easier and faster. Pressing the Tab key or Space Bar will automatically advance the text edit to the next note. This way when you’re entering strings of lyric text, you don’t have to remove you hand from your keyboard until you’re done.

When you’re done editing, simply click your mouse with the cursor positioned in a neutral (no control) area. As a matter of fact, any action that’s not an edit function will pop you out of lyric text editing. Exiting lyric editing will always cause the changes to be accepted. If you give it some bogus data, VocalWriter will try to correct it. Often you’ll get the default “Doo” inserted if VocalWriter encountered an error it can’t correct.

So to start editing your lyrics, position your cursor over the first Doo in measure 5 and click your mouse. The background for this text will turn light blue in color with white lettering (word selected) for the text.

Fig 3.15

Start lyrics editing on the first note.

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Now, type the lyrics for the first phrase of this song. Remember you can press the Space Bar to automatically advance your edit to the next note.

Lyric Note Why F2 do F2 the F2 emp- F2 ty E2 nights D2 seem E2 so F2 long A#1 I G1 know A#1 she’s F2 gone E2

Make sure to include the “-“ in the first syllable for “emp-ty”. This tells VocalWriter the next syllable on the next note is part of the current word. When you play this phrase, don’t worry about the awkward sounding “the” on the third note (should sound like “thee”). VocalWriter will automatically correct this later. Now finish the lyrics for this song (there still will be 5 Doo’s remaining at the end).

Lyric Note Why F2 did F2 I G2 let A2 her D2 go D2

And here again, note the formal sounding “did I” and “let her”. On a word level, these are pronounced correctly. However in real speech, we slur these words

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together by flapping our tongue against our mouth. You can try this yourself: say “Did, I” as two isolated words with a silence between them. Next say them together (“did I”) without any pause or silence, but try to pronounce them like you did with the pause in between. Notice that it’s very difficult to say the two words without adding the slurred flap. That’s why we insert the flap, otherwise it’s too difficult to say.

You can have VocalWriter scan your lyrics and look for mispronunciations like these and others. When it finds them, it can automatically correct the pronuncia- tions for you.

To do this, you first have to specify which notes VocalWriter should scan. You could go back to the Tracks window and select the entire Vocals track. Or you could select the range of notes directly in the Notes window. Since you haven’t made any note selections in the Notes window yet, as an exercise, you’ll make your selection here.

Block selections are made by drawing a rectangular selection “marquee” around the notes you wish to select. Try a few block selections by pointing anywhere inside the Notes Area and click-dragging your mouse. When you select the notes, they’ll be colored red. Notice the window automatically scrolls if you move the selection marquee past any Notes Area border. Now select all the notes from measure 5 through measure 10 (Fig. 3.16).

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In the Selection menu, select the Adjust Phonemes item. At the dialog, keep all the options at their default values and press the Adjust button. Now, when playing the lyrics, notice these problems are cleaned up.

Fig 3.17

Making automatic pronunciation adjustments.

Since you still have some leftover Doo’s at the end, you should finish the song with some of your own lyrics. Remember, only one syllable per note. A syllable must have a vowel in it. Fig. 3.18 shows some examples of using the syllable split (“-“) and vowel repeat (“=”) characters.

hello

ov- er hel- lo hel- =- lo love- =- =

Fig 3.18 (a) Syllables from the same word are split with “-”.

(b) To sing a two syllable word on a single note, break the note apart. (c) Use “=” to repeat a vowel over several notes.

(d) Three note, single syllable word.

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Lyric Edit Summary

• Open Notes window by double-clicking in Track Data Area. • Click I-beam cursor over lyric text in Control Data Area to start

edit.

• Press Tab or Space Bar to automatically advance to next note lyric.

• Split syllables in word with “-“ character. • Carry syllable to next note with “=” character.

Adding a Karaoke Track

Adding a Karaoke TrackAdding a Karaoke Track

Adding a Karaoke Track

Adding a Karaoke Track

So far you’ve added a new drum track and a new vocals track to this song. You still have one more track to add: the Karaoke track. A Karaoke track is a special VocalWriter track type, which instead of playing music, displays synchronized text in a window. This track is typically used to display the vocal lyrics as it’s sung. The procedure for making a Karaoke track is fairly simple. You’ll copy the entire Vocals track, paste it into the Karaoke track, and finally you’ll format the Karaoke display with a minor text edit.

Your Karaoke track will be the next one available, track 9. First, make the track type for track 9 into Karaoke by selecting the Make Kara item from the Track Type menu. At this time, you should also name this track Karaoke.

Next, select all of track 8 and copy it into the clipboard. Now normally, if you were to paste this clipboard into track 9, the lyrics would be lost since track 9 is a different track type than the data in the clipboard. However, you can tell Vocal- Writer to transfer the lyrics as Karaoke text if you hold the Option key down while pasting the clipboard.

Fig 3.19

Make track 9 into type Karaoke.

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So here’s what you do, select track 9 by pressing in the Track Select button. Then hold down the Option key while selecting the Paste item from the Edit menu. This will not only copy the notes, but will also copy the lyric text. If you open a Notes window for track 9, you will see your lyric text exactly as in the Vocals track. Open the Karaoke window by selection the Karaoke item from the Windows menu. Notice that all the lyrics are display on a single line. This is because VocalWriter doesn’t know how you want to break the lyrics up. You insert the “/” character wherever you want to start a new line.

Open a Notes window for track 9 and edit the Karaoke text so it reads as follows: /Why do the empty nights

/seem so long? /I know she’s gone. /Why did I let her go? /Doo Doo

/Doo Doo Doo.

The “/” character is to designate the start of each line in the Karaoke window. The character itself is not displayed. However notice that you did enter some punctua- tion characters, these will be displayed. Now your Karaoke window should look like Fig. 3.21.

Fig 3.20

Lyrics formatted for Karaoke display on track 9.

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When you play the song, the Karaoke display will highlight each line as the synthesizer sings it. Your version of this song should now be the same as the demo song “Empty Nights.trk”. Listen to them both to see if you can hear any differences. If you hear something different, find out what it is and change your version.

Karaoke Summary

• Copy entire Vocal track as Karaoke track.

• Hold down Option key to transfer vocal lyrics as Karaoke text. • Insert “/” character at line start.

• Punctuation will be displayed.

Fig 3.21

Formatted Karaoke display.

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So far in this tutorial, the main thing you’ve done with vocals is enter the lyric text. This is just scratching the surface when you consider the rich set of vocal controls available in VocalWriter. This next section will show a few things you can do with vocals. The purpose is to illustrate various VocalWriter procedures and tech- niques, so these examples are not necessarily musical. In fact, your song will probably sound much worst when you’re done!

Changing the Vocal Instrument

Changing the Vocal InstrumentChanging the Vocal Instrument

Changing the Vocal Instrument

Changing the Vocal Instrument

The first thing you can do is experiment with different singing voices for the vocals. Open a Notes window for the Vocals (track 8) and click on the Control Select button. From the menu select Instrument item.