Using Melody Assistant For Rehearsing Choral Music

Click on the following headings to go directly to that section

1. Finding Choral Midi Files
2. Playing a piece
3. To play a number of bars repeatedly
4. To start playing from a specific bar
5. To vary the playing speed
6. To emphasise a voice
7. To show the notes actually playing
8. To listen to a particular note
9. Saving your changes
10. Changing the synthesiser voice for a stave
11. Metronome

1. Finding Choral Midi Files

Choral music files can be found on the internet using www.google.com and searching for the words "choral midi" (without the double quotes). This points to a large number of sites, so add the composer’s surname to the search words to narrow it down. The most comprehensive sites are Cyberbass, The Silvis Woodshed and The Choral Public Domain Library. These give you an index to all the composers’ works available at that site. These tend to contain only the choral sections, often the accompaniment is only included for bars when there is no choral singing (for copyright reasons).

On Windows :

using Internet Explorer right click on the work you want. This displays a menu, select “Save target as” or "Save link as" then select the folder to store it in –

• If the file name ends “.mid” then choose the folder called My music in My Documents so that you can find it easily later. The file will then be copied to your computer
• If the file name ends “.zip” it is a compressed file so choose to save it on the desktop. This allows you to "unzip" the file so you can use it. When the file is downloaded it will be shown as an icon on your desktop. In Windows 98 or XP double click on the icon; this will run your unzip program. In Vista right click on the desktop icon. Click on Extract and specify the unzip location as the folder called My music in My Documents. Once the files have been extracted the zip file is no longer required, so click on the zip file icon and drag it to the Recycle Bin.
  (If you are running Windows  earlier than XP and you don’t already have an unzip program you will need a freeware program such as Ultimate Zip available from http://www.ultimatezip.com/download.htm, or a shareware program such as Winzip or Zipmagic. Vista and XP users do not need to install an unzip program).

On Macintosh:

• Just download the file by a long click on the link. The file is available on the "download folder" you defined in your browser's setup.
• If the file doesn't have the .mid extension but for example the .zip, .hqx,.sit extension, drag it on the StuffIt Icon to decode it.

2. Playing a piece

• open the piece of music with Ctrl+O (command + O on Macintosh), select the music folder, set the “Files of type” to Midi and it will then display all the midi pieces in the folder. Click on the piece required and press OK. You can also use  "File>Import>Midi"
• press the space bar to start from the beginning or to stop the playback
• click on the pause button  instead of the space bar if you want to resume playing later from that point. Click on the pause button again to resume

3. To play a number of bars repeatedly

To repeat just a few bars click on the bar number above the staves you want to start from and drag the cursor to the last bar number you want (this highlights the selected bars), click on the “play only the selected bars” button  and then press the space bar to start/stop the playback

4. To start playing from a specific bar

• if the bar you want to start from is not displayed drag the slider button with the bar number in at the bottom of the screen until the bar is displayed
• right click on the bar heading for the bar you want to start from  at the top of the window, click on “Set and reset play mark” and then press the space bar to start playing from that point. You will need to turn the play mark off when you want to start right from bar 1 again

5. To vary the playing speed

• click on Score, click on General tempo ­ this will display the current tempo as the number of quarter notes per minute. Make a note of the existing tempo before you change it so that you can change it back later
• change the number by either typing in a new number, or by sliding the blue slider button left or right

6. To emphasise a voice

• if the “vol/pan” panel is not displayed then click on Windows, Mixer and then either Small mixer or Complete mixer (the small mixer takes up less space on the screen, the large one is easier to use if you are not used to the using the mouse). If the panel covers the line you are following it can be dragged to a different part of the screen by clicking on the blue bar at the left of its panel
• the Vol knobs  can be turned by using the mouse to drag them round to increase or decrease the volume for each stave. Hence you can increase the volume of your own voice register to maximum and reduce the others to less than half
• the Pan knobs can be used to move your voice register to the right speaker and other voices to the left speaker or vice versa

7. To show the notes actually playing

Click on Configuration, Global setup, Play, and ensure that the “Scroll music while playing” is checked and that “Page after page” is checked and then click on OK

8. To listen to a particular note

• click on the button  and the cursor will then change to a hammer
• click on the note in the score

9. Saving your changes

If you always make the same changes every time you play a piece then you can save it by clicking on “File” and “Save as” and either replace the original or add to the name if you want more than one version. Replace the “.mus” with “.mid” at the end of the name so that it is saved in midi format.
To export your file in MIDI format you can also use "File>Export>Midi"

10. Changing the synthesiser voice for a stave

Usually choral music is computerised with a choral Aah for the choral staves and with piano for the accompaniment. Sometimes all the staves are recorded as piano; to change the choral staves to choral aah

• left click on the  to the left of the stave. This will display a panel “Edit related instruments”
• In the “Set” column click on “Ensemble” and then in the “name” column click on “Choir Aahs”
• Click on “OK”

11. Metronome

To set the metronome on or off click on the