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Topic: Flatten all voices (Read 385 times) |
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Tony Deff
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What is the purpose of "Flatten all voices" (Fr: Aplatir toutes les voix) ?
This command (in the Blue/Red triangle menu) only appears when two voices have been merged.
After this command, the voices cannot be un-merged (unless by Undo) and changes of instrument are eliminated.
The English term "Flatten" seems (to me) quite inappropriate here, but I cannot think of a better term until I understand why this function exists.
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bubu42
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Re: Flatten all voices
« Reply #1 on: Jan 21st, 2021, 7:15pm » |
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I think it's meant to have all the notes of both staves on a single staff, as if you had typed them all on one staff (including flattened and sharpened notes  )
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Sylvain Machefert
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Re: Flatten all voices
« Reply #2 on: Jan 21st, 2021, 8:06pm » |
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bubu is right.
By the way, if you have two voices (two staves merged), flattening them can produce some difficult situations, when you want to change stem direction, when you have notes of different length played together, etc...
It's exactly the same as in image/video software.
You can have several layers, i.e. a photo, a transparent layer with text, another transparent layer with borders to imitate a wooden frame... You can change some settings, font size, colorize (sepia / grey scale), contrast... on separate layers.
says you want to transforme the picture in greyscale (1st layer), move the text on the 2nd, and change the size of the frame on the 3rd.
When you see on your screen all layers, it's flat, but until you can work on each layer, the structure of the image is not flatten.
Once you save in BMP, JPEG or PNG format, you flatten all the layers. If you don't keep a photoshop (or equivalent) project file, it'll be very very very hard to change the font size or move the text, change the size of the frame... on a JPEG.
"Flatten" the voices is the same.
When you see all voices on your screen, it appears flat, but you can work on each voice separately.
Once you flatten, it'll be harder to work on what was "different" voices.
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ANdre_B
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Re: Flatten all voices
« Reply #3 on: Jan 21st, 2021, 8:06pm » |
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J'ai trouvé cela utile en particulier pour introduire des notes au piano; je ne suis pas arrivé à caler les notes sans cela; je veux dire, en introduisant les notes sur différentes portées, et quand l'alignement est bon, je fusionne pour vérifier l'aspect, puis j"'aplatis" pour n'avoir plus qu'une seule portée.
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André Baeck, de retour en Belgique après 12 ans passés dans le Gard.
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Tony Deff
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Re: Flatten all voices
« Reply #4 on: Jan 22nd, 2021, 12:12pm » |
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That is a good explanation, Sylvain
So I now understand the command to mean "Compress all voices into the base layer"
As you say, a lot of disadvantages, plus not being able to change instrument.
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An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
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PaulL
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Re: Flatten all voices
« Reply #5 on: Jan 22nd, 2021, 5:27pm » |
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As Andre remarks, flattening is very useful in certain specific circumstances. Since I mostly work with choral music, I prefer merging but not flattening for most of my scores, but as Andre mentions, flattening can be useful with keyboard music. Even there, however, it is sometimes useful to keep the separate musical voices on their own (merged) staves.
(The one drawback with merging several staves together is that some of the automatic colors are hard to see when "Display colors" is turned on. It would be nice to be able to alter the defaults.)
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Paul Littlefield, retired Church musician
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