Impro-Visor

Jazz Improvisation Advisor

Tutorial
Last Revised: 5 June 2006
Currently 62 Steps

Bob Keller

Harvey Mudd College

Computer Science Department

This brief tutorial will take you through some of the basic editing features
and options provided by Impro-Visor. If anything is unclear, please email to
improvisor at cs dot hmc dot edu and we will try to correct it.

0. Assuming that Java 1.5 is already installed, open Impro-Visor by double-

clicking the improvisor.jar file.
You should get a GUI (graphical user interface) view similar to the
following:
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At the top is the Menu Bar, with drop-down menus File, Edit, View, Stave,
Play, and Help.

Below the Menu Bar is the Tool Bar, which consists of four separate tear-
out segments (identified by the grips at the left) for File, Edit, Options, and
Playback.

Below the Tool Bar is the Text Entry window, which can be used to enter
chords or melody via the keyboard.

Some of the Tool Bar items may duplicate functions found in other menus.

Below the text entry is the lead sheet display.

Any number of these windows can be open simultaneously, each with its own
lead sheet. It is possible to cut and paste chords and melody from one
window to the other.

The pointing device (henceforth called the “mouse”) can be used to select
places for note and chord insertion. While our selection rules may be a little
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different than those in other products you have used, once you learn them,
it is relatively easy to enter an entire lead sheet in a short amount of time.

1. Move the mouse toward the first measure. You should notice some
vertical grid lines appearing with brackets below. We call these “slots”
and both notes and chords can be aligned to them. (There are currently
120 slots per beat, but only a few show at a time.)The slots and brackets
will come and go depending on the mouse position. The first slot is
highlighted at started up, and indicates the extent of the current
selection.

2. Click somewhere on the red slot below the NC (no-chord) symbol. You
should get some notes tied together. Impro-Visor considers these as a
single long note, incidentally.

3. Shorten the first note by clicking on the slot to the immediate right of
the first slot, which will add a new note.
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4. To change the note you just added to a rest, press the r key.

5. If you don’t like what you just did, you can undo it with the z key.

6. Now add more notes. Click on the third and fourth slots.

7. If you don’t like the note you just clicked, click over it. The software
ensures that there will never be more than one note on a given vertical
slot.

8. Choose some longer note values by skipping over some slots, then clicking.
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9. To transpose a note down a half-step, press the d key.

10. To transpose up a half-step, press the e key (twice in this case).

11. To toggle a note enharmonically (e.g. from a# to bb), press the space bar.
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12. By now you might think “How can I remember all of these key bindings?”
Most keys are accelerators for commands that are available in one of the
menus in the menu bar. Click the edit entry in the menu bar, to get a list
of the editing commands and accelerators. Note that ^ stands for holding
the control key, and ⇑ stands for holding the shift key. The grayed menu
items are ones that are inapplicable in the current state.
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13. Another source of help is through the Help menu. In contrast to the edit
menu, the help menu is its own window, which will stay open so that you
can view it while editing. There are different tabs for different
organizations of the information.

14. Here is an important operation you may need: selecting several notes at
one time. For example, you might want to transpose some notes together.
Beginning with one slot selected, hold the shift key and click on another
slot. All of the slots between the two should also be highlighted. We call
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these slots the selection. If you shift-click outside the selection, you will
widen the selection to include the slot you clicked. (If there is no
selection to start with, shift-clicking will just select the one slot.)

15. Many operations that can be performed on one note can also be
performed on a selection. For example, pressing e transposes the entire
selection up.

16. If you don’t like the result, you can bring it back down by either pressing
d (for down) or z (for undo).

17. If you shift-click inside a selection, the selection will revert to just the
slot clicked.
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18. Sometimes we overlook that there is already a selection and shift-click

some slot as if to select that slot only. What happens though is the
existing selection gets extended instead of what we wanted. To get a
single slot selection in this case, it is only necessary to click one more
time, consistent with the rules we have already mentioned. For example,
suppose that on the sheet shown above we want to select the very first
slot, but have overlooked that the slot is already selected. What we will
get is this:

19. If we leave the mouse in the same position and click again, we will get
what we desired:

20. You’ve probably noticed that the selection gets played each time you
change something. If you don’t want to hear the results, toggle the
Silence Entry button on the toolbar. It will turn into Play Entry, so that
you can toggle it back when desired.
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21. An entire selection can be moved laterally by dragging (moving the mouse
while holding the button down) from one slot to another. Below we
dragged the selection two slots to the right.

22. To change from a multi-slot selection to a single slot inside, simply shift-
click on the slot. Below we clicked on the second C#. (Recall that several
notes tied together are treated as one note).

23. To delete a note, select it, then press x. If the note was preceded by
another note (rather than a rest), the value of the note deleted will be
added to the preceding note, as shown.

24. If you wanted a rest instead, press r, either instead of x or after x.

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25. You can fill in other notes in place of the rests simply by clicking the
corresponding slots.

26. To save your work, open the file menu and select Save As. You will be
prompted for a directory and a file name.
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27. Files should be saved with the extension .ls (for leadsheet).

28. To save again, once you have named the file, use control-S.

29. One way to enter chords is to use the textual entry field. First select
the slot where you want the chords to start. Then type the chord
symbols freely. Use a vertical bar to indicate a new measure. Press return
to enter the chords on the leadsheet.

30. If you don’t like what you entered, press shift-Z to undo, or edit the
textual entry window and press return again. Note that the slot selection
does not advance when you enter chords, so you can keep adding more
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chords to the end of the text entry if you wish. The textual entry can
also be edited selectively using the mouse to select characters.

31. The textual entry can also be used to enter notes in Impro-Visor’s
leadsheet notation described in a separate document. Here is a simple
example. The notes and chords are essentially in two separate tracks
that can be commingled. Notes do not observe bar slots. A note is the
pitch class (a, b, …, g, possibly followed by # or b, or r for rest), optional
+ to raise the octave or – to lower the octave, followed by a duration (4
for quarter note, 8 for eighth note, etc.).

32. For lengthy entries, I find it easier to edit a plain text file using my
favorite text editor (Emacs), save it with extension .ls, then Open the
file in Impro-Visor. When the file is re-saved, Impro-Visor will add
various meta-data regarding key signature, formatting, etc.
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33. Alternatively, Impro-Visor comes with its own text editor that you may
use if you wish to edit with the mouse. This editor is opened using
control-F or from the File Menu. Using it, you have a more space to lay
out your chords and melody for ease in editing. You can transfer the
contents to and from the lead sheet using the buttons indicated. When
you save to a file, it saves from the lead sheet, not from this editor.
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34. When you go from the lead sheet to the editor, meta-data will be added.
This can be ignored for basic chord and melody editing. This is the
format in which files are saved. Impro-Visor tries to lay out the text
approximately 4-measures per line for chords and one measure per line
for melody.

35. To set the key signature using the mouse, drag the mouse up or down in
the area after the clef symbol. Drag upward for sharps and downward for
flats.
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36. Key signature and other information can also be set using the leadsheet
preferences dialog, which is identified by the note symbols icon on the
toolbar. Clicking this

opens the following dialog

A lead sheet consists of one or more “parts”. The intention is that these
parts are successive choruses in a solo, so they all have the same chord
structure.
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37. To get advice for melodies over a chord, a single slot must first be
selected. If multiple slots are selected, advice will intentionally not
function.

38. With a single slot selected, press the light bulb icon on the toolbar.

This will open the Advice menu for that slot. (Note: To get Advice, a single
slot only must be selected. If there are multiple slots, nothing will happen.)

Any of the folders may have sub-folders that organize the material. Some
of the folders may pertain only to the first chord, others to both chords.
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39. Selecting an item that is not a folder will introduce melody notes to the
lead sheet. For example, suppose we select the scale tones item. It lists
several scales that can be used over a Dm7. (These are determined by
the vocabulary file, and can be changed at the user’s or instructor’s
discretion.)

40. Suppose we select d dorian, then “all tones descending”.

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41. The descending scale will appear in the lead sheet and the notes will be
selected.

42. At this point we can move on to focus on another slot, make a different
choice from the menu, or press x to delete the selection. Let’s assume
the latter.

43. Again making sure that a single slot is selected, select the licks item
from the Advice menu and open the sub-folder therein, then the folder
showing 4.0 beats.
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44. The slashes and back-slashes are used to indicate the shape of the lick,
where shape is defined by the up and down sub-sequences. Let’s choose
the one marked \/, which stands for down-up. We get a menu of licks, any
of which can be tried, until we find one we like. For example, in this
particular instance the second lick looks like the following.

45. Once the notes of the lick have been entered on the lead sheet, we are
totally free to modify them. For example, we could select the last two
notes and reverse them by pressing / (for Reverse Selected Melody),
giving the following.

46. Now select the first slot in measure 3, the CM7 (C major 7) chord.
Notice that the Advice menu changes to indicate the new chord.
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47. Open the cells (sequences over a single chord) folder, and select a cell
with 2.5 beats, shape /\ (up-down).

48. The overall result, after this cell has been entered, appears on the lead
sheet as shown.

By continuing in this fashion, we can create a solo for any chord sequence.
Of course, we do not have to use licks and cells at all; we can do
everything with individual notes.
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49. Suppose we have a constructed a particularly cool sequence that we want

to save as a unit for future reference. Select that sequence, then press
u.

A dialog will open that appears something like the following, and we’ve
typed in the name we wish to give it. Names need not be unique, and
have no significance other than mnemonic or informative.

50. At this point, we can either save the sequence as a lick, or cancel. Or we
can save it with any of the other attributes: cell, idiom, or quote. The
following distinctions are made:

Cell: Associated with just the first chord

Idiom: Like a cell, but something well-known or clichéd
Lick: Associated with one or two chords
Quote: Like a lick, except from a known tune or solo

These categories are subjective and discretionary on the part of the

user.

51. Suppose we try to save the lick again. The following dialog will appear.
The reason we want to avoid saving licks more than once is that they take
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up space in the vocabulary, which can slow things down. So it is best to

select ignore.
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52. Once a lick has been saved, it becomes a part of the vocabulary as Advice
and can be used in any key. Impro-Visor does the transposition for you.
However, Impro-Visor caches the menu structures that it creates, so you
might not see your lick immediately in the menu. The cache can be purged
through the Global Preferences menu, which is opened by the icon with
the check boxes.

opens the dialog

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53. If we purge the cache and close the global preferences dialog, then open
advice with a note b entered at the start of the G7 CM7 chord sequence:

we will see our lick in all of its glory:

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54. Selecting that lick will enter it on the sheet.

55. Suppose, on the other hand, that our chord sequence was a transposition
of the original chord sequence, such as F7 BbM7. Then our lick would
appear in transposed form in the menu

and will be entered that way on the lead sheet if we select it.

Note that it may be necessary to transpose it up or down to the proper

octave, by pressing the t or g keys.
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56. If you want to play the selection along with the chords, press
return/enter. If you want play from the selection to the end of lead
sheet, hold shift and press return/enter.

57. Impro-Visor attempts to layout the melody with reasonably uniform

spacing, by controlling the number of measures on each staff.. If you
wish to dictate the exact number of measures on a staff, control-click on
the staff. The following menu should appear:

Select Override Measures for this Line, to get:

and set the number of measures you want for that staff line.

58. Impro-Visor may change the layout of a staff line subsequently, unless
you freeze the layout. Click the green button marked Freeze to do this.
To thaw the layout, click the same button, which has since turned red.
When frozen, the layout information is saved in the leadsheet file as
meta-data.

59. To play or stop play of the entire lead sheet, you may use the standard
audio player triangle and box buttons, as shown here.
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Playback constructs a MIDI sequence, then plays it. The tempo and
volume controls are only effective before the sequence is
constructed, not during playback.

60. To change the visible slot spacing, either drag the edge of the bracket
under the staff, or type the number of slots you want to show (currently
must be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 9, but not 7). For example, use 4 if you want
sixteenth notes (4 per beat), 3 if you want eighth-note triplets.

61. The playback of the entire lead sheet can be exported as a MIDI file,
which can be played on a stand-alone MIDI player. Simply select from the
file menu whether you want to export everything, just the chords, or just
the melody.

62. Another possible reason for exporting is to import the file to another
software tool, for purposes of other types of editing. If you do this, it is
probably a god idea to set the swing value (in the lead sheet preferences
dialog) to 0.5. Otherwise the notation will show the tune as rendered for
playback, rather than as notated.

This concludes the Impro-Visor tutorial for the present. We plan to extend
it to demonstrate other features in the near future. Do contact us if
anything is unclear.