Enabling/Disabling pitch contour emphasis

Pitch contour emphasis emulates the subtle dynamic changes produced by performers, allowing melodies to play back more expressively. You can enable/disable pitch contour emphasis project-wide, and change how much it affects the dynamic level.

In general, performers increase dynamics when melodies rise in pitch, and decrease dynamics when melodies fall in pitch.

Pitch contour emphasis considers the pitch of notes, as well as their duration and position relative to other notes, on each staff independently to calculate changes to dynamic levels.

Note

  • Pitch contour emphasis does not affect unpitched percussion instruments.

  • In order to produce smooth transitions between phrases, pitch contour emphasis can reduce dynamic levels as well as increasing them.

Procedure

  1. Press Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-P to open Playback Options.
  2. In the category list, click Dynamics.
  3. In the Humanize section, activate/deactivate Use pitch contour emphasis.
  4. Optional: If you activated Use pitch contour emphasis, change its effect on the default dynamic level by changing the values for the following options:

    • Scale effect by

    • Maximum change to written dynamic

      Note

      Scale effect by never exceeds the Maximum change to written dynamic value.

  5. Click Apply, then Close.

Example

Video tutorial about pitch contour emphasis (English)