--- In impro-visor@yahoogroups.com, "charles kasler"
<charleskasler@...> wrote:
>
> Hi...finally getting around to reading the help files & have some
> questions:
>
> I'm not getting how to use the looping - unless it just automatically
> loops the whole song. I've been using the chorus tab to do that. I'd
> like to loop a couple of measures of chords to practice playing over
> hard changes...

It will either loop the whole song or the current selection
(highlighted slots):

There are two ways to play the whole song:

a) Pressing the play button on the tool bar, or
b) Pressing the i key.

If looping is turned on, whatever is played will be looped the
specified number of times (default 2).
Setting the times to 0 will play forever.

To stop playback, either:

c) Press the stop button, or
d) Press the k (kill) key.

To play the current selection (highlighted slots), either

e) Press the return/enter key to play just the selection, or
f) Press the shift-return/enter to play the selection and
continue to the end.

In either case, playback can be stopped using the k key or
the stop button.

>
> The first note sounds when I start a song - why is that?

I'm not sure of the question. Whenever you enter a note by
clicking, it will sound, unless you have the entry volume
slider turned to 0 or muted.

If you mean the notes that are pre-entered on many of the
leadsheets, those are just a guide for the first note of the
head of the song. If you are writing a solo, you'd probably
want to erase that note. Select the note (e.g. by shift-clicking
over its slot) then press x to erase it.

>
> Not sure what freeze/thaw is - only for song creation? I just use
> improvisor to play bk the real book songs - not to create my own.
>

Freeze freezes the layout of the chorus at its current number of
bars on each line. Otherwise Impro-Visor may adjust the number
of bars per line as you enter more notes. Thaw un-freezes the
layout.

The layout can be specified numerically by going into the
Preferences and entering the number of bars desired for each
line. If any numbers are specified, this is equivalent to
freezing.

> How do I get rid of the little grid lines that appear where the currsor
> is?

Press escape, or click in the gutters to the left or right of
the staves.

>
> To open a real book song I have to navigate up a couple of levels each
> time - is there a way to click open leadsheet & have it go directly to
> imaginary?

The basic installation should have it set up so that when you
click open, it will go to the Leadsheets directory. Then you
just go down a level if you've put your imaginary book within
that directory. If you double click the jar file in the same
directory where the Leadsheets directory is, you should not
have to navigate any further.

I'm sorry, but currently there is no way to just click a
leadsheet outside of Impro-Visor and have it open.

>
> Thanks for yr help!!
>

I hope that I answered most of your questions.

Thanks for the inquiry.

Bob Keller