Preferences window
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## Preferences window

### Instruments

#### Tempo

Set the tempo (beats per minute) for music and arpeggios.

#### Preferred instrument

Set the midi instrument and volume used for most exercises.

#### Chord instruments

Solfege can use three different instruments when playing chords. One for the highest tone, one for the tones in the middle and one for the bass tone. This can be helpful if you find it difficult to hear individual tones in chords.

#### Preferred percussion instruments

Set the percussion instrument used for count-in before rhythm questions, and the instrument used to play the question.

### User

Solfege uses this info in some exercises where the user is supposed to sing.

#### Lowest/highest tone the user can sing

These spin buttons tell Solfege the highest and lowest tone the user can sing. These values are only considered advisory by the program. If for example the values are set to `c` to `c'` and you have configured the program to ask you to sing small and large decims, you will have to sing tones outside this range.

#### Sex

Solfege need to know if the user is male or female when creating some of the questions where the user will sing the answer. This because the male voice sound one octave lower than the female voice.

### External programs

Solfege will search the PATH for the programs you enter on this page. So you only have to enter the full path if the programs are installed outside the PATH.

#### Convertors

Give command lines that can convert between different audio formats. `%(in)s` will be replaced with the name of the file we convert from, and `%(out)s` with the name we convert to. It is not necessary to enter `%(out)s` if the program automatically saved to a new file with the correct file extention.

#### Audio players

Command lines that can play different audio formats. `%s` will be replaced with the name of the file to be played. The file name will be appended to the end of the string if you do not include a `%s`.

#### Miscellaneous

A few exercises make use of the programs CSound and MMA. Lilypond-book is required to make ear training test printouts, and latex is required if the printout should be created in dvi format. Without latex, you can still create html output.

If the file entered is a file ending with `.py`, then the script will be run by the same python interpreter as Solfege itself.

"Mail program" defines the command that starts the mail program when you click on email addresses in the user manual.

### Interface

Display user manual in web browser: Use this as an alternative to the help browser included with the program.

Resizeable main window: Allow the user to resize the main solfege window.

Select language: You can manually select the language you want if Solfege does not detect this correctly, or if you want to run Solfege with a different language that your operating system.

### Practise

Not allow new question before the old is solved: Disable the 'new' button until the question is answered correctly or the user clicks "give up".

Repeat question if the answer was wrong: Play the sound again when the user gives an incorrect answer.

Expert mode: On many exercises, you will be able to select to practise only a subset of the questions in the lesson file.

### Sound setup

#### Midi setup

There are three ways to play sound:

No sound:

  Use this for debugging or when you are porting Solfege. No sounds are played, the midi events are printed to stdout.

Use device:

  The best choice here is usually `/dev/music` because it has the best support for percussion instruments. `/dev/sequencer2` is usually a symbolic link to `/dev/music`. If your system don't have `/dev/music`, you can create it with this command as root (if you run the linux kernel version 2.2 or later):

  cd /dev mknod music u 14 8

  On MS Windows this choise is labeled `Windows multimedia output`.

Use external midiplayer:

  This can be useful when porting to systems that don't use OSS, or if you have a bad midi synth on your soundcard and want to use timidity.

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