Preferences window
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## Preferences window

### Instruments

#### Tempo

Set the tempo (beats per minute) for music and arpeggios. These values are used by exercises written with these exercise modules: `compareintervals`, `harmonicintervals`, `idtone`, `melodicinterval`, `singchord`, `singinterval`, `twelvetone`, `rhythm`, `identifybpm`, `nameinterval`. Other exercises will either have the tempo set in the lesson file or on the config page of the exercise.

#### 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 minor and major tenths, 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. A warning sign after the entry where you enter the file name mean that the program is not found.

Please check the download page on www.solfege.org for up-to-date tips and download links if you run MS Windows and have to download and install the programs yourself.

#### Converters

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 extension.

#### 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.

### Interface

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.

#### Identify tone keyboard accelerators

Here you can change the keyboard accelerators for the «Identify tone» exercise. Click on a row to select the tone you want to change the accelerator for, then click again on the second column of the row. Finally you can press the key you want to set as the accel for the tone.

The «Dvorak» and «ASCII» buttons will set the accelerators to the default values for Dvorak and ASCII keyboards.

#### Interval keyboard accelerators

Here you can change the keyboard accelerators for the interval exercises, like the «Harmonic interval» and «Melodic interval» exercises. Click on a row to select the tone you want to change the accelerator for, then click again on the second column of the row. Finally you can press the key you want to set as the accel for the tone.

The «Dvorak» and «ASCII» buttons will set the accelerators to the default values for Dvorak and ASCII keyboards.

### 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: Enabling this option in exercises using the idbyname and idproperty modules will let you select to practise only a subset of the questions in the lesson file. Practising with expert mode enabled will not save any statistics.

### Sound setup

#### Midi setup

The exercises that generate sound have several 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 ALSA device

  If you have the Python modules for ALSA installed, you can use the ALSA sequencer. If your operating system is GNU/Linux, you have a menu item on the Help menu that can download and compile the modules for you.

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 choice 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.

### Statistics

#### Statistics from 3.15 and older

Versions of Solfege before 3.16.0 saved statistics in many small files. Solfege 3.16.0 and newer will import these files into the new database file the first time the program is run, but it will leave the old files on your computer. It is safe to delete these files after you have run solfege 3.16.0 or newer once. The files are stored in the `statistics` directory of the application data directory.

#### Statistics

Statistics are now saved in a file `statistics.sqlite` in the application data directory. The exact location of the directory can be found by selecting File Locations on the Help menu. Click Delete to reset you statistics and start with an empty `statistics.sqlite` file.

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