Ramirez E2 - Quase profissional
Decifra
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Ramirez E2 - Quase profissional

This page is taken from our Help file, and contains more details about our software. For a more complete investigation, however, we encourage you to test the program and to see the rest of our Help. This is completely free of charge. Just download the corresponding files and use them (but remember that the program is quite limited while not registered).

Decifra is the Portuguese word for Decipher, and was originally developed as a chord and fingerings databank. In this function, it tries to be powerful, intelligent, didactic, friendly and flexible. For that, the program is shipped with an original catalogue (in two files) with 54 chord types and more than 2500 chord fingerings. However, what guarantees most of the abilities above is the conceptual structure of our program, which makes it possible to:

1. Observe the constitution of each chord type;
2. Include or exclude chord types;
3. Include or exclude chord fingerings;
4. Personalize the symbol of the chord types;
5. Modify form and order of presentation of chord types.

Furthermore, the program is aware of the constitution of chords. Thus, it is intelligent enough to:

1. Identify chords from a given fingering;
2. Criticize fingerings, if associated to a chord type;
3. Help the user to build new fingerings for a given chord;
4. Prevent wrong association and other symbol mistakes.

The other, and most important, objective of this program is the edition of chords & lyrics documents (as we are calling this simple and popular kind of musical document). In this objective, Decifra is one of the first and few programs to achieve a professional level, by combining musical understanding and text edition facilities:

1. Specification of chord fingerings (optional and individualized);
2. Support of a flexible catalogue of chords and fingerings;
3. Reasonable capacity of musical understanding;
4. Emission of sound for chords (according to actual fingering);

a. Comprehension of imported texts (Internet, etc.);
b. Facilities for editing and manipulating documents;
c. Alternative models and formats of presentation ;
d. Simple and flexible printing configuration.

Summarizing, Decifra is a simple text editor with musical capacity, totally dedicated to documents containing lyrics and chord symbols (as shown below, we can also represent measures, using special digits).

Example of chords and symbols:

Example of chords and measures:

Without dealing with musical scores in conventional staffs, as other programs, Decifra is less sophisticated and much cheaper than those traditional programs. For the same reasons, it is much simpler to use and, for the lyrics & chords documents, more efficient than its counterparts, whose complexity is unnecessary in this application. In fact, those programs usually offer no facilities for editing and printing such simple documents, being also either ambiguous or rigid when referring to the chord fingerings. And it is exactly in this detail where Decifra is uniquely powerful and flexible. It can include, at the end of each document, a list of the graphical schemes for the fingerings of all present chords, where it is also possible to omit selected chords. More than that, when importing texts from the Internet or from a file, the program suggests the chord fingerings, whenever allowed by its databank. Quite important for beginners, this function will probably be despised only by professionals with a solid musical background (and very good memory).
For more details and glossary, please consult the program's Help or the Help file.