Tips on Getting Started in MITA

Scholars today have scant knowledge about how the kithara, an ancient Greek instrument, may have sounded.

If you are like us, you’ll want to dive right into MITA, and we encourage you to do so. We’ve designed MITA to be easy and intuitive. Still, we hope these tips can lend a hand or spark your curiosity.

Pathways

The easiest way to get your bearings in MITA’s vast content universe is through Pathways, a module that enables users of all musical levels to follow learning paths based on a particular topic. Pathways tie together all MITA’s content—like historical synopses, listening guides, scores, and conceptual overviews—and cover a wide range of themes, from orchestral music to love duets to full course syllabi.

Home Page

From the Home Page, click on any of MITA’s four integrated sections to go directly to that section (moving your pointer over an item brings up a description). An Eventful Story provides a logical starting place because its Tables of Contents allow you to sort MITA’s content eight different ways. “Composers” and “Works by Chapter” are popular starting places.

Home Icon

Clicking on the Home Icon at the lower left of MITA’s window always returns you to the Home Page.

Go Back with Delete or Backspace

To retrace your navigation steps at any time, press Delete or Backspace.

Pause and Play with Space Bar

In all parts of the program, whenever music is playing, pressing the keyboard space bar stops the music (your cursor must be within the MITA window); pressing it again restarts the music.

Grayed-Out Items

Grayed-out items in menus are unavailable in your version; black-text items are ready to go.

Blocks and Links Modes

In the Listening Guides and Interactive Scores, be aware of whether you are in “Blocks” or “Links” mode. “Blocks” (the default, with red text) means that you can start the music anyplace on your page. “Links,” which turns the text blue, means that clicking on a term will bring up a definition. You can toggle freely between the two modes.

Browse Efficiently in the Deep Glossary

While browsing the alphabetical list of terms available in the Deep Glossary, use blind typing to quickly jump to a term or area in the list. For example, if you’re looking for “Marcato,” just type the letters M-A-R in quick succession.

Hear Music within Overview or Jump to Page in Scores

On the first page of every Interactive Score, holding down the Shift Key while clicking on any location in the Overview will start the music from that point; clicking on any location without the Shift Key pressed takes you directly to that location in the score, where the music starts playing automatically.

Navigate from Pages within a Score

Within an Interactive Score, clicking on “Go To” (in the lower right hand portion of the MITA window) brings up the same Overview that you see on p. 1. Keep your cursor within that frame and you can click and go immediately to any place within the score.

Jump to a Specific Page Number

In both the Listening Guides and the Interactive Scores, clicking on the name of the piece at the center of the lower Control Panel returns you to p. 1. Clicking on any page number within MITA produces a pop-up that allows you to enter the number of any page to which you would like to go.

Read Chinese?

In almost all of Books 3 and 4 of Eventful Story—and the corresponding Listening Guides and Interactive Scores—you can read MITA in Chinese! Just press Command+L on your Mac or Control+L on your Windows machine to read Chinese on all pages where it’s available. To return to English, just press the same keys again. You’ll see more and more Chinese in the coming months.

Contextual Help from within MITA

Although we provide detailed contextual help through the ? in the lower Control Panel on each page, our students have never used it. They figure everything out within a few minutes.

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