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Topic: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties? (Read 6010 times) previous topic - next topic

Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Hello,

Most of the music I need to handle with NoteWorthy is Choral Score music--which has Soprano and Alto parts on the top staff ; and Tenor and Bass on the bottom staff.

The two voices on each of the two staff are differentiated by stems up or stems down.

My requirement is that slurs/ties appear both over the Soprano part and under the Alto part at the same time--and the same for the Tenor and Bass, i.e. I need to show four sets of ties--two on each staff--one above, and one below the notes.

The layering feature works almost perfectly in this regard, except that I have no control as to where NoteWorthy places the slurs/ties--whether above the notes or below. Sometimes it chooses in accordance with what I need--sometimes it doesn't.

I guess the simplest way to express my requirement is that I need to be able to control on each staff (which I can then layer) whether the slurs/ties appear above or below the notes, just as I can control whether the stems go up or down.

Is there a way to do this?

Basically, I wish there were an option to say: I want the slurs/ties on the same side as the stems of the notes.

This is really important for me, as I have a lot of music that needs to be transcribed, and all of it has the same requirement.

Thank you

Alex

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #1 –
Alex,

at the time being, slurs are on the opposite side of the stem.
So if you want to place your slurs above or under the note, change the stem in accordance --tothe opposite.

But this may lead to unreadable staves.

but IMHO, choral atuff should not be written on 2 staves but on 4, one per voice. This allow much more readability for the reader, and it's 20+ years that I read choral music... Many music friends of mine agree on this (in fact, none denies this opinion).

Unless it's a real trouble on the cost when you print it, it's better for the final user to have a voice per staff, since he/she can write easily the remarks, annothations or whatever on the part he/she reads. Which is realy convenient...

Otherwise, for such an already discussed subject, you can use (it is really useful) the "offline forum" to calmly search for what you need. Use the "Go offline" item on the top of this page :-) or use the inline "search" tool.
(If you're on a 16 bits system, there is a way to use it)

Hope this helps
                      MAD

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #2 –
Amen.
Thanks to Eric et al. we are no longer nearsighted monks scratching with (hard to find) quills on (incedibly expensive) parchment. The shortcuts and compromises that were so critical in the resource poor world in which notation developed are not needed in the world of cut/copy/paste. In fact, they impede getting music on paper. As the Nike ads say, "Just do it!"

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #3 –
Drake:

Speaking as one of the 'monks'.
I STILL prefer to copy my parts by hand using an Asian music pen.

They're more readable - I can easily control bars per line, note spacing, notehead size and so much more when manually copying.

It's faster - the time spent in tarting up the parts is longer than manually copying ( I have spent a long apprenticeship ).

I can add whatever marks I wish - not just those included with the software or offered in the Boxmarks font (I created it but don't use it).

I can quickly produce - piano, guitar, bass (with chord symbols and rhythm markers) and drum parts using correct notation.

Most studio musicians I know prefer manual copying and they see so much of it because arrangers still score by hand for speed.

I use NoteWorthy as a tool - to transpose the saxes, trumpets and print out an exquisite little score to copy from.
NoteWorthy offers an easy method of note entry to create the score but I export a midi file to Cakewalk to create a better sound.

I don't need to get involved in discussions about slur placement, stem positions, lack of marks - their all there at my finger tips.
If I ever get to the stage where I depend entirely on a computer to produce my parts I'll give music away!

Copying is an art combining the look, feel and accuracy of writing with the incredible flexibility of the human brain.
(Although mine is slowly reaching a stage of atrophy)!

I love NoteWorthy for what it offers and it ranks highly among my favourite software.
I'm sorry but to me the printed part looks stiff and mechanical.

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #4 –
While there may be alternatives, I think the request of the originator of this thread is reasonable and not hard to implement. I would like it too.

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #5 –
I would like to reply to Marsu about choral music.

I sing in 2 choirs at the moment, and most of the work I do on NWC is to re-notate scores I get from the choir librarian that have the voices split over 4 staves, to bring it back to 2 staves. I find that music over 4 staves with the piano parts added only give me a few bars per page, and you end up paging like crazy to follow the music.

It just goes to show that we all have differnet needs and tastes and it is great to have a program that will allow us to express that freedom.

Barry, I agree with you that a handwritten score is a work of art, but it is not practical. I used to a draughtsman and enjoyed drawing "on the board" but the benefits of CAD far outweighed the "niceness" of a hand-drawn drawing.

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #6 –
Different needs, indeed. _My_ 20 years experience has all
been with the two-staff, four-part format. And I (and 98%
of the people I sing with) couldn't sing a Bach chorale if
you engraved it in notes of gold in a scroll of silver. What
_we_ really need (to make the music easier to read) is
shaped notes. (The Aiken scheme, that is. Any chance?)

But, using two staves, a hymn score fits within one page
of a handbook-sized book. You can sing multiple verses
without any page flipping. This is a real advantage for
people who can read music barely, if at all; and perhaps
can just barely read words fast enough to keep up.

For many of us, if the music is too complex to fit clearly
on two staves, it's much to complex to sing.

A lot of music gets printed this way: probably 5-15 pages
per capita per annum in the U.S. That has to account for
a significant part of the ink spilled on lined paper.

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #7 –
I would like to add my vote for the request to control the position of slurs. I also score music for voice and instruments as a church musician. Although I have gone the four-stave route, it really takes too much paper. Often, to be readable you end up with one set of four-staves per page.

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #8 –
To Cathy, Stephen, Roelie and the others...
Don't forget to fill the NWC Wish list !

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #10 –
Looks like it will be very useful, Robert.  Thanks for making it available.

Re: Any way to control the placement of slurs/ties?

Reply #11 –
Alex's request is reasonable.
I am nearly finished re-setting Stainer's Crucifixion (58pp) in NWC2. The choice was made to use SATB closed score throughout even for the polyphonic segments.

Several problems had to be solved including the positioning of slurs. In the old music engraving which was done painstakingly by hand, every element was placed skillfully. NWC does not do it that way but has to have a set of defaults. These work well particularly in getting in the lyrics and their alignment.

Our approach with SATB is to set the lyrics for the sopranos and position it in the middle. Notation is entered on 4 staves and layered. We have fixed margins, 17pt staves and use a readable modern sans serif font for the lyrics. The inner parts have their note lengths set to 5. These may be adjusted note by note to as low as 3 to allow for fermata and to make sure that the lyrics are readable.
Staves have to be kept fairly close for readibility and economy. The slur problem is got around by using the NWC slur font. The NWC slurs are used for quick input and later selectively removed. It make take 3 different point sizes for the slurs to cover the length needed: 17, 28, 36 but it works. They can be postioned close to the note head [left/at next notehead] and adjusted by the microspace [t]. The are not perfect but quite acceptable. A program like the, free, Typecase is very handy to pick the one needed at the time.
As for performance marking: to get consistency of style we have had to create two new fonts; one we use for rehearsal letters and different sized hairpins and an italic one for nearly everthing else, where we can enter what is needed including accidentals, tempo directions etc.
Effectively we have gone back to the engraving approach; pick up a character, mark or type in a string and place it. This can be very quick. The marking are only entered once usually after the staves have been hidden. So we work on the presentation version. Something that would helpful would be to have the cursor position shown on the status bar. However we have to check the placement visually in the viewer as the on-screen version does'nt always agree. With the slurs their position has to be checked by actually printing them as there appears to even more variation.

Where the text differs between parts we may use place text above or below the staves as necessary to show the variation. Even in "Fling Wide the Gates" it was possible to so that in closed score. And it is much more readable than open score. The entries which follow each other can be seen, so everyone knows what is going on.