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Topic: Audit Accidentals Tool (Read 5597 times) previous topic - next topic

Audit Accidentals Tool

Hi NWC'ers,

I make good use of the Audit tools available, particularly the "audit accidentals" tool.

However, the tool removes all but one accidental from equivalent notes in the measure -- e.g. if you have two notes played sequentially, one octave apart (like Eb), the flat symbol is removed from the 2nd note, even though most music (that I've seen) places the accidental on all notes in the measure (am I making sense?). I believe the NWC help file explains that the tool will do this (along with removing hint accidentals in the next measure), but I'd like to know why...? It seems like we would want NWC to leave all those marks there in the printed score.

The tool is great, takes care of some of my keying problems, but then I have to go back and fix the octaves, as well as add back in the hint accidentals.

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #1 –
Hi Sue: For security, always put it into a mearures
all the accidental notes with your simbol. By.. by

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #2 –
The way I was taught way back a long time ago, only the first occurrence of an accidental was written. It was assumed that the change remained throughout the entire bar.

On occasion, to emphasize that an accidental is in effect, the accidental might be repeated in parentheses as a "courtesy" to the player. As a rule, though, only the first occurrence is traditionally indicated.

However, I've recently seen several scores where every occurrence is notated. Which is correct? I suppose it's up to personal taste.

Fred

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #3 –
Fred,
Certainly, an accidental propagates to all subsequent instances of the same note within the bar. However, I'm not sure what the strict technical answer is for notes with the same name in different octaves. Personally, I prefer each octave to be treated independently. I've got a few examples of music where the octave has an implied accidental (courtesy of this "feature" of Noteworthy) and I get it wrong every time I play them! (until I hand lettered the accidental).

It's definitely not "incorrect" to write redundant accidentals, so I'd say to do whatever makes the music easiest to read. Maybe the audit accidental tool needs an option to leave octaves alone? (just like it needs a way to select the preferred enharmonic spelling!).

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #4 –
As John points out, there is a problem with accidentals in NWC, as they work with notes that appear in different octaves in a measure. When two notes of the same pitch appear in different octaves, NWC assumes the same accidental for both notes, unless each specifically contains the accidental that should be used. This is not technically accurate for sheet music, and we are working on an improvement in NWC to help this (stay tuned).

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #5 –
Hi All,

Thanks everyone (and NWC-support!), for info and encourgement on this issue. I must agree with John, I think the octave accidentals are very readable, and I too have often played the octave notes wrong without the added mark!

The "hint" accidentals written at the next measure are also very helpful and readable and the audit tool removes these as well. Yes, the "rules" say the accidental is not in effect in the next measure unless written in again, but the "hint" marks are so very helpful and readable. I hope NWC-support will consider leaving these alone when the audit tool is used.

Thanks for a great forum, and a great product. NWC gets better and better all the time!

Sue

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #6 –
Meanwhile, you can do "hint" accidentals by inserting them as text. Set up your User 1 font for NWCV15, and you can then insert anything in the NWC font wherever you like, without having the audit routines mess with them.

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #7 –
What a good idea, Fred, that is a nice workaround for the time being. BTW, I found your guitar arrangement of Adagio Cantabile at the Sheet Music Archive, great job!

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #8 –
Thanks, Sue. It's nice to know that other people hang out at some of my favourite sites.

The sysop of GMD posted this right away, no questions asked. For this I have to give credit to NWC (and its illustrious programmer). The resulting .ps files look anywhere as good as the files created using the (*much* more cumbersome, I've heard) MusiTex for Unix.

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #10 –
Talking of accidentals - I think I see a bug here.
When I tie a note with an accidental into the next bar
I get a "stuck" note.

When I explicitly mark the next note (in my case qith
a "natural") the natural does NOT show up in the text
but i get a "stuck" note from that point onwards.

1) the stuck note is a definate bug
2) should a tie extend the natural ? I think someone
above implied not - I think NWC does - but it doesn't show
up on the screen

Re: Audit Accidentals Tool

Reply #11 –
I've seen that as well. When you have an accidental tied across a measure, NWC does not change pitch at the bar line. That seems correct. However, internally, NWC seems to know that the note in the second measure does not have the accidental applied (the sharp or flat is not indicated on the toolbar when you select the note). During playback, NWC does not stop the note. It just keeps playing. I think this is a bug, but you can work around it by explicitly marking the sharp or flat on the second note (it won't print, but you can see it on the toolbar).