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Messages - hmmueller

651
User Tools / "Compactify rests"?
The Parts user tool is helpful, but it leaves rest sequences like the following when a voice is completely deleted:

Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.75,Single)
|Rest|Dur:4th
|Rest|Dur:8th,Dotted
|Rest|Dur:16th
|Rest|Dur:8th,Slur
|Rest|Dur:8th
|Rest|Dur:8th,Staccato
|Rest|Dur:8th,Staccato
|Bar
|Rest|Dur:4th
|Rest|Dur:4th
|Rest|Dur:Half
|Bar
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

(from this:

Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.75,Single)
|Rest|Dur:4th
|Note|Dur:8th,Dotted|Pos:2|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=First
|Note|Dur:16th|Pos:3|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=End
|Note|Dur:8th,Slur|Pos:4|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=First
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:3|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam
|Note|Dur:8th,Staccato|Pos:2|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam
|Note|Dur:8th,Staccato|Pos:1|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=End
|Bar
|Note|Dur:4th|Pos:0
|Rest|Dur:4th
|Rest|Dur:Half
|Bar
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

Is there an easy way (read: a tool) to rewrite these rest sequences (and, more generally, also sequences of identical notes and chords) to the shortest possible rest/note/chord?

(Additional "possible hiccup": Musically, it is not ok to span a note over a "beat boundary", e.g., the 4th and 5th eighth in a 4/4 measure - they must be written as two tied eights. But then again, in some rhythms - e.g. when the 4/4 measures are split into 3+3+2 eighths -, it is ok to write a single quarter note. I do not know which and how many additional parameters one would need to control this - a string of the form "2+2/4" for a standard 4/4 time signature or "3+3+2/8" with semantics "no note spanning the boundaries indicated by +" might be the most versatile ...

//Edit: No, this is not enough; one needs such a string for each subdivision: 1/1, 2/2, [none for /4], 3+3+2/8, 2/16 as a shortcut for the repeated group 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2/16, meaning that no eights can start at an odd sixteenths; etc.

// Edit^2: I think this is about the 3rd or 4th time I invent this, isn't it?? - including the Edit^2 idea :) ... I should use "search" more often and not invent so many things ...).

Thanks for help!
Harald
653
User Tools / Re: (a) Tool to create single voices from chords? (b) Class model of NWC2ClipItem
Hi Lawrie -

with your posting (thank you!), I should immediately give up writing my own tool - because that's exactly what I want to do.

Right now, I still do not really understand these "bottom" and "top" things - instead of just saying what I want ("keep the second voice from the bottom"), this implies an "operational way" of doing things (wait ... I have to think ... probably it is: "remove bottom, then retain bottom").

What I do not understand at all, was that "position thing", including accidentals?? - this lead me to the conclusion that this tool was used for something else which I did not understand ... maybe I should have asked instead :-[ And the "nosingle" also makes me stumble - what is special about a single voice? Why is there no "nodouble", when chords are written with 3 voices?

But is seems that I will split my programming play-arounds (be they in PHP or, more likely, in Lua) from my musical ones (which, however, have a higher priority - I am years behind with the things I want to do there ...).

Many thanks!
Harald
655
User Tools / (a) Tool to create single voices from chords? (b) Class model of NWC2ClipItem
Hello all -

I urgently need (well ... I would like to have) a tool that creates single voices from chords ... and I'll write it myself (already started), but I found that I have a few questions:

a) I write it in PHP, because I also wrote my previous tool in it - but I must say I hate the language and am not fluent in it (whatever here is the cause and what the effect, I do not know). Which other language could I use which gives me a sensible object model for items, like the one in lib/nwc2clips.inc? (yes, I could write my own string splitter - but I rather would not).

b) What I need is actually a little more than single voices: I want to extract some voices from chords, according to some heuristics (e.g., in a chord with 3 notes, "take voices 1 and 2" will select the upper most two notes, whereas "voices -1 and -2" will take the lowermost; and with rules for what to take when there is chord with 2 notes or a single note; etc...). So, I sometimes have to rewrite RestChords to Chords or Notes or Rests ... and for that, I would like to have an overview over the options I have to copy into the new object. In the attachment is my current draft of such a model - but: Is there one documented and more complete somewhere around?

c) And last but not least: Is there already such a tool around - or something near it which I could modify according to my ideas?

Thanks a lot!
Harald M.
656
General Discussion / Re: Paste as new file
... that's why I love working in software development - all those nice customers having ideas about what's right and what not, but for some unfathomable reason not agreeing on what's right and what not ::) ...
... and, of course, me myself also knowing the one and only solution! ;)

H.M.

P.S. But it's not your computer telling you what you want - it's me, your software developer ;D
657
Object Plugins / Re: Trill.ms (1.1)
My new trill that led to the error was not at end, but somewhere in the middle ... but be that as it may, now my trills trill again!
Many thanks!
Harald
658
Object Plugins / Re: Trill.ms (1.0)
Suddenly, I get this:

C:\ProgramData\Noteworthy Software\nwc2\UserPlugins\Trill.ms.nwcuser.lua:138: attempt to perform arithmetic on a nil value

Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce in a smaller score thatn the complete one.

Harald
660
General Discussion / Re: Odd flow to the n-th power?
Thanks for workaround also from me.

But can anyone solve the following (not really useful) puzzle: When one removes the red workaround special endings, the whole thing repeats 7 times! - is the reason something like an implicit special ending with all of 2.,3....,8. checked?

H.M.
661
General Discussion / Re: New computer and MIDI problem
But, Johnno, you can direct each staff to a different "Play back device" - so some of them could send their MIDI to the Virtual...Synt, whereas others send them to the Microsoft...Synth.
One problem however, that I have with such setups, is that the latency of the two can and will differ significantly. So one has to get one or both to add a suitable delay ...

H.M.
664
Object Plugins / Re: Slur.ms (1.6)
Hi Mike, all -

what is the "best practice" regarding long slurs that possibly/probably/certainly will go over (automatic) line breaks?

The (IMHO) greatest feature of NWC is that one does in general nothing to get acceptable line breaks. This is a wonderful thing that makes work much easier for many typical "internal use scores". NWC's slurs work nicely over such automatic line and page breaks - the slur plugin, as far as I can see, does not (yet?) support continuing of slurs after a break. I would not want to add new slur objects exactly at (after) each break, especially as I usually create different printouts from one score with different breaks. Is there something I'm supposed to do instead?

(Ah - of course: Use the slur object only for slurs not going over a bar boundary ... makes them somewhat less usable than they could be - especially as the NWC slurs are not that beautifully bowed when long).

Thanks!
Harald

665
General Discussion / Re: Printing
I think it's more the other way round: What you get from NWC, is the standard Windows print dialog. All other ("richer") print dialogs are implemented by the respective programs themselves.
If I open a MS Word file and print it to PDFCreator, I get a print dialog with the "free page box" you indicate; however, when I print a MS Excel file to the same PDFCreator, I only get two "from ...to" boxes, and the dialog talks about "(active) sheets".
Thus, you would, AFAIK, have to convince the NWC people to create a richer dialog where you could enter 1;4;2;3 as print order.

H.M.
666
General Discussion / Re: NWC - the big picture?
Thanks for your comments.

I obviously missed a fourth option, which seems to be the perfect one and is, if I understand it correctly, pursued by the NWC team:

(B') Integrate objects so well that they appear to be part of the program. Great!

Now, in my opinion this would mean for an object:

  • It must not only "do something good", but it must do "all good" for the intended functionality: (a) Integration into NWC's "command interface" (e.g., the CueHeads must integrate themselves into the Notehead selection, where they "logically belong"); (b) Integration into NWC's "presentation interface" (e.g., the CueHeads must show small noteheads, but also integrate with distance computations for notes, rests, lyrics etc.); (c) Integration into NWC's "print interface" (i.e., take part in computations for line and page breaks); (d) Integration into NWC's "MIDI interface" (i.e., produce correct audio output; CueHeads won't do anything here, I assume, but - as Bill mentioned - slurs should).

    Almost all of this, if I understand it correctly, can be done right now already (great!) - except maybe (a); but for a "seamless experience", all objects must do all this - which requires sort of an "extension point interface" with a number of required functions ... It seems to me that such a concept is, right now, somewhat at odds with objects: CueHeads uses a concept where a "segment of a staff" (starting at the object's location and ending with a corresponding object somewhere "later") behaves this way or the other (e.g. replacing invisible heads with cue heads), whereas standard noteheads have no such concept of "segment behavior". Getting both to behave alike seems to require some "even higher abstraction"...

  • Documentation: Probably this could just have been mentioned as a fifth item in the list (a)...(d) above. But I think this is a crucial point: Warren wrote " it can be a problem for a new user to become familiar with [the many user tools]" (and the same is true for objects) - but I think this still sounds a little backwards: It seems to assume that it is the job of users to "become familiar", like "Didn't you know there is a thread ...?", "Didn't you keep up with the discussion about new slur objects ...?", "Didn't you ...?". But this is wrong, in my opinion: It is not a user's job to integrate knowledge over mulitple channels for typical, standard functions - this must all be in the documentation. So, a fifth and required part of writing an object is integration with the standard help file - in such a way that the tool's functionality is found at the "expected place".

  • (Added later - sorry) A crucial and, in my experience, hard aspect of plug-in-based software is quality assurance: When one allows "out-sourcing" of functionality to other contributors, especially with a powerful interaction interface as outlined above, the responsibility for bug fixing - and, before that, bug detection - also becomes distributed. It seems to me that the development and release process must ensure that plug-ins behave well while the program evolves. Especially, "old plug-ins" that work fine now must still work fine in the next release. It seems to me that this requires a two-level approach: Some objects are "first class", i.e., the NWC team includes them in regression tests during development and before a new release (why not have the object's contributor take this part - probably he/she will be a beta tester anyway? because the contributor might no longer be around, for whatever reason; but her/his object might still be in full use in many many scores out there); whereas many other objects - experimental ones, abandoned ones, ... - will just "live or die."

... all this is just loud thinking to get a grip on this wonderful tool with its contributions that help me - but (with my vision of a new group of users which might not be able to take part in English discussions) also all users that "just want to use the program without being in the community".

So, thanks for the comments, and I hope I did not "require" anything, just point out one user's view of how to think about NWC.

Harald M.
667
General Discussion / NWC - the big picture?
I've wanted to write something about the "big picture" for some time now - the discussion about enharmonic audit has finally pushed me to do so. Maybe it stirs up some discussion - but maybe, we get some answers or thoughts from the "Noteworthy product drivers".

With 2.75's objects, big possibilities have arrived - as can be seen from the contributions. I have now gotten my most important wish via the "CueHeads" object, and I feel now more confident that I can create the scores I wish with acceptable effort.
However, we have now, I believe, a quite foggy vision of what Noteworthy Composer actually is or wants to be. With version 2.51, I thought I would offer my hand to create a German version - I find the product so much better and easier to use than other competing "not so high cost" score programs (Cappella is the main one used here in Germany) that this seemed a worthwhile undertaking.

However, when I saw 2.75, I dropped that idea: The reason is that NWC now suddenly looks like a "hodge-podge of features," which might be hard to explain. And with a currently non-existing German [added later - sorry] user community (save for me and maybe a few others), explaining various tricks to a typical user might be hard. Here are some examples:
  • CueHeads is great, but why can't you choose smaller heads (maybe even of the fixed 70% size) from the standard notehead menu? The "shape" noteheads are, certainly, much less useful than cue noteheads ...
  • The slurs have been an ongoing topic for years - now we have even more of them in objects (which, as far as I can see, do not interact in the standard way with lyrics), but still the standard ones.
  • The recent discussion about a "better enharmonic audit" also shows that there are tools around that try to improve NWC functions, but run into problems because at least some users feel unhappy about the double built-in vs. user tools world (and now, I would believe, even more so about the three-pronged built-in vs. user tools vs. objects world).
  • The "extra note spacing" is still restricted to integral (and therefore too coarse) values, but there are tricks with empty-head, empty-stem grace notes that move notes a little bit.
  • And there are, it seems, a host of other spacing tricks which are totally unobvious to the typical user.
  • Striked-through grace notes ("Vorschläge") require a combination of built-in grace notes and a user plugin, instead of a simple checkbox on some grace note options.

Instead of considering all these features and their problems, the question behind all this is, in my opinion, more fundamental: Namely, "Where does NWC want to go?" (with regards to score printing - there is another topic which is playback, which I'll briefly touch below).

Possible answers to the "quo vadis" question are, in my opinion:

(A) NWC is now, and remains an environment for plugins where some interested people can provide many good solutions to various problems of score printing; with the assumption that users will work on their understanding of these plugins (be it user tools or objects).
  • Some tools introduce new functionalty (e.g., CueHeads).
  • Some replace existing NWC functions. When they are (much) better (more versatile, with better results, etc.), they should become "best practice", i.e. override built-in functions "almost always" - see the new copyright and other PageTxt objects, which can do (with quite some hassle for the setup) everything NWC can do and more. The same might be true for the various slur solutions.

(B) NWC continues to strive to be a compact (and also in the future very affordable) and efficient (from the point of the user) program. In this case, the "hodge-podge" resulting from the user tool and (NWC and user provided) objects is, in my opinion, unacceptable. E.g., looking for "slurs" in the documentation would not give average users a good solution, because better objects exist outside the core program. Looking for "cue heads" wouldn't give users a solution at all, because the only way to get them is via the CueHead object; similarly, users would not find out how to print repeated copyright notes. But, to give objects and - to a lesser extent? - user tools their credit (very much so!), the "community approach" to improving the functions might be part of a valuable and - to say it loud - cost-effective process which, after some users have praised a certain plug-in (user tool or object), might lead to a quick integration into the Noteworthy program, thereby using (a) the knowledge about what is a valuable addition; and (b) the algorithmic knowledge in the plug-in (if the author of the plug-in agrees).

(C) NWC strives to become a feature-complete program, which can do e.g. everything along the lines of Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars." For the first time, this seems to be possible - but the big question is whether NWC actually should try to accomplish this. New feature blocks that would be needed for this would probably be concepts for "multi-score printing" (printing of large works consisting of several movements or pieces or "sections"), which would probably require that almost every option could be enabled/disabled per section. I fear that such a "can-do-all vision" would lead to (a) increased pricing - which would probably kill NWC because there are other companies and programs out there occupying the "next higher price range" successfully - and (b) worse usability, because many more options would become necessary.

My heartful hope is that (B) is the way to go. This might lead to the effect that each new NWC version has "no new functionality at all", because all which is in (say) 2.85 already was provided by 2.75 plug-ins. Yet, the new 2.85 would be much better integrated and hence still worth it.

Finally, a few remarks on playback: Almost all of us NWC users need MIDI file export, i.e., "rendering the score" into a useful MIDI file. My attempts to think about how to play trills in another thread lead me to the conclusion that also there, some features are missing. For example, grace notes currently take their time off the following note (start playing on the beat), whereas in many cases (since 1820 or so), playing them as a "Vorschlag" - before the beat - would be preferable. Also here, one can ponder whether (a) the necessary features should be included in NWC; or (b) they are provided by plugins (e.g. the Trills object). In contrast to the "score features", I would opt here for "plugin-ing:" Those users who do not want plugins can do everything by meticuously writing hidden "playback staffs". Other users can use plugins that render printed score features like trills or arpeggions into acceptable or even perfect sounds.

Returning to the overall picture: With (B) above - i.e., NWC continues to try to integrate new features into the core program, even if they are provided satisfactorily or even perfectly via plugins -, I might again be tempted to create that German version (if this is technically possible at all) - i.e., continue to consider NWC as the great tool it has been for me for the last 15 years!

Regards
Harald M.
668
Object Plugins / Re: Trill.ms (1.0)
After I found this nice object, I thought a little about playing trills better. I did have some ideas here, mainly from having arranged quite a number of trills for crank and band organs - so I set out to describe them, and even write an experimental program that would create trills that are "more musical." The result of all this can be found here: "Some thoughts on automatic playing of trills".

The program is my first Lua program, so it might not be the very best style; and it does not at all interface with NWC's objects - it's just a demo program for my trill note computing algorithm. But maybe it might be possible to include part of the algorithm in the Trill.ms object ... if my ideas make any sense.

H.M.
669
Tips & Tricks / Re: Using LoopBe1 (and alternatives)
The one I use is loopMIDI.
With loopBe1, you can have only one connection (but there is loopBe30...), which was not enough when I had to run two MIDI signal chains.
MIDI Yoke I could never get up and running on my Win7 laptop, so I threw it out quite quickly.

H.M.

672
General Discussion / Re: Downgrade to 2.5.5
Quote from: Paul O –
Another point ( less important) is the layout of the new insert toolbar: less efficient then in 2.5.5
You could, if you want, customize it ...
... but being a efficiency freak myself - that's the whole reason I use NWC -:
(a) I wonder what is less efficient?
but
(b) for efficiency, I use almost only keyboard commands, so I do not really care for the toolbars ... Wouldn't that be the way to go?

Harald
673
Object Plugins / Re: PageTxtMaestro.nw
Ah ... right. I think that right now, I'll stay with my hidden and eXcluded bar, until I find the troubles it might create myself.

Thanks
Harald
675
Object Plugins / Re: PageTxtMaestro.nw
... I tried the hidden grace rest, but this creates, for me, a bad problem. When I start my staffs as follows ...

Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.75,Single)
|Clef|Type:Treble
|Key|Signature:F#,C#,G#,D#|Tonic:E
|User|PageTxtMaestro.nw|Pos:0|Class:StaffSig|Visibility:TopStaff
|Boundary|Style:NewSize|Upper:25|Lower:6|Visibility:TopStaff
|Rest|Dur:8th,Grace
|Boundary|Style:Reset|Visibility:TopStaff
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Title|Text:%Title%|Fnt:PageTitleText|YLoc:Top|XLoc:Center|PgCtrl:Once
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Author|Text:%Author%|Fnt:PageText|YLoc:Top|XLoc:Right|CY:10|PgCtrl:Once
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Lyricist|Text:%Lyricist%|Fnt:PageText|YLoc:Top|CY:10|XLoc:Left|PgCtrl:Once
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Copyright|Text:%Copyright1%%br%%Copyright2%|Fnt:PageSmallText|YLoc:Bottom|XLoc:Center|Visibility:TopStaff
|User|Acciaccatura.ms|Pos:0|Class:StaffSig
|TimeSig|Signature:3/8
|PerformanceStyle|Style:Legato|Pos:7.5
|Rest|Dur:Whole
|Bar
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

... then that first whole rest does not come out as a 3/8 rest, but as a 4/4 rest! :( ... Do you put some things (clefs, time signature, key, objects) at other places to circumvent this?

Harald

677
Object Plugins / Re: Slur.ms (1.1)
When I copied a "slur" object (ctrl-C, ctrl-V) to another position, I got the error

Slur.ms.nwcuser.lua:110: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'x2' (a nil value)

in the "Alert Log."
(Moreover, I had to copy this text manually - it seems that it is not possible to copy-paste from the Alert Log :( )

Regards
Harald M.
679
Object Plugins / Re: PageTxtMaestro.nw
Spacing ... oh yes. So the final result is that I start each staff in all my templates with this one (the dummy bar is there to force the first boundary to take effect):

Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
|User|PageTxtMaestro.nw|Pos:0|Class:StaffSig|Visibility:TopStaff
|Boundary|Style:NewSize|Upper:25|Lower:6|Visibility:TopStaff
|Bar|XBarCnt:Y|Visibility:Never
|Boundary|Style:Reset|Visibility:TopStaff
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Title|Text:%Title%|Fnt:PageTitleText|YLoc:Top|XLoc:Center|PgCtrl:Once|Visibility:TopStaff
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Author|Text:%Author%|Fnt:PageText|YLoc:Top|XLoc:Right|CY:10
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Lyricist|Text:%Lyricist%|Fnt:PageText|YLoc:Top|CY:10|XLoc:Left
|User|PageTxt.nw|Pos:0|PgStyle:Copyright|Text:%Copyright1%%br%%Copyright2%|Fnt:PageSmallText|YLoc:Bottom|XLoc:Center|Visibility:TopStaff

This should work ... thanks a lot!
Harald M.
681
Object Plugins / Re: PageTxtMaestro.nw
Thank you.

Re "turning off title info" - I assume that's now the suggested way: Create all the standard text with PageTxt objects.
Now, there's one problem - for which I have a solution, but is it the best one?: I print different scores from one NWC file controlled via "Page Setup / Contents" - e.g., conductor's score, choir's score, piano score (sometimes with soprano voice - where I'd like to have that small staff  :) ) etc. So that the title and copyright and author and lyricist appear on all these scores, I add the 1+4 objects to each staff and mark them as "Visibility: Top Staff Only". That works out quite nice ... (except that the title seems not to claim as much place as the "old title" did and hence sometimes moves too near to the top staff ... so be it).

Re "Manage Objects" - I admit that I overlooked this; and it took me a while to find out that right-clicking opens the important menu where you can install a new download (some text to this end would have been helpful). But this is exactly the feature needed - sorry that I implied you'd have overlooked that!!

Thanks a lot!
Harald M.
682
General Discussion / Tiny bug with placing accidental
On compound chords, an accidental is, IMHO, printed too far to the left - see attachment.
Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
|Chord|Dur:4th|Pos:n-1|Opts:Stem=Up,Slur=Upward|Dur2:Half|Pos2:n-3,n-1

Regards
Harald M.
683
General Discussion / Re: (Minor) Upgrade to 2.75 deleted links to NWC
Yes, I feared that some "other magic" was going on ...
The program I used is nwcupd_from_v2.51.0.exe, downloaded from the page that I arrived at from NWC's Help-->Access ... menu item.

If you say the upgrade program does not change anything, most probably something is strange with my laptop (it is a company laptop with many company settings ...).

Regards
Harald M.
684
General Discussion / My 2 wishes: 1) small staffs 4) striked-through grace notes
A few months ago, I had three wishes. One of them was already possible back then (tightening the notes somewhat by spacers), one is possible with the PageTxt/Maestro object (copyright on each page).

One is still open: Small staffs.

And I have a new (last?) one: Grace notes that are striked through. Although it is possible to create them with careful placement of a dash (text) over the grace note, this is a nuisance; and almost impossible for grace chords or multiple grace notes that would need a longer or differently angled strike-through line. Striked-through grace notes have been a standard musical notation "since ever," so I would very much like to see them ...

Thanks!
Harald M.
685
Object Plugins / Re: PageTxtMaestro.nw
Two questions:

1. Regarding all these standard objects: How do I know whether the version that came with the 2.75 upgrade is the one that has been discussed here lately? Or, more constructively: I would like to see a version numbering for the standard objects - otherwise, I have to get all the objects from github and overwrite my current one, wouldn't I? (and I wonder whether for average end users, going to github is an option at all - is there some "bulk update mechanism" for objects?

2. Regarding this object: I want to use it to print the copyright info on each page (see https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=9138.0). Now, if I add PageTxtMaestro and PageTxt at the very beginning of my score, the copyright notice is printed twice on the first page (even if I put a bar between the two). Of course, I could put the PageTxt "a little later" (in the second measure) - but I'd like to add the two objects into all my templates, and there, of course, are not yet any measures - so I would have to remember to move the PageTxt to a later measure lateron. So either (a) can I put the PageTxt in a template so that it will show up only from page 2 onwards; or, alternatively, (b) could I somehow disable the "standard" printing of the copyright notice on page 1 even if a I add Copyright 1 and 2?

Thx a lot for any enlightenments!
Harald M.
686
General Discussion / Q re MIDI import
Sometimes, I want/have to import MIDIs that play "everything" (a choir arrangement; or a piano piece) on a single channel. Usually, there are of course overlapping notes in the different voices in such pieces, which NWC cannot import with correct length - it cuts off some notes (see attached example MIDI and import). I would be happy with a quite crude import which would place notes on quite a few staffs with simple heuristics - I would have to copy around snippets between staffs afterwards, of course, but at least the input would be correct. I even thought about writing a (more or less) simple tool reading in MIDI and producing nwctxt ... but before I do that, I try to summarize my question as follows:

Is there some facility for importing MIDI which
  • guarantees to keep the note lengths as in the original MIDI and
  • puts the notes into staffs "somewhat reasonably" (so that one can copy "longer" stretches of notes and move them around in after-editing)?

Thanks!
Harald M.
689
General Discussion / (Minor) Upgrade to 2.75 deleted links to NWC
After running the upgrade exe, I found that on my Win7 laptop, the two links to NWC on the desktop and in the program folder structure had vanished. I could easily repair this ("copy as link" to both places as admin), but others may see this as more of a problem ...

Regards
Harald M.
690
General Discussion / Re: How do you call this rhythm indication in some music scores?
It gets more and more interesting.

The "dotted breve = breve" notation is, as far as I know, usually classified as a tempo indication, not a rhythm indication: It relates the tempo of a previous part to the tempo of the following part. But your interpretation as a "dropped triplet notation" makes also sense, at least in modern terms! Historically, however, I am quite sure it has nothing to do with "triplets", but with the "perfect" and "imperfect" underlying rhythm - odd or even "time signature" in modern parlance - stemming from at least the 13th century.
I reverse myself: It has more or less "everything" to do with triplets, i.e. with rhythm - you are totally right here: This notation is used only for music notated "alla breve", i.e. the breves=half notes are the beats. But there are two possibilities:
  • Each breve is divided into two semibreves (quarters) - our standard "alle breve" = 2/2 =approx. 4/4, but with a "half beat feel"; and we of course have this also in modern times, not only at and before Frescobaldi:  - e.g. Gershwin's "s'Wonderful" if sung straight
  • Each breve is divided into three parts - e.g. "s'Wonderful" with swing!
This still correlates with the almost 1000 year old "perfect" (ternary - swung) vs. "imperfect" (binary - straight) reading of notation - but it certainly derives from two different base rhythms, not tempos. I learned something.

(Re notation - see e.g. the entry for "mensural notation" in the Wikipedia where it says:
Quote
Whether a note was to be read as ternary ("perfect") or binary ("imperfect") was a matter partly of context rules and partly of a system of mensuration signs comparable to modern time signatures.)

(Clarification:) And from this it follows that this sign has not been necessary as long as a breve was a breve, whether is was binary or ternary. Only when we changed the meaning (around 1600, I think) that a breve always contains two semi(!)breves, we had to notate ternary rhythm with dotted breves. But now, we needed a separate convention and, eventually, symbol to explain that the dotted breve actually was an "old undotted one", only split into three parts.

Here is another example of that sign, from one of the earliest German songs as notated in our contemporary hymn book:
<Image Link>
The interesting thing here is that, in contrast to the Frescobaldi example, the change of the "meter" happens in full flight, not between to clearly separate parts.
Incidentally, many modern scores of this song notate it (wrongly) in 6/4 and 4/4 and then moreover drop that sign, thereby leading choirs and conductors to keep the quarter beat the same throughout - which is absolutely wrong!

Re the tip hiding the "3"s in triplets, a famous example of a score that jumps between tripletted and normal eighths is the end of Buxtehude's Passacaglia in D minor. The last page of this score shows this - only a few of the triplets have a "3", the rest is obvious to the reader (from the fact that either 9 or 12 eighths are contained in a measure).

H.M.

691
General Discussion / Re: How do you call this rhythm indication in some music scores?
"Well", too ... I think you are not right on all accounts, so let me spell out what I think I know - I happily stand corrected wherever I'm wrong:

1. What you are talking about, are the notes inégales - a very interesting topic indeed. However, notes inégales where never indicated by the composer with such a sign - they were a mode of playing that was known by some players to be used with certain pieces (see the Wikipedia article - even if its contents are not definitely true, it shows the historical questions and insecurities about them - similar to questions about many ornaments which also often were implied and not notated).

2. Besides that, notes notated as dotted-eighth+sixteenth have, for a long time, been used as a kind of "shorthand" for the 2/3+1/3 split of a triplet, as can be seen in pieces by Bach, Bach's sons and up at least to Beethoven. But this has nothing to do with notes inégales (or shuffle or swing), but is just a notation - as can be seen in many cases where another voice plays triplets in parallel.

3. The symbol for shuffle/"swing" actually is two eights equalled to a triplet of a quarter+eighth ("crotchet"+"quaver"), because in jazz scores, eighths are used throughout (a dotted eighth+a sixteenth note, if it occurs at all, means an "especially sharply dotted rhythm").

4. The symbol you describe, with "a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth on the left side of the equal sign," I have never seen in any jazz or other score. It might be used in piano sheet music for beginners to indicate the shorthand I've indicated in item 2. above - but composers of that time would not (need to) indicate that with a special symbol.

If we disagree on this, we would probably have to start citing examples - I'll try to find a few in my heaps of piano and other scores that confirm or disprove what I said ...


Edit: For the fun of it, here are links to twelve scans from (only) two books of choir arrangements (one German, there is a piano acc. book and the choir book; and one American) - just click on the links and have fun with the inconsistencies and also how some of the scans disagree with my items:


Edit one day later: I think I have to modify my claim 3 above: The shuffle/swing notation using pairs of eighths seems to be a more "recent" (60s or later) development. At least the "classical jazz composers", starting with Jelly Roll Morton, then Gershwin, Cole Porter etc. used the dotted eighth+sixteenth notation to indicate "swing" - I know that I have Morton and Gershwin scores somewhere notated like that. Still, I cannot remember having seen any sign that would inform the reader that this rhythm is to be played more "triplet-like" - I think it was "obvious"/"implied" like the notes inégales a few centuries earlier.

H.M.
692
General Discussion / Re: How do you call this rhythm indication in some music scores?
Mea culpa, as they say: I lead this thread on an off-topic track with that talk about sound fonts and the like - do not worry about that! It might maybe become a problem - but on the other hand, everything may work just fine (as it did for me for many pieces I wrote)!
Just use whatever Noteworthy gives you to write your music.

(I will write a concrete text about the possible problems and my solutions "somewhen" - maybe in July -, then you can check whether this is of any interest at all for you ...).

H.M.
693
General Discussion / Re: How do you call this rhythm indication in some music scores?
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
Umm, H.M., I'm not sure the soundfonts have any relevance ...
Yes, it's a somewhat weird claim, I know. When I have more time (not right now), I'll try to show in a demo project why I believe this (in a nutshell: When I modified the attack values in the sfz definitions, notes started to appear or disappear at some places, but not at others) - but maybe such a "controlled experiment" might also show that I'm wrong, and there is some other effect ...

H.M.
694
General Discussion / Re: How do you call this rhythm indication in some music scores?
The problem of those soundfonts and/or Reaper are probably not the zillions of MIDI message per se, but the concrete messages that line up perfectly with notes (I guess). In the ritartando example, usually a note is playing "over" a tempo change ...
... but all that's only guesswork. Also in my case, many notes played correctly - only a noticable amount (20% or so) had a strange loudness.
I just wanted to point out that that conductor's staff might produce problems in some cases, for which one needs then more "creative solutions" ...

H.M.
695
General Discussion / Re: How do you call this rhythm indication in some music scores?
There is one "caveat" (problem?) with the conductor staff: If you export a MIDI of such a Noteworthy score (with hundreds of tempo changes), the software reading down the line might not be really happy. Some sound fonts I use get problems with the "attack" parts of notes, which makes the notes more or less inaudible; and/or at least (the DAW) Reaper seems also to get lost with notes playing at such varying tempos.
The solution (with which I am completely happy) is to let Noteworthy play the score and send the MIDI to the DAW (e.g. via loopMIDI).

(It might very much be that I do not yet understand sound fonts enough, and so that behavior may well be "right" - still, for me, it was a problem ... the more so because the forums of Reaper and the like will tell you quite decidedly that you should use "their" note entry feature ... ahem).

H.M.
698
General Discussion / Re: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page
Thanks for your reply -

Re the slurs, good to hear this. I recently skimmed through Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars" - I'd by happy to try some of what is written there with slurs ... but of course I would never demand or even want that Noteworthy becomes a tool that can do "all that": Keeping it at a "perfect minimal feature set" is very crucial! I think I will somewhen document how composing - as opposed to writing a score - with NWC works, which depends on that property of NWC that it does not require me to think about formatting and "musical correctness" (e.g. correct number of quarters in a bar) - I can just "write along", in contrast to almost all other tools. The real efficient way of writing, using a few helper staffs, took me a few years to find that out (maybe I'm slow) ... but now I'm very very (very!) happy with it.

Re the smaller staffs - well, then I heartily hope that we can convince the NWC guys (and girls) to do this!

Re spacers - oh yes, I noticed this behavior already sometimes, but pushed it away as "somewhat weird". I'll try whether it is good enough for what I want.

Re "user plugin for repeated footers," I'll eagerly wait for your result!

Thank you very much!
Harald
699
General Discussion / My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page
As a long time user of NWC, I'm very happy with it - I use it to compose music (without a connected MIDI keyboard - I mostly think in musical notation), arrange for our choir and for crank organs, sketching snippets in forums, and rewrite clumsy parts for easier playing or singing.

Many features that others may need I am happy without: This keeps the tool small and efficient. And I'm not very concerned about the perfect beauty of the result - for example, I had no great complaints about those slurs which curve "in interesting ways".

But there are three things I'd dearly need, in descending order of importance:


1. Smaller scales - almost all instrument parts need either a few stretches or full staffs of cue notes. Currently, I use normal staffs with diamond note heads (which look a little bit like smaller note heads). But a vertical scaling is very much needed.

2. Finer-scaled "Extra Note Spacing" that takes tenths instead of only integral values; and negative values up to maybe minus 1. Sometimes, in a little more complex chords assembled on 2 layered staffs, just shifting over a note "a little bit" would make the chord really readable. And, sometimes, I'd like to push notes together a little bit, usually in a scale or a repetitive acc. pattern: This might save that unncessary fourth page where just 2 measures spill over, and still keep the score perfectly readable.

3. Printing fixed text on each page would also be great - for copyright purposes, but more for title and instrument remarks. I usually prepare all the different printouts (instruments, singers, conductor's score) by creating PDFs on my laptop during my (train) commute. Then I print all of the PDFs together - so inserting different paper is no option. But maybe I have to look into some batch tooling that adds footers into PDFs easily.


If I got these features (only two, maybe only the first), I'd happily pay for a new complete license - NWC has paid itself over so many times that I would not complain about another bunch of $ (or €) for that!

Harald M.

P.S. Off-topic, but not really - it shows again what can be done with NWC: For an example of a recent piece I wrote: http://www.hmmueller.de/MyMusic/20150522-p+2Fl.SlowAndFast.mp3 (generated with Reaper and 'Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra' Soundfonts), score at http://www.hmmueller.de/MyMusic/20150522-p+2Fl.SlowAndFast.pdf. A score with my current "cue notes" is at http://www.hmmueller.de/MyMusic/20150522-p+2Fl.SlowAndFast_FLOETEN2.pdf ...