I would hazard a guess that your hymns generally each have only a single tempo directive throughout the entire piece? And that that directive is normally right at the very beginning of the first staff? If so, I'd think that "global mod" (or any user tool for that matter) was a bit of overkill - I'd simply train the users a bit more on the interface of NWC so that they could select and edit the tempo directive manually.
Note that "global mod" (or any other user tool) applies only to a single song at a time, and is not at all useful for "bulk" changes to multiple songs. If you are willing to run a tool manually outside of NWC, such bulk changes are possible.
Rick's example definitely hid stems at times (via a stem length of 0) when it technically didn't have to. But he was mostly demonstrating cue-sized notes, and not layering techniques so much. I enter a lot of music with overlapping stems, and prefer to never hide any of them. This ensures that the stem of the layered notes will always have the correct length, and not be too short. This works great for half notes and quarter notes, but eighth notes and shorter frequently require some of their stems be lengthened, so as to align flags or beams. Some folks will prefer to just turn off the shorter stem in this case, rather than getting the length just right. But another benefit of getting all stems right is that you can successfully print off each part in isolation, if you ever want to be able to do that. I did notice one neat use of turning off stems in Rick's example - you may have to do this if you want overlaid slurs in differing directions.
It occurs to me now that we've been talking about 2 different things. I still state that a true "cue note" is by default not to be played - it exists primarily to help the performer be sure when his coming entrance is, and secondarily to be played if its instrument needs supplementing. However, what is also needed (and supported separately in MusicXML) is a "cue size" - this allows regular notes to be displayed at the smaller size, while still maintaining all other attributes of regular notes (including playback). When/if NWC supports "cue", I'd be perfectly happy with it only supporting "cue size", as a true "cue note" could then easily be emulated by setting "cue size" plus "mute". If it supported only a true "cue note", it would not help the folks wanting a cue-sized regular note, so I do not like that. If NWC does implement "cue size", I would shudder to see it called the "cue note" attribute, but at least we'd have all "cue" functionality!
I think the problem is that the duration of a grace note is by definition open to interpretation. I think most notation programs might at best allow "global" control of grace notes - do they steal time from the following note or from the preceding note (both are possible), how long is "minimal" for slashed grace notes (acciaccatura), how long are non-slashed grace notes (appoggiatura) as a percentage of the following note's duration (generally half, but not always), etc? To expect a program to "interpret" grace notes on its own is of course ridiculous, but even to allow "programming" of different behaviours for different grace notes in a piece is taking the computer where it shouldn't go, in my opinion. In short, computer playback of grace notes (or cue notes) is a slippery slope - computers might be wise to avoid this altogether, and leave playback decisions to the humans reading the music it outputs.
I was assuming that MusicXML had had time to mature, and be able to represent all classic music out there, but this may not be true I guess. It is still interesting to me how/why MusicXML justified purposely avoiding allowing playback ties for cue notes! Rest assured that NWC would implement cue notes (if ever) how they saw fit, regardless of MusicXML or anything I say. :-)
If they include playback, aside from the issue of failing to be able to map cue ties to MusicXML, I'd expect they'd have to address controlling whether cues were played or not. I can imagine them never playing, but I can't imagine them always playing, unless there is at least a global ability to easily turn off all cues. It seems a slippery slope to me, as in my jazz band, I play some cues but not others, depending on the cue instrument type.
You could well be right. I was thinking about the MusicXML model, and what parameters it takes away when going from regular notes to cue or grace notes, and I think I got it backwards. I see now that grace notes are not allowed a duration, and cue notes are not allowed to be tied. So I no longer see an incompatibility with chording cue notes and regular notes, even as MusicXML does not specifically say it allows this. As an aside, I can't see a reason to disallow cue notes being tied (playback-wise)?! I guess cue notes by definition can never be played, so ties for playback would be ignored (while ties notation-wise are perfectly acceptable).
Ok, I think what happened is that I tried the file text first without the header/footer (I'd used my nwctxt file editor to copy the text, and it had stripped them). I immediately added them, but it appears that the forum server held onto my original copy of the nwc code, even as I was modifying its block visually. Bottom line is to not make a mistake with file (or clip) text, as you may not be able to fix it (in that particular post).
Combining regular notes and cue notes in the same chord seems highly unusual to me, and I doubt NWC would support such a mixture even if/when it did support cue notes! I guess one could hope that cue note stems in one staff would perfectly align with regular note stems in another staff, so that this might be achieved via layering.
I know that "select" for a file (as opposed to a clip) won't help, as NWC only allows pasting of a clip to a single staff. But is it possible that "download" could support a file, if it doesn't already? I'm trying this in another thread without success.
Since you're not looking for the "ossia" functionality, it seems that you're really wanting "cue" notes. It's not too bad a solution to use grace notes as cue notes, until such time that they might be supported natively in NWC. You'd have to live with the notes being offset a bit from other staffs, but if one is just reading the "harmony" staff in isolation, one might not even notice the offset (aside from the first note of each measure being close to the bar). An example of this is attached.
In the staff that is to contain cue notes, you could enter the notes normally. Then each note would be duplicated, with the first note of each pair turned into a muted grace note, and the second note of each pair set to be never visible. A user tool could easily automate the entire duplication process if you wanted.
Note: While writing this, Bill responded with something similar, and I think we're both agreeing here...
I think to say that all music occurs in "2's" (or even "1's") is perhaps oversimplifying a bit. Yes you can count 3/8 time in "1's", and 6/8 time in "2's". But to say we count 9/8 time in "2's" by grouping measure pairs is kind of like being surprised that you can multiply any number by 2 and get an even number! I think of it as we tend to count in prime factors (or sometimes multiples thereof), so 1 (technically not prime I know), 2, and 3 are most common. Going to 5 and 7 counts starts to get tough on our human brains, so we tend to subdivide these (arithmetically, not geometrically :-) into 1's, 2's, and 3's. I think some of the most interesting music comes from those who do not know how to read or write music! They create music that almost (but not quite) defies description using our classic (and somewhat limiting) view of measure divisions and time signatures. [The intro to the song "Changes" by the group "Yes" comes to mind, although if they read/write music, I'd point out that Paul McCartney could not, until quite recently.]
To confuse matters even more (and perhaps our Italian friends can help us with translations), Alfred's defines "sforzando" as "sf" and "sforzato" as "sfz". NWC defines "sforzando" as "sfz", so it's unclear which exact symbol or text you're looking at in your music. Perhaps the "sforzati" you're asking about is plural for "sforzato"? At any rate, if you want a dynamic variance not currently supported by NWC, you can always just add a text expression, using the standard staff italic font.
Great solution NWSW! Inexperienced folks can do the simple and intuitive "download", and experienced folks can now even easier do the copy-and-paste they're used to (although any chance the "select" could do the copy to clipboard for them as well? :-).
I assume that NWCInfo is an old tool, and no longer supported? Would it help if nwc-conv could be used instead? Unfortunately, the latter does not seem to have the handy "list" option. So might this crude solution work?
Quote
for /r %%F in (*.nwc) do call nwc-conv.exe "%%F" info
Put the above in a batch file, and then redirect its standard output to a catalog file. [You might see some errors where it tries to process "nwcitree" files (in addition to "nwc" and "nwctxt"), but they are not much harm.] Run the batch file from the directory where nwc-conv is, or specify its path in the batch file. Add the nwc-conv "-t" option if needed.
Apologies in advance if this is no help.
Now that I have a copy of NWCInfo (thanks for the link), I see that it works fine. Only problem I had was that "nwctxt" and "nwcitree" files were attempted as well (it tried to "repair" them - yikes). The following took care of that:
Sorry guys - ignorant, lazy me was clicking the "OK" button to select a blank template, and then clicking the "OK" button again to accept the default song information. Wow. All this time I could have been hitting Enter twice!! If only I had something to work on during all the time all be saving. :-)
Of course, if folks took a few extra seconds to attach files instead of imbed examples, you wouldn't need PasteAsFile? ;-) Actually, I see now that Ctrl+Shift+V makes it much easier to copy-and-paste a clip - I used to think you had to create a new song tab (with associated selection of template, and cancelling of song info) before using Ctrl+V! So PasteAsFile allows one to select an entire forum page, instead of finding and selecting a clip? Does it handle multiple clips found, putting each in a separate staff I'd guess? Is there anything else it automates?
As an aside, can you tell me the syntax for having any old text in a post become a hypertext link? I know how to do it in emails for example, but I'm unaware of how to (presumably) leverage the "url" tag to do this in a post. Thanks!
Hi Rick - I was not at all familiar with CTRL+SHIFT+V! It seems like a fine alternate solution (and also so few extra keystrokes/mouseclicks so as to not be worth counting). I have not meant to specify NWCTXT over NWC files - the main point is just about using file attachments over quoted text. Either format achieves this end equally well.
By the way, another advantage to file attachments is that you can see how many times the clip has been viewed (or at least downloaded anyway). With copy-and-paste, you can't tell how many folks viewing the post actually bothered to view the clip. But perhaps some folks may like such information to remain hidden. :-)
It seems you may have privately downloaded your own version of PHP, rather than using the version automatically installed by the user tool kit? If so, I have had a wide variety of problems trying to do this myself, although not the particular problem you are seeing. I had to do a bit of "uninstalling" the PHP I privately downloaded, before I could get NWC's PHP working again (particularly with regard to wxWidgets support). HTH, Randy
Hi David - I actually don't bother to isolate the bars into a new song file! I simply copy the bars to the clipboard (which one has to do either way), and then I paste them into a Notepad session (I have a shortcut to bring this up quickly). I save the file from Notepad (into an appropriately-named ".nwctxt" file) right in the default "My Documents" directory, then I load the file as an attachment right from the "My Documents" directory. No navigating required! But I definitely agree it's about 15 seconds easier to copy-and-paste directly into the post than it is to create an attachment. I have never argued it's easier on the poster to attach a file - only that it can save many others varying amounts of trouble, based on their experience level! (Ironically, I suspect most folks already copy-and-paste their clip into Notepad, as part of creating their post in an environment more conducive to long text than the forum's web page!)
By the way, if you ever pull up a file attachment and want to see the clip text for it, I recommend NWSW's nwctxt file explorer (or my nwctxt file editor), for superior and convenient access to the nwctxt for a file, over viewing the text within the forum. The explorer is particularly handy for user tool designers, to be able to see how the PHP objects resulting from the nwctxt will look. (And the editor is particularly handy for colorizing the nwctxt automatically, so fields and values are easier to pick out.)
Hi Lawrie - You have come up with a good counterpoint! When the post is more discussing the raw NWCTXT implementation, and less discussing the resulting graphical notation, I agree that having the clip right in the post is better. This has been particularly good when the poster uses colors (or other highlighting) to draw attention to the relevant field/value. (Such highlighting does not interfere with someone who still wants to copy-and-paste such a clip to NWC for some reason!) Of course, this still does not change my main point, which is that clips intended primarily to be viewed within NWC are easier handled by inexperienced folks via file attachments. :-)
One other advantage to files - they open up directly into NWC with the name of the song (and hence the name of the tab) clearly identified by whatever the poster named the example file. With clips, I have to create a new song (with associated forced acceptance of both the template and songinfo) before I can paste, and the tab ends up unnamed.
Hi William - I understand that you are attached to the process of copy-and-paste, but how you can say it is easier at all (let alone "worlds" easier) than an attachment is beyond my comprehension! I have never myself had any trouble with mouse grabbing - I have however seen a post or two about others having this problem. And more important, as I said earlier, just the idea of grabbing text and pasting into NWC is not at all obvious or intuitive to the inexperienced. How can simply clicking on a "hypertext" attachment link (and selecting the routine "open") be harder than any other method?!
You also seem unclear on the file situation - the attached file is not placed in "your" directories where it can make it difficult to spot other files. It is placed in a "hidden" directory for temporary internet files. If you ever plan on searching any of those directories for some reason, then downloaded NWC files are not going to be the problem for you. On my PC, the relevant directory has over 500 files, with a total of over 6 Meg of data. The one NWC file I just dowloaded is less than 400 bytes - neither the one file nor its size is going to bother me in the slightest. Shoot, the NWC forum seems to put far more files (and bytes) in that directory "behind the scenes" than I'll ever put there with my downloads.
I am not arguing here for something I want for the sake of me - I have had no trouble whatsoever with copy-and-paste clips. I am arguing here for something I think would be better to the less experienced folks who join the forum, both now and in the future (when looking back at old posts).
Hi Rick - I did not attempt to sort my list into "priority" or "likelihood" order. If I had, I certainly would have listed my first point last! I agree that most users who are experienced enough to post quoted clip text are likely experienced enough to have authenticated themself. (Although you might consider that folks who currently show up as authenticated may well not have been at the time they made some of their posts of quoted text clips.) I think it's most likely that folks don't know an NWCTXT file can contain simply an NWCTXT clip - I didn't know this until I tried it just today! I also think some folks don't believe what I believe, that [startrek] the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or one) [/startrek]. I personally am quite guilty of posting clips as quoted text, out of laziness. I am proposing not what I've been doing, or want to do, but what I feel I (and others) should do, particularly to help the inexperienced.
Hi William - You are welcome to your preference. But particularly for inexperienced users, I think the file attachment is far superior. It is not at all intuitive that quoted text can be copied-and-pasted directly into NWC (where it magically becomes graphical notation), and we often have to explain to users how to do this. Further, the mechanics of selecting all the quoted text (no more, no less) are not trivial, via mouse grabbing. Also consider that the user may not have NWC running, and has to start it up on their own (or at least select the window manually if it happens to be already running). Contrast this with a file attachment, where it couldn't be more trivial and intuitive to simply click on the file. If you are having to "hunt down" where it got dowloaded to, then you may have something configured wrong! It should come up automatically in NWC, without ever knowing where the actual file was. (And if you're worried about tiny nwctxt files "cluttering" up your disk, then you'd be amazed at the huge "temp" files that constantly get left on your disk by NWC and other applications!)
Hi Richard - I think you are confusing NWCTXT files with NWCTXT file format. I did not suggest that folks put their entire song file into an attachment when only a particular clip is relevant. I agree it would be silly to bury the example within a song! What I suggested was putting the clip (and the clip only) in an NWCTXT file. It would still be in the NWCTXT clip format, but it would be much more trivial and intuitive for users to load that clip than via copy-and-paste. The end result is identical - it's just that a bit more work by the poster (to create and attach a file) makes it easier on many readers.
Folks on this forum tend to post NWCTXT clips as quoted text within posts, rather than as attached files. There are several possible reasons for this:
They are unaware that they can easily authenticate themselves as licensed NWC 2.X users, giving them the ability (among other things) to attach files to posts. See https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=5483.0 for details.
They are unaware that NWCTXT clips can be placed into an NWCTXT file for attachment to a post. Yes, NWC can load NWCTXT clip format from an NWCTXT file!
They are unaware that a little extra work on their part (to create and attach an NWCTXT file) can save much more work on the readers' parts, by allowing them to simply click on the file rather than cut and paste.
IMHO, folks should try to always post examples as attached files, even if they are just a single object in the extreme! (One annoyance however is that the burden of choosing a unique file name is placed on the user - too bad the forum can't auto-generate a unique file name upon submission.)
No apologies needed. I've been meaning to add more instructions here anyway!
First off, I'd recommend making sure you have the very latest beta version of NWC, and then the very latest beta version of NWC User Tools. These are both pretty trivial to download and install from the backstage forum (once you've authenticated yourself as a valid NWC 2.X user): https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?board=8.0.
Secondly, make sure you only invoke the editor as a User Tool. From the error message below, you seem to have the user tool defined correctly. But for posterity, the recommended user tool name is "nwctxt File Editor (prw)" for your file editing user tool entry, and/or "nwctxt Clip Editor (prw)" for your clip editing user tool entry. The user tool command for both is "php\php.exe scripts\prw_nwctxtFileEditor.wxphp" (rename my script above from ".v#.php" to ".wxphp"). For your file editing user tool entry, make the input type "file text" and check the "returns file text" option. For your clip editing user tool entry, make the input type "clip text". For both user tool entries, make at least one of "long task handling" and "prompts for user input" be checked, and optionally check "compress input".
Please let me know if you have any further troubles!
I would be happy with something that just tells me the likely fundamental notes going on at certain points in time - I'd "connect the dots" myself, and assign instruments to the resulting lines, all by ear. It'd be akin to SharpEye, where you don't necessarily get a good final picture out of the software, but you get something that jump-starts your manual entry, possibly tremendously.
Thank you MusicJohn/Maurizio/Lawrie/David/Phil/Barry! I see now that perhaps they haven't made a big jump in technology, as they appeared to be claiming. (I'm a computer and electrical engineer by trade, and having dabbled with running Fourier transforms on music myself, I still believe there will be a big breakthrough one day.) But I will download the demo to see for myself, and report back, though I now expect to be quite disappointed. Perhaps I will start a new thread in 2 years, when the next "breakthrough" software comes out (unless a 4-hr-old member beats me to it ;-).
Debaumann - It was my fault for not being clear off the top I was looking into audio recognition! I will see if I can retroactively change the title of this thread...
1. I'm actually not at all interested in WAV or MIDI! I'm interested only in a program that can go from MP3 to Music XML (then from Music XML to NWC using my importer). I guess I could have thought to search the forum for WAV instead of MP3, and/or MIDI instead of Music XML, but I was really only interested in the very latest technology. From what I read at the link, they seem to have jumped light years ahead just recently! I just wish I had a place where I could talk to other interested folks without bothering the uninterested.
2. I think the term "semi-annual" (as well as "biannual") means every six months, when it's been more like "every other year" for the WAV to MIDI discussions? Searching back, I found mostly a bunch of unapplicable MIDI to WAV posts - roughly 3 times as many as the WAV to MIDI posts. For the latter, there was this in early 2009 (https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=6748.0), but the FAQ it points to has not been updated in a year! Going back further, I found an early 2007 post, and a 2005 post, etc.
So I apologize for not thinking to search for WAV and/or MIDI, and I apologize that I had not yet joined the forum at the time of the most recent WAV to MIDI post.
Sorry I wasn't more clear - I'm looking at software for audio recognition this time, not visual recognition! Instead of scanning sheet music, I'm wondering how software does at listening to MP3's/CD's and picking out at least all the notes/harmonics present, and possibly connecting them into voices/parts by the timbre of the instruments making them. With my engineering background, I know it can be done, and will be done quite well at some point in the future. But looking at the link above makes me wonder if the future has arrived to some degree, based on their sale's pitch!
Sorry guys. It was my understanding that NWC 2.5 was available to any authenticated NWC 2.X user at this point, as a download from the backstage area of the forum. I also thought that using a built-in/native NWC font was easier than finding/downloading/installing a non-NWC font. I further thought dumping an NWC post on him was better than sending him off to figure out another web site. But I was apparently wrong about all this! My bad.
If anyone is interested in surveying NWC's handling of text-based fields wrt to which can currently be cleared and which cannot (I did not thoroughly do this), here is a list of them:
File properties:
All SongInfo fields - Title, Author, Lyricist, Copyright1, Copyright2, Comments
Font field - Typeface
Staff properties:
All (current) AddStaff fields - Name, Label, Group
Actually, the trill and mordent at least are directly available in plain NWC 2.5, per the example in the link I posted - no outside font required! I'm not sure of the status of arpeggio and tremolo, with regard to needing an outside font or not.
With the recent expansion from "clip text" to "file text", I wonder if the intention is to allow use of NWC2ClipItem for file properties, staff properties, and staff lyrics, in addition to the staff notations it was originally designed for. It is basically already there as far as I can tell, except for one "bug". I've noticed that if I set the Title/Author/Lyricist/etc to an empty string in an NWC2ClipItem object and then ReconstructClipText, the empty string value gets dropped. For example, "Title" => "" becomes simply '|Title' instead of '|Title:""' as expected. Then NWC sees a text label with no field value and does not overwrite the value it has. This prevents a file text script from clearing a SongInfo field. [Interestingly, if NWC sees even just '|Title:' it clears the field, so the colon is the key, not the quotes.]
The problem is that ReconstructClipText assumes that an empty string value is indicative of a "flag" field, and just moves the key into the nwctxt without any value. Only after that does it test the opt tag classification for text and add quotes if so. If the empty string handling could be suppressed for text opt tags, the subsequent quoting code would do what we want I think. [As an alternative fix, NWC could change its behaviour upon a field label with no text value, and assume that means to set the field to an empty string, rather than simply ignoring the field label. The text staff notations (e.g. Instrument/Name) seem to already have this behaviour.]
Bottom line: I'd like to be able to set any text-based field to an empty string in a clip item object, and have that make it back to NWC as a "clear field" operation.
Welcome to the forum. If you authenticate yourself on the forum as a valid NWC user, you'll get "backstage" access to a number of goodies. Among them is this link, which I think gives you much of what you ask: https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=7375.0
Hi William - I'm terribly sorry to be bothering you about this. It's a topic that interests me, and I'm trying to collaborate with others of similar interest, to obtain the "final answer" for quintuplets. I thought we could post this answer in the tips and tricks (minus all the discussion to get to that point) for someone to perhaps find and use in the future. If no one ever uses it, then you are right about me wasting everyone's time. I wish I could direct this post to only those very few who may be interested, but I know of no way to do that.
I've attached a quick little user tool. It finds a text object containing "quintuplet" and converts it and the following 5 eighth notes into a quintuplet. I'd expand it to 5 quarters and/or 5 sixteenths if there were any interest.
William - I agree with you on using the pedals for non-piano! I use them regularly for handbells, to simulate an "LV" (let vibrate).
Peter - That's an ingenious way to independently control note on and note off! Using this concept from you, and Rick's rest chords, I think we have a pretty good solution for quintuplets now. I've attached a version of William's example below for comment.
The solution looks intimidating, but it really isn't. There's basically a stock sequence of 6 objects per quintuplet member:
3. Pad rest from rest chord to fill out note on time.
4. Set up for "no-break" note off with hidden grace note.
5. Turn note off with hidden grace note.
6. Rest to provide note off time.
To create a quintuplet, all one has to do is cut and paste this stock sequence 5 times. Then select each sequence in turn and ctrl-shift-arrow to move the set of 4 notes en masse to the proper note. Then select the 32nd rests in the middle of the 2nd and 4th sequences one at a time, and change them from 32nd rests to double-dotted 64th rests. Finally, add some sort of text "5" bracket. (Alternatively, one can cut and paste a stock sequence already having all 5 sets, to avoid having to adjust the 2nd and 4th set rests.)
The visible portion would of course be better if we could beam the eight notes. The audio portion is pretty close to perfect, given that a "real" solution would still be off too, due to divide-by-5 round-offs in MIDI. The solution I give offers a 67-to-11 (or 64-to-11) note on-to-off ratio, which is pretty good compared to a regular eighth which is 80-to-16.
I'll take a stab at a user tool to automate this, and post it soon for comment.
Agree with you on the default. Just was hoping to stave off discussion on how best to remove added notes (lest someone brings up the "globalmod" user tool :-).
Last update for now is attached above. I've added a bunch of field value keywords. Again, without a context-sensitive lexer, there is no way to sort out keywords with multiple uses.
