Thank you, Opagust, for developing this superb new user tool! It saved my day (or, to be precise: a couple of nights) Let me point out just 2 features I like most with it: - It is one single tool, carrying both the export and import functions. So, though it needs to be called separately for each export and import step of every file to be added, you can take advantage of the 'CTRL-ALT-F8' shortcut for 'Repeat Last Tool Used' over and over again (and just adding an 'i' takes you into import mode). - It is very forgiving w.r.t. all sorts of inconsistencies between the files to be processed.
After (re-)assembling 4 medleys out of 24 single choir song files with accompaniment, I'd like to give a few pieces of advice for smooth operation: - Each staff in any of the single files should find a corresponding staff in the destination file, preferably with a consistent staff name. Though the tool automagically resolves all such mismatches, clearing them in advance saves time by avoiding many queries in the process. - With each staff of the destination file, establish in advance the max. number of lyrics lines that may occur in a corresponding staff of any of the single files. Otherwise, some lyrics content might get lost on import. - On processing long files section-wise (due to clipboard size restrictions), be sure not to hit a hyphen in any line of lyrics, with a section border (by selecting 'end measure'). Presently, this might disrupt the lyrics line affected. - If any of the files to be processed contains text items, make sure the associated fonts are properly assigned in the destination file.
Hi Bart, thanks for replying. And thank you in particular for sharpening my awareness of potential external influences on the conditions of a score, as long as these are not controlled in the score itself. What I am interested in, however, is not changes in the score through the editor, but the momentary numerical values of the internal parameters at a given point of the score during play. I don't think a user tool can provide that, but it would probably need an object plugin instead, which could be inserted at the point of interest like a probe. As an example, let's take a long crescendo over, say, 20 notes, between a standard p and a standard f. Now my question could be: When play has reached the 7th note under that crescendo, what are the numerical values of velocity, volume, and expression at the end of that note? And if I set an accent on that note, or a marcato: How would those values change? What if I used an active hairpin instead of the 'cresc' marker, and what if some MPC interfered? I could look forward to a lot of interesting experimenting with such a tool, and I would love being able to base my adjustments in the score on numbers instead of trial & error & just listening. BTW: Tina Billet's fabulous documents are well-known here, but I would love being able to measure her results.
Tinkering with changing conditions in a score, using tempo or dynamic variances, hairpins, MPCs and the like, I am trying to get a better understanding of their mutual interactions. To this end, it would be helpful to get an indication of the current values of certain parameters (like tempo, velocity, volume, expression etc.) at a given point of a staff in a playing score. Is such a tool available in NWC vers. 2.75a.2, or does an appropriate user plugin exist?
Hi Rich, what you describe is almost exactly what I have been preparing for my choir mates over the past 15 years or so (as a just-singer with no further musical education). It is a still manual procedure, which was greatly eased with the advent of the R command a couple of years ago. But what I don't understand in your description is: Why do you remove all dynamics and MPCs from the emphasised voice, and put that staff on a constant fff velocity? In my rehearsal files I keep all dynamics (which are normally velocity-controlled) as they are. They are not disturbed by raising or lowering the staff volume, and the effect of staff volume 120 versus 60 for the dimmed voices appears sufficient for emphasis, while still having the dimmed voices audible for reference. In those cases where a volume change would be used (mostly, to achieve a dynamic variance over a sustained note), I simply use expression MPCs instead (and that already in the master file, for all voices). Other than volume variations, they do their job unaffected by any change of staff volume (At least with the standard sound equipment found on most home computers, AFAIK 'volume' and 'expression' act on the same MIDI parameter, without disturbing each other).
Soundcheck of the new medley ran flawlessly, as expected. Now, my comments: First__ I am very happy with this new tool! Second__ A few glitches were encountered that appear to me as resulting from little bugs: 1. The MedleyTitle mechanism: a) I didn't understand from the description that the MedleyTitle apparently has to appear in the comment section of one of the imported files. Intuitively, I had first put it in the comments of the destination file, but there it had no effect. Perhaps the description/Help text could be amended to reflect this. b) Unlike the title of the first song, the MedleyTitle should not appear in the score as a text marker. c) The MedleyTitle swallows too much information. Preferably, it should get just the text folllowing the 'MedleyTitle' keyword in line. However, in all of my attempts it grabbed much more: Up to the 2nd filled line of the comments, and even more, the complete content of the 'Author' field in the File info box. 2. Extending incomplete staves: On a hidden staff existing but empty in the destination file, on the first import extension ran smoothly, perfectly handling even repeats, time sig changes and the like. However, it didn't account for a time sig change that occurred in the very last measure of the destination file, thereby causing a half-measure shift of everything following on that staff. (In the imported file, that staff started with a long MMR; that, by itself, was handled perfectly, even through an interruption due to overrun-induced sectioning.)
Third__Let's now proceed to department NTH (nice to have): 1) I had a few failed attempts starting the tool, with aborts and cryptic error messages, until I recognized it required, upon installation, to have all 3 ticks on the right of the user tool box *set*, i.e. Input Type: *File Text*, Options: *Returns File Text* & *Prompts for User Input* . If this advice could be added to the heading message of this thread, this could save some not-everyday-users of user tools from frustration. 2) Avoid to set another text marker in the score with the 2nd (and following) section of a file. (This might be handled by recognizing a start measure of '0' as indicating the start section of a file). 3) Could the double bar inserted on extension of an empty staff be avoided? 4) The appearence of the resulting score could be improved through once more checking for incomplete staves, and extending them, after the import. Possibly, this could be done only with the last imported section of a file, indicated by 'last measure=1024'. 5) Clipboard overflow is not detected until the final step of import. Could that be detected earlier, preferably in the export phase?
Before this runs into a never-ending story (Hydra is still lurking! ), I better stop it here, once more leaving all the work to the master (Working material in PM). Horst
And once more: Congratulations, Opagust -- Your refined tool works close to perfect! I have just completed my 2nd medley out of 5 songs, with 6-8 staves. Excellent, your handling of mismatched parameters like staff names, stereo pans etc., that saved me a lot of extra work in preparation of the files. Actually, it seems I've dumped a lot of work I didn't want to do manually, on your shoulders -- but now it is saved in your tool for further use. I found a few glitches (if not user handling errors, who knows?), and a few potential improvements came to my mind. I'll comment on these tomorrow. And, similar to Hydra (the classical one): One wish fulfilled, makes two or more new ones arise... Thanks and so long, Horst
Soundcheck of my first medley accomplished -- it ran flawlessly through all transitions on all staves and ended properly! A few observations made during the first work on this: - Bar Lines: The standard 'section close' at the end of a staff is not recognized as a bar line. So every staff that does not have an explicit bar line at the end will lack a bar line at the joint of the two components. The import mechanism should precede each imported staff with an extra bar line or, even better, a double one. (Didn't yet check the behaviour if the ending bar is a special one, like MRC, or if the imported staff starts with an MRO). - Song Titles: - Size: The 18pt size of the text items appeared a bit bombastic to me, inside the score. Changing them to 75% made them appear much more adequte in my eyes. Also, I pushed them up to pos. 21 in order to keep them from interfering with tempo markers. - Strangely, all the title text items are shown in quotation marks. These should be avoided. - More strangely, the word "Can't" in the title string appears as "Can\'t" in the text item. - More as a hint to myself for the preparation phase: In order to have the first element consistently marked with its song title as well, the first destination file should not be that of the first song but an empty template instead. This should carry the title of the complete medley in its File Info. (Or could even that be handled by the import mechanism itself? It would avoid an extra copy-paste cycle.) - Truncation of overflowing text: It would be desirable if pasting could continue anyway, then signal the last bar number pasted. For the section(s) to follow, could there be an option in the selection box like 'last' or 'end'? This would avoid having to look up the last bar number.
In the first attempt, I had some confusion with lyrics, but that could be quickly traced back to flaws in my original files. In most cases, the mess was due to my habit to omit lyrics on every second staff where voices are running in parallel, then failing to mark all the notes of that staff as bearing no lyric syllable. Having no observable effect in the single file, it perfectly prepared the muddle with any lyrics to follow on that staff. So, my hint for the preparation phase: Any note that carries no lyrics has to be marked as such under Properties/Lyric Sylllable: Never.
BTW, in preparing my song files by adding missing staves, I was happy to find your older tool 'ExtendStaff.js' which smoothly did the job of filling them up. And with great joy I found above that my wish to have that tool incorporated in the import mechanism is about to be fulfilled before I could even utter it! Would you like to see the result? Unfortunately I think I cannot post it here since it is certainly not in PD. What about PM?
Congratulations, Opagust: You've made it! I have just completed the first medley out of 5 songs. The look of it appears really OK after a few manual modifications. Sound check will follow tomorrow, and then, of course, a couple of comments. Hope I can find sleep now, excited as I am... Horst
Thanks Flurmy, for pointing to these plugins. I didn't know them yet, and so I was referring to native NWC behaviour above. Quite probably, I'll make use of them in the future, but I think they will not be required in the present context. Regards, Horst
Hi hmmueller, I agree, as long as you see it with a composer's eyes. But that's not me. I am just transcribing sheet music into NWC rehearsal files for my choir mates. And since I want to enable them to read the rehearsal file in parallel with the printed score, measure numbers do always matter for me. Of course, I sometimes use text markers as well to mark sections or points of special attention. Regards, Horst
For the present purpose to re-assemble a given medley from its constituents, inserting just at the end would certainly be sufficient. Later users, composers in particular who want to build their own medleys, might wish to be able to rearrange the songs. Then, selection of the starting measure would be desirable. As to measure numbers: Since there seems to be no mechanism in NWC to set an arbitrary new measure number within a song, it appears natural to keep the measure numbers of the copied songs undetermined, making them adapt themselves to the existing ones. In my special case, with the measure numbers of the medley consecutively running through all the songs, I had adhered to them by properly setting the start number of each song; so, when re-placed in the medley, each song will retain its assigned measure numbers if put there in the proper order. But if one thinks of the opposite case, where someone might wish to disassemble a given medley: Then it might be desirable to have an option to set the start number of each copied song. Importing the song title of each copied song as a text item is great. It would save a lot of work one would otherwise have to do manually after copying. Hip-hip-hurrah! Horst
Wow, Opagust: You appear already deeply immersed in my issue! Yes, the destination file needs to be prepared first by blowing it up to the maximum number of staves that may follow, in a proper order. That applies as well to the number of lyrics lines per staff. Selectability on the copy side would be desirable (with the naturally implied option to take them all). As to staff names, I was a bit divided: At first, I thought of designating a start staff at the destination, and from there just consecutively adding the copied staves. But that would raise the question where to put the staves of subsequent songs with less voice parts. So, it appears advisable to adhere to a goal-finding mechanism by staff names. Though I haven't always been consistent with staff naming, repairing this first in the songs to be added seems a fair price to pay. Filling up non-existent voice parts in the destination file by multi-measure rests, and potential collapsing, are good ideas. Wish you good luck! Horst
Yes: Rick's pair of tools demonstrates the fundamental idea that apparently 2 separate tools are required for my task. I had looked at them, but refrained from using them: Since they operate on a single staff, and place it in the destination file as a separate staff not allowing immediate concatenation with an existing one, they would hardly have reduced my workload with respect to the ordinary manual copy-paste procedure. On the other hand, the fantastic power of your tool, Opagust, is that it handles a bunch of staves at once, and also does the concatenation job like a charm, albeit just within one file. Doesn't that cry for a synthesis? CopyPasteMeasures.og would need another option of 'Just Copy' which should finally provide the address of the copied stuff. Then, the 'Paste' part of that tool would have to be separated into a stand-alone tool, to be operated from the destination file and receiving the 'clipboard' address. It would, however, have to ask for the starting point in terms of first staff to be pasted to, and start measure (but why not, just the cursor position?). Unfortunately, my own programming skills are quite ancient, so I can't readily cope with lua and the like myself.
Hi Bart, thanks for your contribution. But maybe it wouldn't need that much automation of the user tool. I think of having the destination file already open in the same NWC window, just under another tab. Then, it would be of great help if, after copying a bunch of staves in the source file, then manually opening the destination file tab, I could have access to the copied stuff to manually paste it into the destination file.
This tool appeared to be great for me, but now I wonder: Is it not meant to do what I want, or am I just too stupid to use it properly? My purpose is to merge several songs of choir music (of types varying between SAB and SSAATTBB, each of them with piano accompaniment) into a single file, thus restoring the medley they were originally separated from as a whole. Copying a bunch of staves at once, including lyrics, seems to go like a charm with the tool, but I can't figure out how to paste these to a prescribed position of a separate file thereafter. Actually, our choir's present programme consists of four musical medleys, each of which carrying between 5 and 8 single songs. Over the past year, I had supplied our members with rehearsal files of each of the single songs, one after the other. Carelessly, I had recently announced I would try to provide the complete medleys as well, as they are to be performed. But meanwhile I've realized what tremendous amount of dull work this would be, copying staff after staff, and lyrics line after lyrics line... Can anyone help me out?
A strange observation: In the posted sample, mute any note in any staff before bar 39: Indicated play time goes to 3:18, and the odd tempo change behaviour disappears. Mute any note in or after bar 39, and the odd behaviour persists. Whatever that may mean...
Just spotted your post by chance, and not knowing the exact reason of your problem, I think I can at least present a work-around: In bar 38, replace the sequence "dotted-half rest | tempo=50" by "half rest | eighth rest | tempo=50 | eighth rest". It seems as if a tempo change (and probably other instructions as well) needs a dedicated note to work on, which it doesn't have in your original notation: There, the two consecutive tempo changes both act on the first note of bar 39, with seemingly unpredictable results. Regards, Horst
Hi all, (coming in as a first-time poster, but year-long reader of this forum, and reg. user since eons) there seems to be a simpler solution to jfb's problem of non-final melismatic syllables: In the lyrics text box, just add a blank to each such syllable, keeping the associated hyphen attached to the following syllable, e.g. change "im-ple-vit" to "im -ple -vit". The result can be seen in the first staff of the attached file, where I left the 2nd staff unmodified for comparison. Maybe it doesn't meet strict engraving rules, but to my eyes, at least, it appears quite nice. On the first occurrence of "dimisit", staff 1 also demonstrates what results if the trick is inadvertently applied to a non-melismatic syllable: Not the standard look, but not too weird either.
), I better stop it here,