I just found a solution, that seems ok for a start. CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth: http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth#download and this set of sounds: FluidR3 soundfont (144 MB): www.synthfont.com/SoundFonts/FluidR3_GM.sfArk It took me a little while to unzip and install properly, but it works fine. It takes NWC2 a few seconds to start playback, though, compared to when I used Microsoft GS Wavetable. But that´s not a big problem.
This is a "dummy-sort-of" question, following my first experiences with orchestrated music for a short movie, discussed under "General Discussion" - (topic: Wrong sounds in orchestral score - https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=8488.0).
I need a much better sound output than I have, using Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth. AND - yes, I have seen the many good instructions in the Scriptorium and elsewhere. And I will study all of that!
Just thought that someone might point me in the right direction, when I tell you I use Windows 7, 64bit.
I feel good about what´s written about Hammersound and the SoundFont file to use with the BASSMIDI SoundFont Compatible MIDI Synthesizer Driver (by Rcik Nagel). But I´m open to anything.
A last remark here and thanks for your help: Using the 16 channels available in the way described earlier in this post, I have now almost 30 different instruments playing in my piece without problems. And converting to MIDI and from there to mp3 was also no problem with Synthfont. The sound picture in the mp3 is identical to my NWC2 file. Great!
One thing you haven't told us is the sound device you are using. It could be possible that your sound device has two synthesisers like the Creative X-Fi or Audigy. If that is the case you can have 16 channels per synth port without conflict.
Sorry, I didn´t answer this important question sufficiently. The playback device I use is Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth. And I have to stick to that for the moment due to deadline. But having made MIDI and mp3 testfiles yesterday -trying different software like Audacity, Synthfont, GarageBand (Mac) and Q-Base - made me aware of two things: 1) I might get a better result using software like Q-Base (my son use it) in the first place (but I´d still like to explore the possibilities of NWC2). And - 2) The sound picture I have in my piece in NWC2 may - as I hear it - change in the conversion, when I use Synthfont to translate the MIDI-file (exported from NWC2) into a mp3 - which, as earlier mentioned, is what I have to deliver to the guy who´s making the film in IMovie (MAC).
At this moment I´m busy trying ot get the piece to sound as I want it to. Thanks to your help I´m getting on well.
You might want to look at an existing score to see how it's done. Try Beethoven's 6th.....
Thank you, I think I´m getting the picture now. My score sounds right after some corrections. Only my staffs are not in numerical order, since the whole thing developed as I worked. Apart from the aspect of order and systematic discipline, - is it a probleme that the staffs are not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. from top?
A percussion set is a patch that has a different (percussive) instrument for each note. Timpani is a kind of percussive instrument in which the pitch of each note is well defined, so it can not be a percussion set but a standard voice patch (so normally it can't be assigned to channel 10).
sequentially assign Channels to the staves, from "1" to "16" (Reserving "10" for percussion sounds.)
Why "10" for percussion? Does it only work on that channel? I had timpani sounding in one staff, when I changed the channel to 10, I don´t hear the timpani any longer, but a regular set of drums in stead -?
Hello all! Let me get this right: I organize 16 chairs on the stage (my score) and at any given moment there can only be one musician in each chair. However - from time to time you may see that some of the musicians will leave their chair and another instrumentalist will take their place. And behind some of chairs you may see additional chairs, i.e. 3 violins instead of only one. But the three violin chairs will then have the same number (channel). And of course you can´t have one musician trying to finish a long note, while another attempts to start playing something on the same chair. In this way I can have say 30 or more instrumental sounds in my piece, correct? The sound level I guess will have to be fixed for each channel, but then I can use dynamics like pp og FF a.s.o. - ? And this is no problem when proceeding to MIDI and ultimately converting to mp3? (I´m doing a piece of film music for a short movie intented for YouTube.)
Ok, for the time being, I´ll stick to 16 channels and make that work. Question: When I right-click on a staff, I get a choice under "MIDI Control" called "Instrumental change". Does that give me the possibility of changing the instrument-sound in one staff? Could be useful, if I only need one blow of a horn in the first bar, and some harp arpeggios in the end?
I´m doing my first orchestral score, which is ment to be played with synthesizer sounds, not real instruments this time. I made the score adding more and more staffs as my work progressed and I needed more instruments. Because the piece moves around a lot in different keys and meters, I some times copied a number of bars from one existing staff to a newly created - to save time. I notice that the key signatures are places correctly, even if I paste bars from a trebble clef to a bass clef. So that part seems to go smoothly. Here comes the problem: Some of the staffs sound right when played individually (using shift+f5), but when I play a part of the whole score, I hear instrumental sounds, that should be silent at that moment. For instance: I have rock organ, harp and flute in the band. Some bars should be played by flute and harp, but the organ - for some reason - joins in, although it does NOT have any notes in those bars. I am not short of RAM, so that´s not the reason. And unfortunately I have a deadline I will be greatful for any suggestions?
IMO, viewed at 100% in Adobe, Ex1.pdf and Ex2.pdf don't look very good.
Ups, I forgot to attach the latest attempt, described yesterday at 5:03pm. Here it is. It´s clearly better than the two previous, and actually I find this ok from 100% and up.
Hi, it´s more than ok that you point to the week part of the method I just described: the 100% view isn´t satisfying. However I must assume that my method preserves a very high resolution all the way through to the pdf, since both the 75% and 800% views are totally sharp! A mystery to me, actually, why only the 100% view goes blurry??
I still would like to try what you´re suggesting, but I´m afraid I don´t understand the code (not being an expert - yet). What do I do step by step with my NWC theme? And are you also saying that it makes a difference, which fontsize or print preview magnification I use - before saving as emf?
Yes! That was the missing cue! I can see now, that Richard W. suggested this path already in his first answer, but then I didn´t know I could crop the picture in Word.
So - for anybody, who might need this too - the procedure goes like this: Take your piece of music into "Print Preview", enlarge it if needed, press "Copy", chose "Save as emf". In Word insert the emf, doubleclick and do the editing, cropping etc., save the Wordfile. From this file you can copy the finished picture into another Wordfile, if you wish.
This took a heavy burden off my shoulders, thank you. A nice start in this forum!
By the way - I have seen people struggling with this problem in other forums, so I wonder: Is this method described anywhere in NWC helpfiles? Maybe it ought to be?
Ok, for attachments I had to upgrade my account. However, the pdf I made was too big, so I post the text here and attach the examples.
Creating music examples with NWC2 to be inserted into Word2010 and converted to PDF for onscreen reading (eBook)
Working with an eBook layout I have made some illustrations - music examples and black/white drawings with small texts - and I discovered that allthough these appeared perfectly in a printed version of the book, the same illustrations weren´t good enough for onscreen viewing, where they have to appear clear and readable on different screens and in different sizes (if the reader would like to zoom in). So I need some vectorbased illustrations of a reasonable size and in a format, that can be inserted into Word without ending up with enormous files. Using the easiest way – printscreen and Paint, it seems you won´t get resolutions above 100 dpi.
Example #1: (se attachment ex.1) Done this way: In NWC highlight bars, Edit/Copy Special, mark ”all open staves”, paste into Word, needed to change color to black since one of the staffs were blue.
Ups: In Word this picture stands very clear and the colour is absolutely black. When converted into PDF (prepress settings) this method gives me by far the best resolution in the endproduct, compared to the other methods suggested. All elements (notes, beams, slurs etc.) stands perfectly sharp from 75 to 800%, although for some reason the 100% view isn´t quite as clear.
Downs: How to get rid of the anchors? (they are still showing in front of the two texts, although minimized to 0,1 using Tools/Options). And I don´t get the brace in front of the two staffs and the barline in the end. And the colour problem.
Example #2: (se attachment ex.2) Done this way: From NWC Print Preview, Copy to clipboard, pasted into Corel Paintshop Pro X5, cropped and saved as .emf (preserving vectordata). Inserted into Word with no colourchanges. (Using the NWC Printer Setup Command shows me different options (from 300 to 1200 dpi), but choosing any of them doesn´t seem to affect the resolution of the Screenprint. I think the settings are only kept if I press “ok” to print, but I may be wrong here).
Ups: I get the whole staff picture, including the brace in front of the two staffs and the barline in the end of the staffs. And no anchors.
Downs: Already in Word this picture is worse than example #1. It ´s greyish in colour, the notelines are poorly rendered. The resolution in PDF (converted as before using prepress settings) is not satifying, the whole picture is blurred.
Question: If from Print Preview (ex.#2) I choose “save as emf” instead of copy to clipboard, I get an emf-file that is 1) of a reasonable size, and 2) looks good when inserted into Word. But - the file hasn´t been cropped! So, if for that purpose I open the file in Corel Paintshop Pro, it doesn´t show notes as when pasted into the same programme, but some boxes where to the notes should be. Why is that?
Conclusion: I´ve been told that taking vector graphics into Word (needed for delicate detailed figures as f.i. musicnotes) can ony be done in eps, wmf and emf formats. I haven´t been succesful working with eps, but emf – as recommended here in the NWC forum – seems to be the right format. However I find it difficult to go through a graphics editor such as Photoshop or Corel Paintshop Pro, because I seem to get either a loss of resolution (bitmap instead of vector) or enormous filesizes. Apparently some exercises with the settings in Paintshop and other software is needed here, since many parameters seem to influence what happens to the graphics when the file is opened and saved.
Hi I´ve made some experiments using methods suggested by the two honourable members Rick. G and Richard W. and have described these in a pdf, which I had hoped to be able to attach to this post. But I can´t find out how. There is no sign of it in "additional options"? Until you get this pdf, this post doesn´t really make sense, but here it is anyway. For me the goal is to have nice onscreen-readable illustrations in a published pdf (ebook). This would be a different matter had I used e.g. InDesign for the book layout instead of Word, but I can´t change that right now. The two things I find most annoying in this quest is 1) the fixed resolution when using Windows printscreen and paste to e.g. Paint (because that method is so easy), and 2) the difficulties in preserving vector graphics without getting enormous files.
A few things I still can´t figure out: I still don´t see any change in resolution or message when right-clicking from Print Preview? I would prefer to find a method that would allow me to make "fixed" pictures containing a setup of e.g. two different music examples and some explaining text -and be able to insert these into Word, instead of having to control interaction and and position of the mentioned elements in the layout.
Thanks for the help so far. I hope to get even closer!
When you have selected which you want, the relevant bars will be copied to the clipboard in emf format which you will then be able to paste into Word.
Two questions: where is this emf saved? (I need to use the sample more than once) - and the anchors appear also. Is there a way to avoid that? The emf looks quite good after inserted in Word, but the slurs are not convincing - in strong contrast to the very sharp notes and lines.
Thank you for this (have been away for some days, so couldn´t answer.) "The trick is to use Print Preview: Right-click to get full resolution." - right-clicking doesn´t give me a choice of resolution, only view-%. What do you mean here?
"adjust the dpi of the printer that you have selected with the Printer Setup Command before you capture the screen." - Your attachment #3 looks perfect with totally sharp nodeheads and lines, but what happens to the slurs here?? Looks like bad resolution? If they weren´t blurry, I´d surely use this sample. As I understand your comments, sample #3 was made with Print Preview and printscreen, right? Are you then saying that "Printer setup command" gives me the possibility of changing the resolution of a printscreen? I read a lot about this topic, and no one seems to be able to come up with means to change the hard default resolution of approx. 72dpi, that is used in printscreens. I therefore assume that using (from Print Preview) "Copy/save as .emf" (as Rich. suggests in the former post) will give me a picture with a better resolution. Do you agree - or have I missed something?
Yep, what a difference! Thank you! Just tried it out, and the result when in PDF is excellent. But NWC makes the whole sheet into emf. Is there a way to mask just the needed part (the staff is only two bars long, and contains only the motif I need to use as an illustration), or do I trim the picture afterwords in f.i. Microsoft Office Picture Manager? Or where is the highlight-tool you mention?
Hi I´m new in this forum and have for some time searched the internet for advise on how to convert note-examples made with NWC into a fil format, that can be inserted into a Word2010 doc., and eventually be clearly readable, when the doc. is converted to pdf. Many music-writers seem to have this problem. In this case I´m doing an eBook layout, so it´s not the same story as if I wanted a printed output. Until now I´ve tried print-screenshot and "Paint", saving as TIF, but the solution obtainable here is not above 100dpi. The pictures have blurry notelines and other weeknesses. I need at least 300 dpi. Any recommendations?
