First fill the top staff with whole rests, time signatures, and rehearsal symbols. I don't know of any tool that does that, but you can go to the beginning of a staff and hit Cntl/F At the end of the "Find What" line is a small box with four dots. Click on it, then select Tempo or Tempo Variance. When you find one, select it (if not done already) , Cntl/X on it and paste it upstairs. Hit F3 to repeat. I used that in Spanish Dance recently.
Just wanted to say that I enjoyed the song! It's fun to look at another person's scores as well!
Thanks for all your suggestions! These won't really be much faster than the way I was already going about it, unfortunately!
If I got it right, I suppose the problem is that the fermate are not exported to MIDI but only operate when played by NWC. N.B. The tempo changes are exported. Well, it should not be too difficult to emulate them.
Each unit of delay of a fermata is 1/16 so you can put in the score, instead of a fermata (of course you can leave the gliph with delay set to 0), a hidden rest or a hidden tied note in each staff so as to restore the proper timing.
And, of course, no, I'm not aware of any tool for doing this automatically.
If I got it right, I suppose the problem is that the fermate are not exported to MIDI but only operate when played by NWC. N.B. The tempo changes are exported. Well, it should not be too difficult to emulate them.
Each unit of delay of a fermata is 1/16 so you can put in the score, instead of a fermata (of course you can leave the gliph with delay set to 0), a hidden rest or a hidden tied note in each staff so as to restore the proper timing.
And, of course, no, I'm not aware of any tool for doing this automatically.
Sorry, do you mean it's the same length of delay as a 16th note of the same measure?
Try creating a one line staff that would be layered into the next visible staff. It would contain all tempos and tempo variances as well as all rehearsal symbols. You can search for a tempo or tempo variance and move it to your top staff.
OK, I guess I don't know how that works or how to do that! Are you saying that the program already has a feature that will automatically move all of the tempo information, etc. onto a new staff? If so, does it also move all the fermatas automatically? I'm actually more concerned about the fermatas than I am about the tempos. What I specifically want to do is convert the fermatas into tempos and be sure that they measure exactly the same as they do during playback in NWC.
For the moment, my only concern is getting all of it on one staff.
Thanks to everyone's help on this forum, I have learned a few strategies of preventing various problems concerning tempo changes when exporting .mid files. However, I have a concert coming up, and I need to revise a bunch of very old scores really fast. These scores are not very playable in their current state, since I never expected them to be performed live.
The scores have fermatas all over the place with various lengths, in addition to numerous tempo changes every several measures, some of which overlap with tempo markers, ritardandos, etc. I made them that way because, at the time it was the easiest/fastest way to create the exact rubato I wanted. I know this is a long shot, but is there a tool that can analyze all the tempo markers and fermatas in a .NWC file in one fell swoop and add everything up into a new staff with nothing but tempo markers in it? Something that will reproduce whatever calculations determine the playback speed(s) on the fly in NWC. I'm just hoping that this might be easier than it sounds, and I won't have to redo all the rubato from scratch.
This would, of course, be helpful for instances of importing into other programs, as well as cleaning up scores.
Thanks for the breath mark idea! I'm going to give that a try! Yeah, I've encountered that fermata problem you mentioned as well, haha. I fix it the same way you do.
I think I'll have to make a new midi file specifically to upload onto here and demonstrate the problem, if I can re-create it. Most of my songs are very long and complex! I'll try to check back in here in a couple days when I get home.
This has been frustrating me for years! I make midi in noteworthy composer, and then I export it to .mid files, which I can upload into Ableton and other DAWs. Sometimes the fermatas are saved properly as tempo variations, other times, they're just ignored and aren't visible anywhere in the tempo data. I haven't been able to figure out what allows this information to be exported properly vs not.
I will note (in case it's relevant) that regular tempo changes also occasionally don't export properly. This, however, only seems to happen if I have two tempos placed one after the other with no interval in between. So, for instance, I might have a ritardando which ends in 90 BPM, and then immediately switches back to the previous BPM. In those cases, I have to make sure that there is at least a quick rest or note placed between the two tempos in order for them to export properly. I haven't been able to figure out a workaround like that for the fermatas, however.
Very similar issues seem to happen with the pedal markers. Some of my petals appear in other programs when I export and import the midi file, whereas others are simply ignored, as though they weren't included in the data for whatever reason. I can't really verify whether this is happening during the exports or the imports, or both. I have been able to deduce that some DAWs seem to retain more of the midi data than others, however!
Does anybody else have these problems when exporting?
So now, @RebeccaETripp , we expect a comparative study about the highs and lows of all these apparatuses, with attached ranking lists for all features that are there and that are missing and ...
There's at least this tool ("Extend staff below with rests to cursor") I wrote somewhen. Don't know whether it does what you want - and I didn't do any updates since then
... I have just uploaded a version 0.2 which has been lying around on my computer, which does insert whole rests; however, as far as I can see, it will always count them as 4 beats. And the inserted rests are invisible (the original purpose for this tool is to help you compose, where you want to write snippets "later in the score", beforegoing back to an earlier position) - but you easily mark them and then make them visible, of course; which is also simple for many staves, as NWC keeps the selection when going to the next staff with PgDn.
... and I just found that the tool does the following: If you already have a staff of any time signature filled with full rests, and you invoke the tool, it will produce nice full rests on the staff below; this is actually a bug - but might be helpful in your case.
But the tool could be extended in various ways to make it more versatile ...
Well, that might be helpful in some cases, but with orchestras using 20+ staves, each active during different combinations of measures, setting them up would end up being more work, I think. Plus, I'd need to go back and change their values if/when I want to add anything to those parts of the staves afterwards.
I guess there isn't a tool that can automatically generate whole rest measures up until the last measure?
This is a problem I've seen mentioned on this forum a few times, but I'm not completely sure whether it's been "solved" by this point. I tired searching for a few times, but the results didn't quite seem to match my issue. I'm just going to paste in a quote from 12 odd years ago. I have the exact same query.
Noteworthy is probably preferred so much by us all because it's easy to use and very efficient, however I find that I waste a lot of time, when working with large scores, copy and pasting measures and measures of nothing but rests so that the orchestra can catch up to where I am. For example, I'm working with a 24 part orchestra but there is a section where I only have a quartet playing, for say 16 measures, I'm ready to go in and use everyone else now but before I can do that I have to go copy and paste 16 measures of whole rests 20 times! Would anyone mind making me a user tool that would auto fill the empty spaces, can it be done?
With the tool: Pitch Mod, move some instruments so that none are within 2 semitones of another
Add playing style: Tenuto to the begining of each staff
Set each staff to MIDI channel 10
Export to MIDI
Import the file you just saved specifying a Track Size of 2 semitones
Shift the instrument notes moved in step 1 to their desired place
Well, unfortunately, I have over 30 minutes worth of music to get through + carpel tunnel syndrome, which is why I'm trying not to do this all by hand. I was hoping that maybe there was a way to automate the process a bit more, like some tool that would automatically split each "note" into a different staff. So, for instance, Staff 1 has just the high As (open triangle), Staff 2 has just the low As (cymbal crash), etc, and rests are automatically put into all the blank/leftover spaces
All of these suggestions are decent, but ultimately too time consuming. I have a total of 30 minutes worth of music to get through though, which is why I'm trying not to do this all by hand.
I want it so that there's a different staff for each "note". So, that would end up being one for snares, one for hihats, one for tambourines, one for triangles, etc.
Hey! I was hoping that somebody maybe knew how to automatically separate every instrument used on a percussion stuff into individual staffs. I have a performance coming up in a couple months, and the percussion section has been a pain, and my engraver has asked me to do this, but my wrists hurt too much to do this all manually. I think Musescore used to do this, but it doesn't now, for whatever reason. Does anyone know of an instant/automatic way to do this? Maybe a website I can upload my midis to or something?
You've all been really helpful to me in the past, so thanks again in advance!
How can I make a dotted line or something else like that to indicate the number of bars I want a ritardando or other things of that nature to last? I should note that this is for a live performer.
Well... I've been up all night and it's 3 AM, doing this one note at a time for 30 minutes of music. Is there any way to automate the spacer where I can just highlight a chunk of measures and they will automatically get compressed down? I couldn't find anything like that in the user tool and there is just so, so much music to get through by the end of the week.
Thanks for your help, Lawrie. I think there's something I'm not understanding here. I tried that, but all it does (seemingly no matter how I configure it) is make the measures wider! I really want to find a way to make them narrower. So, for example, if I have one bar with nothing but 16th notes followed by a bar with two half notes, they'll both be the exact same width on a printed version.
Hello! I was wondering if there is a way to make it so that all measures are roughly of equal length (regardless of how many notes are in them). I have some passages with lots of 8th, 16th, 32nd notes, etc. Is there a way I can get them to squish down visually to add a bit more consistency to my score? Someone who plays in an orchestra is reviewing my scores and told me that it can be confusing for players when the note spacing is like this. This is what he said:
"See on the first page how rhythms aren't spaced proportionately to their length? While, of course, players read rhythms, rather than spacing, to work out rhythms, it helps immeasurably with sight-reading."
I must admit, it is frustrating when I'm printing the scores and a percussion staff with lots of smaller notes makes it so that only two bars can be printed on one page at a time! Thanks in advance for your time!
Thanks for the global modification idea! This will be helpful!
Between enharmonic spelling, forcing naturals and changing key, I can accomplish most of what I need to do. Since the global mod will allow me to make a specific selection, I think that will help with the random trickier parts.
To give some background, I rely VERY much on ear and rarely bother with key signatures at all in midi- or if I do, they're not necessarily the most helpful ones for live performers. But, as I said, all of these tools combined should take care of this issue for me.
Is there a function anywhere in the user tool (or something I could download, maybe?) which automatically generates and notates a key signature based on the notes present? Similarly, is there a way do something like take all the F#s in a staff and change them into Gbs, having everything auto-adjust where necessary (for instance, any G natural present would automatically obtain the natural symbol)?
There's a lot of painstaking work involved with some of my key signatures (or lack thereof, in some cases) and some of my performers are better with flats vs sharps, etc. Thank you once again to anyone who can help me!
Hi! I know this question has been posed many times on here, but I haven't been able to figure this out (or find any recent posts about it). If it's not too much trouble, could someone please give me a really straightforward, step by step list of instructions on how to do multi measure rests?
I've read a bunch of older threads on this topic, but there is still a gap somewhere in my understanding! I don't know anything about boxmark fonts, for isntance and, although I found a few different plugins that seemed promising, I don't know how to install them/utilize them and can't seem to find any full instructions!
Hello! First of all, let me just say that I'm grateful for the fast and effective solutions you guys offered me last time with my clef question!
I was wondering if someone could recommend a good tool for splitting chords into individual notes (preferably on their own staffs). Thanks again in advance!
Thank you all so much for your quick responses! ^_^ I haven't had the chance to try these solutions out yet (and have not actually used the user tool yet). I'll experiment on an unimportant midi to test these things out to save myself hassle if I mess it up, haha!
Thanks for welcoming me to the community. I REALLY like NWC! I find it incredibly intuitive and I can work in it so quickly- much more so than any of the other midi programs I've tried.
Hey! Does anyone know of a way to make all the existing notes on a staff conform to a new/different clef? I'm not just talking about notating in a different clef in general, but having all the notes automatically move to their respective positions on the staff according to the new clef (so, a C remains a C, etc). Musescore can do this (in that one, you just drag a clef onto the staff and everything instantly conforms/adjusts). I need this very badly with NWC since my work is going to be performed live in only a few months and I need to find a fast/efficient way put a lot of stuff that was initially written with treble and bass clefs into alto and tenor clefs- preferably without losing any other notation in the process (such as dynamics, performance styles, etc). I am so incredibly grateful to anyone who can help me with this problem!!
