You can make a file read-only before sending it to someone. This way, the person who receives the file can only view or copy it, but not modify it. If they try to make changes, they will have to save the file with a new name or in a new location. However, this does not prevent them from making a new copy of the file and editing it as they wish. There are different ways to make a file read-only depending on the type of file and the program you use to create it.
Since NWC doesn't seem to have a way to make the song files read only, Copilot tells me
Quote
To make a file read-only in Explorer, you can follow these steps¹: - Right-click on the file you want to make read-only and select Properties from the context menu. - On the General tab, check the Read-only box under Attributes and click Apply. - Click OK to close the Properties window. The file will now be read-only and you will see a lock icon on its thumbnail. This means that you can view or copy the file, but not modify or delete it. If you want to make the file writable again, you can uncheck the Read-only box and click Apply.
As an old IT pro, I advise you: Do NOT run multiple AV programs concurrently. The resident portions and background scanners seriously interfere with each other and performance and reliability will go down the toilet.
I believe you. There are so many programs running in the background it's hard to tell which are AV and which are other security features and which are just unnecessary nuisances . Acronis Cyber Protect, Bit Defender, Windows Security, even Adobe Acrobat which Windows Companion tells me "does have features that protect your computer from malicious PDFs.
Anyway, I turn them off when I can. Thanks for the tip.
Hi RoZita Welcome to the Forum. I'm sorry you're having some issues.
Are you running Windows 11 on your new computer? I had no big problems with NWC 2.8 Beta 1 on my new Windows 11 desktop, other than figuring out how to copy the user tools and special fonts from the old hard drive to the new machine.
Windows 11 itself is really ugly buggy and might be causing you some problems in running legacy (old) programmes. I don't know if the laptop and table users have the same problems, but on my desktop, browsers and file explorer windows freeze too often, open emails that I'm drafting disappear, programmes lock up or close unexpectedly, copying and pasting sometimes pastes something from the clipboard that was not the last thing copied, etc. I don't know if it's solely Win 11, the vendor loaded onto my machine with several antivirus programmes and they might be getting in the way. Sometimes it helps to check Task Manager and close what you don't think you need. Windows 11 also prioritizes the apps you're running; the ones you use less frequently go to sleep to save power - I forget what that function is called, but it can be disabled.
Windows 11's artificial intelligent tool (Windows button + C) suggests
Quote
If you’re having trouble running a legacy program on Windows 11, you can try the following steps:
Compatibility Mode: Find the EXE file of the older program. Right-click on the EXE file and open Properties. Move to the “Compatibility” tab, and enable the checkbox for “Run this program in compatibility mode for”. From the drop-down menu, select the Windows version for which the older program was developed.
Troubleshoot Compatibility: In the search box on the taskbar, type “Run programs made for previous versions of Windows” and select it in the results. Select Next, select the program you’re having trouble with, then select Next again. Select Troubleshoot program (or you can select Try recommended settings to try that). Select the problem you’re having and follow the process.
Disable Driver Signature Enforcement: If Windows 11 says that you are unable to run the program due to any driver-related issue, then you will have to disable the enforcement of the driver signature.
Virtual Machine: If none of these work, you could consider setting up a virtual machine running an older version of Windows where your software is known to work1.
It also says how to set up a virtual machine on Windows 11:
Quote
Sure, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up a virtual machine on Windows 11 using Hyper-V:
Enable Virtualization: Before you begin, make sure virtualization is enabled in your PC’s BIOS/UEFI settings1.
Open Hyper-V Manager: Press Start or hit the Windows key on your keyboard. In the Start menu, type “hyper-v manager”. Press the first result (best match) from the search results at the top.
Create a New Virtual Machine: When Hyper-V Manager opens, select your PC’s hostname from the column on the left. That opens the “Actions” panel on the right. From here, press New > Virtual Machine
New Virtual Machine Wizard: The “New Virtual Machine Wizard” will start. The first screen is a fundamental message letting you know what it’s for.
Name Your Virtual Machine: You’ll need to give your virtual machine a name that allows you to identify it easily.
Choose Storage Location: You’ll also need to choose where you’d like to store your virtual machine.
Specify VM Generation: Next, you’ll need to specify the generation of the VM.
Assign System Memory: Assign the amount of system memory (RAM) you want your virtual machine to use. Remember, you can always increase or decrease this amount later.
If you’re still having trouble, there are several helpful videos available online that provide visual guides for this process.
I hope these ideas will help you get NWC running right for you. !
This is from a Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. chart, but it doesn't say which publisher engraved it.
Here, the trill has no descriptor at the beginning of each new system. I have no preference, but if there is to be a descriptor, an accidental could help the user.
I'm using Mike's trill object for the first time. Hey, it's only been available about 7 years, these things take time.
My flatted trill begins with a half note on beat 2 of a 3/4 bar, tied over a 4/4 time change to 21 whole notes, tied to and ending on an 8th note. I've learned that the only way to display the trill the right number of bars in the edit window or in print preview is to use the Span class setting. (I didn't check playback; I only use playback as a proofreading tool and I'm not there yet with this transcription.)
Where the trill lasts past a system break, I see (tr) at the beginning of the next system just before the wavy line. Perhaps on the next update, that could change to show the accidental too? Otherwise someone reading the chart might wonder if the trill is supposed to change to a normal trill at that point.
That aside, what a wonderful tool, once again. A little late, but thanks, Mike.
(And for anyone writing for bass clarinet, please don't write trills from 3rd space C to Db for 22 bars. It's far too much work for the little fingers, with either normal fingering or the alternate. Grrr. Those keys have very long rods! An octave down or an octave up would be okay.)
I think they're just cue notes to tell the pianist what the other performer is singing or playing during the pianist's sustained notes.
You see cue notes frequently in band music.
The easiest way to write them would be to enter them on a layered staff, blank the noteheads and use Mike's CueHeads.ms tool. YOu could write them on the same staff as the piano notes, but it's finicky.
I think Discord could be a good idea, but the NWC Forum works well. There's an old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Users live in various time zones, so right now it's almost supper time where I live, but it's midmorning tomorrow in Australia, it's late evening on the other side of my country, and it's the middle of the night in Europe.
Unless I'm writing charts (a few times a year only) and need help, I won't visit the Forum unless I have a little downtime and want to see what's happening.
Help almost always comes within a couple of hours, and will remain in the archive, umm, forever? I can research my problems in the forum before pestering other users.
Does Discord save discussions in a searchable format? That would be my major concern. I wouldn't want to find the experts who use the Forum have moved away to a system I'm not familiar with.
NWC2.8 Beta 1 runs fine on Windows 11, to the extent Windows 11 runs well (I hate it so far - another unmitigated Microsoft disaster, IMHO).
You probably don't need a sound card; your motherboard will suffice. If I understand it correctly, sound, video and graphics cards were supplements to motherboards that were nowhere near as powerful as they are now.
You will need to copy the NWC fonts (including Lawrie's suite) to the new computer, and the user tools as well. Somewhere in this forum since June somebody helped me to figure out how. It wasn't hard. You may want to copy your soundfonts / instrument trees too, but those are things I've never played with.
Cautionary notes: 1/ It's suprising how many ports and drives you forget you want when you buy/set up your new machine. I had to add an external optical drive, and the new machine doesn't have a memory card slot on the face, which I forgot I wanted when I went shopping. 2/ I ran Windows 10 on my old machine and have Windows 11 on the new one. Windows 11 has a steep learning curve, and still surprises/angers/disappoints me after 3 months. Open files close unexpectedly or work very slowly when W11 puts most of your working apps into Efficiency Mode. 3/ When the vendor copied my files across, he said my existing programme files can't be used, and they weren't copied. I've been able to run some from the backup external hard drive, but some can't be found, including my favourite image editor. I had hundreds of emails needed for my big webpage project, and the Outlook (now Office 365) did not bring across the current ODT file. It seems to have chosen one that was on the second hard drive on the old computer, mail from many years ago but little from this decade. . I might be able to recover them, but I haven't had the energy to try yet. I suggest you review everything you have on the old machine, and back up anything you don't want to lose, before you try upgrading to Win 11.
Curtis and I have exchanged a couple of messages privately. He's experiencing:
Quote
For some reason my app does not play any music. Something must have changed in my settings, either in Noteworthy or in my computer. I am now using Windows 11. Any ideas as to what settings to change?
Quote
It doesn't matter which piece I open, same result. No muting. I'm running Vers. 2.75a.2, is that the latest? I've selected (only choice actually) Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth as the output.
I assume he didn't migrate to a new computer, so the problems I encountered when I did that likely aren't what he's experiencing.
in UserPlugins folder in a location I never thought of checking on the cloned old HDD. I copied them into the corresponding folder on the new machine;s SSD, and Presto! the single measure repeats show up in the big score I was concerned about.
What you and others do for the rest of us users is truly appreciated, but I think this puts you into the superhero category.
Thanks, Lawrie and Mike. I've now found and activated RepeatMark.test
Perhaps it would be best in future that when scripts/tools/objects are outdated and deprecated, they be retained anyway. My last major notation project was to extract parts from a 326 bar full band score, over Christmas. Now the conductor wants me to reprint the score in a larger font, According to the error alert log for the file, there are 245 unknown user objects. That likely means I used RepeatMark.ms 245 times, hopefully most times just in the drum part, but all those now only have hidden notes and rests, with nothing visible. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of old notation projects that I might want to rework from time to time. If they call for tools that no longer exist, I'm hooped.
I recently used either RepeatMark.ms or RepeatMark.test. One or both of these is the single bar repeat sign, and one or the other also gives you a two-bar repeat sign. Isn't this what Lawroc needs?
I recently changed computers and installed NWC 2.8 beta 1 on a machine running Windows 11. These plug-ins/usertools/objects, whatever they are, are nowhere to be found. Not on my new drive nor on my copy of the old drive on an external HDD.
One Manage Objects window lists CourtesyAcc.ms and RepeatBar.ms but says they are not installed. I can't seem to force them to install. RepeatMark.test is simply not listed. I think that window is in 2.8 beta 1. The other Manage Objects, for the most current 2.75, I think, doesn't list either.
Windows 11 is not the easiest system to figure out, granted, but now I've either lost my mind or both the repeat mark tools/plugins/whatever are no longer available.
If they're gone for good, it's a shame because they were very easy to use, if I recall from earlier this year.
And what a painless process it is. It probably took all of 1.25 seconds to identify those that had updates. All seven updates downloaded and installed in the blink of an eye.
Lawrie and Richard, thank you. I accidentally loaded the objects today (Friday) - I think they were installed when I downloaded and installed 2.8 Beta 1.
I bought a 2 TB external hard disk for just under CDN$100 a week or so ago at one of the larger electronic stores in my area. It connects by USB.
The vendor transferred (supposedly) all the files from my old computer to the new external drive. From there I was able to copy the Noteworthy folders to the new machine, including the Noteworthy folders.
The programme works okay on the new machine, although I cannot access user objects. Not gonna worry about it tonight, though.
There's no attached file, but I would think you would just let the Lyric Line Count on staffs 2, 3 and 4 to be zero. Since the lyrics for those staffs will be deleted, I would copy them to a text file first, so you can just copy them back when you're ready for lyrics in those staffs.
You're using essentially 2-note chords. When you enter the "active" note, you can set the note colour, so you would have one default note (black?) and one coloured, say, red or blue.
I guess I was suggesting she enable it. but the statement was unclear. Is she asking about the distance between systems or the distance between notes? Both are user variables.
In any event, if it's the former, adjusting the vertical height of a staff in the first bar of each page may accomplish what she needs.
This is a "double-flat" accidental. This is half a tone lower than an ordinary flat note. You may sometimes see a double-sharp too, a double-sharp uses an X instead of a sharp sign, and raises the note a half step above the sharp. D double-sharp is the same as E natural.
Your key signature probably has at least 4 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db), so every D and E is flat unless marked with an accidental. (Where there is an accidental, if there's another note of the same pitch following it in the same bar, it will have the same accidental, but it's unwritten.)
E double flat is the same as D. The composer wants you to sing/play Db, Eb, D natural, Db, D natural, Db but that means writing four accidental signs in the bar. It's less cluttered to just use the one double-flat.
There's probably a theory reason too, but I have not yet gained that knowledge.
It's in English, but you can use Google Translate to read it in Indonesian. Go to https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=fr&op=websites and copy the dolmetsch URL into the left window. In the right window, use the down arrow to select Indonesian.
You might like to ask your singer what her range is. Your smartphone may have a tuner app that will name the notes when she sings them. I use an app called gStrings.
The transposition tool in NWC asks you how many semitones you want to transpose. This may be easier to understand if you look at the piano keyboard and count the white AND black keys, so for instance to go from D major (it has 2 sharps) to Bb major (it has 2 flats), you count down 4 keys or up 8. Think of a major scale as a staircase, where the first step is a whole step, the second is a whole, step, the third is only a half step, the fourth is another whole step, the fifth is a whole, the sixth is a whole step, and the seventh is a half step - so: tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone, tone. semitone.
Lawrie mentioned Sharpeye and that it's expensive. It is, but it's also good. I use if frequently, particularly with big tasks (I recently extracted 28 instrumental parts from a 325 bar band score).
Errors can be reduced if you scan at 600 dpi or higher, and of course, it helps if the original document is good. If it's faded or uses archaic notation there may be more errors.
Most Sharpeye errors are timing, where perhaps a triplet hasn't been recognized, or a rest is dropped or misread Those can be found and fixed fairly easily in Sharpeye using a mouse. Sharpeye flags those incorrect bars for you.
Once you;ve opened the converted file in NWC, it's not hard to find and fix the remeaining errors. Sometimes you'll see a 1-pixel red dot in a bar. While it's hard to see, that's where you likely have to fix something.
Sometimes it's easier to make corrections within Sharpeye, other times, it's easiest to save the Sharpeye file with the errors, export the file to MusicXML and convert that to NWCTEXT, then fix the errors in NWC.
Bart commented on the high music OCR error rate too. I agree it's sometimes just easier to notate a single page of music note by note.
If your source music is a PDF file, some PDF programmes will allow the page(s) to be exported to black and white BMP or TIFF image files, which is what Sharpeye needs.
An alternative to Mike's solution is just to treat the "variant ad libitum" as a text entry, vertically positioned at the same height as the lyric. For horizontal alignment, put an invisible bar line just after the clef at the beginning of the lower line, and put the text to the left of the bar line, left or right justified as wanted, placed "at next bar."
I saw the backwards eighth rest in a band chart from the early 20th century about a year ago. It's just a quarter rest, written in an old style, I believe. Instead of using Page Text or other workarounds, just use an ordinary quarter rest.
I'm afraid I have no idea how to find the character string in the xml file with the extra space, but I tried your newer programme, NWCCONVERTER. It seems to open and run, but then I got this error message.
Unhandled exception in script Failed to execute script 'nwcconvertor' due to unhandled exception: (P1', 1, '2')
Traceback (most recent call last): File "nwcconvertor.py", line 698, in <module> File "nwcconvertor.py", line 630, in process_main_window File "nwcconvertor.py", line 473, in event_convert File "nwcconvertor.py", line 468, in convert File "xml2nwc.py", line 2192, in convert File "xml2nwc.py", line 2098, in process_tag_element File "xml2nwc.py", line 2098, in process_tag_element File "xml2nwc.py", line 2098, in process_tag_element File "xml2nwc.py", line 2100, in process_tag_element File "xml2nwc.py", line 1104, in convert_tag_note_end File "xml2nwc.py", line 1005, in set_attributes File "xml2nwc.py", line 877, in process_slur File "xml2nwc.py", line 840, in start_slur File "mxml_general.py", line 665, in nwc_staff_index KeyError: ('P1', 1, '2').
The xml file was created in SharpEye2 by scanning 53 pages of music. I think the file is just too large for your converter, so I SharpEyed just one page. It converted very well in your programme. It also works in Niversoft's converter.
So, I've learned something. Big files may not work. And I'll experiment a little to see how many pages of music will be the limit.
Thank you so very much for your help and your suggestion to use the new programme NWCCONVERTER.
I downloaded and installed your MXML2NWC version 1.1.4 tool today. When I select a XML file, the filename displays in the Loggings window but this error message appears immediately:
Attribute value not quoted in 'measure number = "1"'
I don't know what that means or how to fix it.
The file is an xml file exported from SharpEye2.
(It may not be a glitch in your programme, because I've been having problems with the Niversoft converter too. It did two files, but while it says it converted the next three files, the nwctxt files won't download.)
I can't seem to get the two bar repeat sign to work. I think it did, not so long ago, but I must be getting rusty. All I get is a text string on the staff that says "SingleDoubleBarRepeat."
Clearly I'vew lost track of how to get the symbol. Help, please?
Turning INS off in each (non-templated file) worked for me in a test file just now.
To pedantically paraphrase what Flurmy said is that Increase Note Spacing is the default behaviour. If you don't want it, you must turn it off on every file unless you begin with a template which already has it turned off.
There's a reason to increase the note spacing, so an alternative might be to decrease the Staff Metrics in the Fonts tab of the Page Setup tab. Size 14 might be a bit small if you're writing for older instrumentalists, but vocalists can hold the music a bit closer.
Thank you so very much, Lawrie, this helped a tremendous lot. You've allowed me to achieve what I wanted, as shown in the attachment (without the typo that's there now).
Best wishes from (hopefully temporary) snow country.
Here I go again. Never happy. Very confused, a little frustrated, and begging for help.
Background: I've just scanned and edited 38 page, 326 measure, 26 part concert band medley with the permission of the arranger who no longer has printed or digital copies of the parts. I've put about 60 hours into it and now I'm ready to start printing. Most parts will be three or four pages, double sided.
I am pretty sure I can use Page Text Maestro and Page Text, but I have no idea what to enter, or where, to achieve:
Front page, top:
Song title, centred, Page Text font. Dnnnnnnnnnn Medley
Two-line song subtitle, centred below the song title, in either Page Text or Page Small Text: Battle Hymn of the Republic;, Nnnnn Nnnn, The Nnnn of Nnn Nnnnnn; Mnnn Cnnnnnn Bnnnn (Snnnnnn); South Rampart Street Parade
Top left (where File Info normally shows Lyricist): Instrument name Flute 1
Right side (system generated from File Info / Author): The composer/ arranger's name. Arr. Mmmmm Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
All of this should be high enough on the page to avoid clashing with the top system.
Second, third and fourth pages, top, preferably centred:.
I want the song title and the instrument name to appear on one line at the top of each of these pages, centred if possible but left or right justified would be acceptable. Dnnnnnnnnnn Medley - Flute 1
Very specific commands illustrating exactly what to enter and where will be greatly appreciated.
Are you saying that you always used only the piano sound (patch 0)
Yup! I use named instruments for the other channels, but in the 26 years I've been using the program, for drums I use channel 10 and have always selected Acoustic Grand. I had no idea unnamed patches could be added instead, using Staff Properties, Instrument, Midi Patch Instructions Send Patch and Staff Properties, Midi, Channel 10.
You might want to check your system setup, Phillip, particularly your mouse settings.
It might be your hardware or your operating system. I recently had to replace my keyboard, and the Microsoft keyboard software tries to govern my mouse too. The result is clicking, which used to be very quick, is unreliable and slow. I use an old wireless optical Logitech mouse, an HP desktop pc running Windows 10 and a Microsoft articulated keyboard. Compared to the old articulated KB that I used for 15 or 20 years, this one is a piece of cr
Many years ago, I think it was recommended Channel 10 be set to acoustic grand piano to get the right drum sounds. It's been a long time so I may be misremembering.
Also, you may need a little trial and error so see which note gives which drum; for instance, middle C will sound like one drum, F below that may sound like something else, A in the staff like something else again. There's a lot of variety here, including lots of percussion toy noises.
You may be wise to use two staffs - one for the actual drum music, hidden but not muted, and the other for the visual display of the rhythms where you show x-head notes and stems, flags, beams, etc. This one you'd want to mute.
Frank, I'm curious, Western music notation is a written music language meant to tell the reader what music should be played and how. You don't have to read English to understand most of it. You're asking about a different music language which
Quote
is still easier to learn songs in our church, with singing it in Number notes. I can key the number in the lyric place
I get it, but you've been copying music notation for some months now. I think that is an excellent way to learn to read music - I learned the bass clef by doing that and transposing trombone parts (concert pitch bass clef notes) for french horn (treble clef, transposing instrument). You know what note is found at each line or space of either staff, you know the normal time signatures, you probably know your key signatures, and I'm sure you know the differences between a whole note, a half note, a quarter note, etc. I doubt if you need the easier way to learn songs yourself; it must be for your members.
I can almost feel a lightning bolt getting ready to strike me for saying it, but church music is often sung by people who can't carry a tune better than me, and believe me, I can't. Why do you need a musical notation program like Noteworthy Composer to write for people who cannot read music and don't mind not singing what's written?
Regardless, back in 2005 there was a discussion in this forum about lettered noteheads. One guest said
Quote
What I was looking for was something similar to what Hal Leonard does in his 'Easy Play' books; placing the letter inside the notehead, either black on white or white on black, depending on the note.
The 2005 discussion carried on a few years later, and Opagust provided his user tool OGNoteNames.
Rick G. (sadly no longer with us) also gave an example of lettered noteheads done without the user tool, but doesn't seem to have explained how it can be done.
I suspect you might like using the lettered noteheads. You might need to educate your congregation, but there isn't much you'd need to teach them.
The backwards quaver rest is an old style crotchet (quarter) rest,
I encountered this in a ancient band transcription of Pomp and Circumstance this fall. I don't think I've ever seen it before in nearly 60 years of playing band music.
Frank, in addition to what Lawrie has explained, when you get these odd clefs you can sometimes decipher them by examining the key signature.
In traditional western music key signatures, the flats and sharps will always be written in order.
You probably already know,:
Flat key signatures will always be written in this order: Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb and Fb and the major key is named for the second last flat, so, for instance, 4 flats will be Bb Eb Ab and Db, and the key will be Ab major or its corresponding minor).
Sharp key signatures are the reverse sequence: F# ,C# ,G# ,D#, A# ,E# and B#. Sharp key signatures take their names from the note that is one above the last sharp - four sharps will be E major.
In your example, the key signature will tell you which lines and spaces are B, E, A and D.
You can create your four lines of lyrics in one staff using Lyric 1, Lyric 2, Lyric 3 and Lyric 4 tabs in the Lyrics menu. This may cause problems if the words begin with note changes that differ in that part (i.e. trebles' words may not begin at the same beat as the bass lyrics.).
In that case create a separate lyric for each staff and place them below the treble staffs (Lyric 1, Lyric 2) or above the bass staffs ( Lyric 3, Lyric 4). I think you simply position them above or below the relevent staff using the Configuration tab in the Lyrics menu and maybe use the Offset settings to adjust their height.
If you have chosen "allow layering" in Page Setup, when you look at Print Preview the staves will be layered IF the upper one has been set to "layer with next staff" in Staff Properties (F2).
You won't see this in the Edit window unless you've also selected "allow layering in edit mode" from either the View menu or the icon in the menu bar.
Once more I must thank Mike. Using NWC only once in a while, I haven't kept up with the new objects, and Mike's BarLabel.ms is a big improvement over the method I have been using.
I use Lawrie's fonts for some types of music, but I liked Boxmarks2 for many of the charts just because of the styles. It's moot now, though, with BarLabel.ms
Experienced users, ignore this. You have your own methods.
New users, when you're writing a chart you may want to use rehearsal numbers or letters. Generally I create these as text entries, in UserFont1, set to Boxmarks2, Bold, Size 16 (use the Page Setup/Fonts submenu for this).
I place them at the beginning of their respective bars, right-justified to appear above the preceding bar line. When the staff wraps when printing, the rehearsal mark will be at the beginning of the new staff instead of orphaned at the end of the previous staff I also set them to Visibility=Top Staff Only so they don't clutter up a multiple part score, but I usually enter them on all the parts so they're there when I go to print separate instrument parts.
You can get away with entering each rehearal mark once only if you put them in a staff full of rests at the top of your score, but there are pros and cons to that.
Alphabetic rehearsal letters are simply a matter of adding a capital letter. With Boxmark2, it will show inside a rectangular box. Numeric rehearsal marks are a little more complicated. You need to use the Character Map and select one element at a time. Start with the [ bracket. Then select the numeral(s) you want using the Character Map. Choose the numbers that have horizontal lines above and below it. Finally end with the ] bracket. Your number will be entered as a boxed number, and can be 1, 2, 3 or even more characters long.
It's tedious to enter a lot of numeric rehearsal marks because you need the Character Map, so I usually create a supersized one at the very beginning of the staff, with this text string: 123456789012345678901234567890 . When I need to add a rehearsal number, I just copy that to the appropriate bar and edit the copy to remove the numbers I don't want. It saves a lot of time and work if your piece is 300 or more bars long.
Although it's oddly placed on the page the 12 may simply be the publisher's way of numbering the songs in a book. I've seen it in introductory piano books, but usually close to the title.
