Skip to main content

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all Show Posts made by this member. Note that you can only see Show Posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Messages - Steve Bacher

1
General Discussion / Re: Note heads not connected and text is blurred.
Quote
Wow, and just as Microsoft is getting ready to put XP out to pasture...

That's why I finally got a new one.  Otherwise I would have soldiered on until my machine broke, and then I would have had to get Vista (no way).

Quote
Anyway, a couple of things to look for.  Since you say you just installed XP, i presume then it's also on a 5 year old computer (don't worry, I have XP running on an 8-year old computer that I built myself back in 2000 - Pentium III 800MHz, 768MB RAM, plenty of hard drive space - slow, but still runs.

No, it's all brand new, and also custom built.

Quote
Anyway, which service pack are you running.  XP is currently up to Service Pack 3 (but depending on where you are, I'm not sure if you can go directly to SP3, or if you have to pass SP1 and SP2 first).

Service Pack 3.

Quote
Have you updated your video drivers to the latest ones?  (And I don't mean just the video drivers that came with XP - just because XP found an appropriate video driver to use, doesn't mean it's the latest and greatest).

That's like asking "Did you read your latest email?"  How can you be sure?  But seriously, I'm fairly certain my drivers are all as current as can be.

Quote
Have you updated you printer drivers to the latest ones?

First of all, I loaded the latest printer drivers.  Second, this problem occurred before I even installed a printer, and remained the same after I installed my (old HP) printer.

Maybe I should have just gotten a better monitor that doesn't need "assistance".  ~-)

 - seb
2
General Discussion / Re: Note heads not connected and text is blurred.
I just upgraded my home computer to Windows XP (only 5 years late!) and I encountered the "note heads not connected" problem.

Apparently this is caused by my display settings:  having the "clear type" font effect active.  When I revert to no font effects, the Noteworthy display looks fine.  Unfortunately, the rest of my Windows text goes back to looking like crap. :-(

So I guess I'll have to switch ClearType on and off.

 - seb
3
General Discussion / Re: New Forum - Nice look.
Will we be notified of a change (and/or will the "New!" flag appear) when a really, really, really, really old post in a thread gets edited by someone?

 - seb
4
General Discussion / Re: Last Rests not played...
A better way to look at it than "hitting the stop button before the end of the piece" would be:

If you want to save/export as MIDI without the final rests:  do one last save if you need to, then delete the final rests manually, save/export as MIDI, and quit Noteworthy without saving the final-rest-deletion.  It's not that hard, and it gives you more of a feeling of direct control over the content of the MIDI.

 - seb
5
General Discussion / Re: Led Zeppelin music
Man, that is a tricky one.

Think it starts off with 9/8 (or alternating 2/4 + 5/8), then switches to 4/4 alternating with 5/4. then back to 9/8...

Good luck with that.

And they say rock & roll is such primitive music...

7
General Discussion / Re: position of fermata
Quote
Quote
I always use the toolbar button for fermata(s?)

Yeah, but this is the General Discussion Forum.
There seems to more NWC2 content here since the forum format changed.
I suspect that it is quite confusing to folks that only use ver 1.75b

Not an NWC2-only feature at all.  Using toolbar customization, I have a fermata on my 1.75b toolbar, as well as breath mark and all of the dynamics from ppp through fff.

Quote
BTW, it is probably fermati

If probably anything, it's probably fermate.

(Or fermatae, if it were Latin.  Or fermatata, if it were Greek?)


 - seb

8
General Discussion / Re: Last Rests not played...
The problem with solutions like putting a tempo mark after the last rest is:

What happens when Noteworthy gets better and better about "optimizing" away all the non-functioning parts of a score?  It already appears to be doing it wrt the final rests, resulting in the abrupt end on the MIDI which I've also noticed and been unhappy with.  If Noteworthy figures out that a final tempo mark has no effect (as long as there is no preceding ritard or accelerando, that is), it could easily determine that it can be dispensed with, leaving the final rests as, once again, final and dispensable-withable.

I would rather see Noteworthy correct the behavior, and users not depend on tricks which the software may eventually be too clever to be fooled by.

 - seb
9
General Discussion / Re: Staff Sizing/Formatting
Whereas:

  • "Extend Last System" produces a (usually) ugly result that no one seems to like,
  • the workaround with "Force System Break" on a section close is a commonly recommended kludgetechnique,

I humbly recommend that the developer(s) consider making "Extend Last System" function the preferred way:  instead of merely lengthening the last measure, make all the measures on the last system the same width.  No need for users to seek out the "expert advice", then.

Perhaps in a future revision?

 - seb


10
General Discussion / Re: Any Musical Geniouses here?

The only thing sticking out immediately to me is the subdominant chord following the Dominant.  As a rule (I hate rules tho) the IV chord should never follow a V unless your writing rock-n-roll, blues, or country. 

(How do I see these code bits as NWC files?  Do I need to copy/paste them into a text file and rename the file .nwc, or what?  Anyhow...)


An IV chord could follow a V chord and maintain correct voice leading as long as you choose the inversions correctly.  For example, a root chord V could be followed by a first inversion IV.  The only drawback is that it is generally preferable to have at least one tone in common.  For 4-part harmony, you could achieve that by using a [abbr="dominant 7th V chord, I mean to say"]V7[/abbr].  I'm trying to think of a real world example, but none comes to mind.  You would probably be more likely to find it in Brahms than Bach, for instance.

 - seb
16
General Discussion / Re: New Forum - Nice look.
If you have a "real" browser like Firefox, you can right click on the Reply button and open the Reply page in a new tab.

If you are stuck with IE, you can still do the same, but with a new browser window, as someone said previously.

17
Tips & Tricks / Tied Notes Around Other Notes
If you need to tie a pair of notes in one of two voices on a single clef, and there are intervening notes in the other voice between the notes you want to tie, just do this:

  • Highlight the intervening notes and cut (Ctrl+X).
  • Do the tie (select the first note to be tied and press /).
  • Use paste (Ctrl+V) to reinsert the removed notes.
18
Tips & Tricks / Inserting 8va-------
NoteWorthy Composer doesn't support the octave-transposition (8va---) notation directly, but you can fake it and avoid having to use all those hard-to-read ledger lines. Here's how:

For octave-up transposition (e.g. in the treble clef), insert another clef (Insert, Clef) of the same type but with the "octave up" flag set for Octave Shift. Then Insert: Text above the staff: "8va-------^" (use your ASCII creativity). In the Text dialog box Expression Placement, do not put an X in for Preserve Width so the ----- will extend over the notes. Restore the original clef at the end of the sequence.

For octave-down (e.g. bass clef), do similarly, but use the "octave down" flag on the new clef.