NoteWorthy Composer Forum

I confirm everything Bill wrote.

I'd add a note regarding "overlapping" hands. The harpists try to keep the fingers on the strings as much as they can to dump the resonances (imagine playing piano with the sustain pedal always pressed...) and also to play louder. When the hands "mix up" the things gets easily messy. Alternate them as much as you can.
Usually an acceptable surrogate of a chromatic scale, practically impossible on the harp, is a simple glissato.
Remember that you can make two adjacent strings play the same note (e.g. C# and Db). This is often used to play fast, odd "scales" simply with a glissato.
Modern "jazzy" players use pedal bending, pedal half tone/tone portamento, soundboard clapping and clusters. (An example for all: Pearl Chertok's "Around the clock", that includes Harpicide at midnight)
Last but not least: don't forget the wonderful sound of the harp harmonics! (Normally only octave harmonics.)

One idea is a separate staff that vanishes after the first line; and all the other staves emerge only on the second line (i.e., after a system break on the first staff) - see attachment BellChart-A.

A somewhat simpler solution is to use the top staff as the chart staff in the first line; however, it seems that one has, then, to live with a staff label on the chart line if one needs labels ... see BellChart-B.

Suitable gaps center the chart on the first line. Its notes are muted and, additionally, skipped via 1./2. endings. Bar counting is done with a BarCounter.nw object that starts counting after the chart.

Maybe something better can be developed from these ideas ...

H.M.

Just to be clear: using separate layers for separate voices on the same staff isn't unique to NWC - it's standard across most if not all notation programs. NWC is unique in allowing you to use as many layers as you want, though: Finale, Sibelius, MuseScore, Dorico, etc., all limit you to four layers per staff.

I would suggest making the "singer" MIDI channel 1, the oboe  MIDI channel 2, and the piano a higher MIDI channel.

In the event of voice overload, synths are supposed to drop voices from the higher channels first.

I would also remove any sustain pedal down items. While the pedal is down, voices are not released. They can add up rather quickly. If this solves the issue, you can judiciously add the 'pedal downs' back in where needed.

If there's enough going on in the 3 staves you have, you could be running into a synth limitation...  There is always a limited amount of polyphony any synth can handle and some are better than others - some also have the ability to have their polyphony setting adjusted.

What synth are you using?