And vice versa. Meaning: Every program that cares about notation has a lot of "It's my own invention" (thank you, White Knight) which of course does not go into Midi. But there are those absolute beauties in Midi that refuse to be imported in a reasonable way into Noteworthy.
The thing is: all shortcomings set aside, it helps greatly to hunt for Midi files and use them as a starting point.
Nothing easier, SeaCanary. Fire up Noteworthy, File, Open, your midi file. This will start the MIDI Import Wizart. Do not expect miracles, because Midi does not support everything that Noteworthy can do. So if you have a Noteworthy file, export it to Midi, and then import it again, it will look different. It may even sound a bit different because of breathmarks (which are not exported to Midi) and triplets (which are an approximation in Midi).
The good news is: Midi is indeed very often a good start, and it can save you a lot of work. More so when you realise that when something you found is in a wrong key, you can transpose it. Or when you find that a tenor part has a simple G clef, and all the notes are notated an octave too low. Nothing easier. Try your hand, and if you need help you will know where to find it: right here!
Vas-y, expliquez-le problème en Français... on va voir qu'on peut faire? Je ne suis pas le plus grand expert de Noteworthy (on pourrait dire qu'il a déjà répondu) mais on ne sait jamais.
ah-Haaa! Now at least I understand your wish. This, indeed. would be a lot harder to accomplish: "next chord at the tip of your fingers". Hmmm. The downside of it is, as far as Noteworthy goes: no effing way. Having said that, these pieces are by far the easiest to play on the organ. Just a few chords, really, and by definition not in quick succession. So my advice would be: simply play these on the organ (can't be all that many, and they can't be all that hard to play) and the rest is doable by Noteworthy.
Even if you had a program to do that, you would have to restrain yourself with every syllable, NOT to go for the next note - until the next note!
You might do some reading in the manual, Pirahnaplant. It is found on the Scrypto. You will find that a some material is, by now, ready knowledge for you. I guarantee that you will find a few pleasant surprises there that will help you on your way. It's 1.75 only, but it serves its purpose well.
Maybe you used the SATB template. This template has a number of errors in it: the page number starts with 5 (OK, you corrected that) but the margins are all 0.00 . This would explain the disappearing page numbers.
Then, XPS might be the problem. Please try good old PDF first. Does that work as expected? Then, XPS is your problem - maybe it's a bit too new and needs a release or two. If PDF (I have used PrimoPDF and PDF Creator, they both work fine for me) comes out wrong, you have quite another problem.
Page numbering is visible from page 2. The logic behind it is: Page 1 is obvious. The number is not necessary: it has (most of the time) a title, the author, copyright notices... As soon as you reach page 2 the page number appears. I am not saying that this is the correct behaviour - just stating my findings.
Admittedly, it has nothing to do with this thread per se, but it is one of the rare instances where I get this puzzle to work in the English language. Journeys and Lice --> Trips and Ticks --> Tips and Tricks. Another? Bedlight with rabbit --> Candle with hare --> Handle with care. Bored yet? Apartment hat --> Flat cap --> Cat flap.
The lyrics editor is better. Marginally so, it seems, but I think it is great. If you are anywhere inside a large score (or not even that large a score) and you press Ctrl-L, the lyrics editor now starts at the corresponding syllable! Well, a CursorRight or CursorLeft may be necessary for the cursor to appear, but it's just what I wanted! For lyrics with repeating texts it is a real blessing.
For me, there is an added bonus. I have written a macro in my favourite text editor (TSE) that can act on an entire score. This way, when I find a Midi-file somewhere and want to prepare it for choir usage, I read in the Midi-file, save it as .nwctxt, perform my PrepareForChoir trick, and open the modified .nwctxt in Noteworthy. It saves me some work, or even a lot of work, depending on the Midi file. But, as you said, you have your own tricks. Care to share?
"It may simply have not happened to you before" - how true. Following Rick's instructions the problem is reproduced within seconds, and I cannot remember it ever having bugged me. It's funny: blind typing in Noteworthy! Entering notes, rests and whatnots works perfectly - only you don't see a thing! And just NWC2, not 1.75 . The remedy may be trivial. It usually is. Finding the place where the bug lurks maybe time consuming. But 17.5 having the better of NWC2... hey, that can't be right, can it?
Sharpeye comes with a trial period. It's pretty good, but yes - you do need a good original of the sheet music. If you want to buy it, it does not come cheap. It's not exactly a Noteworthy price. Somebody gave me an illegal copy of another program (that does not have a tryout period) but I hardly ever use it - hence, I would never buy it. Then again, maybe I would, but I would buy a better scanner first! The scanner quality is of some influence, I gather.
If you have a lot of work to do, it's worth figuring out all this - and coming back to this forum for more help and instructions. Just a few pages aren't worth the hassle, but it seems that you have enough to do to make it worth your while.
Well... The stems in NWC 1.75 can get in the way of the lyrics. NWC2 does a far better job there, even without manual overrides of stem lengths. I use both NWC's, but always print from version 2.
I could not agree more. Hearing what you enter is priceless. Then again, the stem length, even without tweaking, is usually lots better in nwc2. But... the ability to work with whole scores in text format takes the biscuit. Or, in my case, the "oliebol" (doughball done in hot oil, a special new year's eve treat).
240 MB is not much, these days. Before XP this was quite enough. With XP it can be enough, depending on programs you are running. Some virus checkers take up quite a bit of the computer's processing capacity. Did you switch to another virus checking program lately? If your computer is doing a lot of swapping as a result, this might be the cause of your problem. If so, an extra (second hand) 128 or 256 MB memory bank could help quite a bit. Costs next to nothing if there's a shoppie in the neighbourhood. Another cause might be... a virus. If your computer is a zombie, and doing work for hackers when their master computer tells it to, you may be running low on resources for all the wrong reasons.
If you play this bar, does it sound right? If the rhythms for soprano and alto are not the same, it can be quite difficult to put them both on one staff. Layering is, in many ways, a much preferred option.
* Some way to start on a particular verse. If I'm trying to fix how the seventh verse scans by seeing how each syllable highlights as it plays, I don't want to have to listen to the first six verses again to get to the part I'm trying to fix.
Or try this: temporarily add an 8th lyrics line. Copy lyrics 1 to lyrics 8. Replace lyrics 1 by lyrics 7. Tweak until satisfied. Now replace 7 by 1, and 1 by 8. Remove 8. Done.
Another way would be: save lyrics 1 in Notepad, not in lyrics 8. The idea is the same, but it might be easier to see where you are at a certain point.
I think I understand most of what you did, and why you did it on separate staves. But what is that bottom, empty staff there for?
For me it was the other way around. The empty staff was easy, but without further looking into things I do not understand. And even then, I am not sure I would...
Rick, your suggestion is also very workable. For the "Messe" I am quite happy now (even though I still have to do some backwarding and forwarding between Session and Noteworthy) but as I am quite capable of dealing with Ascii-files, changing Midi into text gives me full power. Just as .nwctxt has opened the option of "preparing a score for rehearsal": I simply export something I found on the Internet to .nwctxt, run my TSE-macro "PrepareForRehearsal" and re-import. Power to musicians!
Hi MusicJohn, I now have your version of Midisoft Recording Session. Strange enough, this seems to be an older version of Midisoft Studio! Even stranger - Midisoft Recording Session works fine, where Midisoft Studio does not. But this is exactly what I wanted, so thank you very much indeed!
Wow, three VERY useful answers in such a short time! Then again, that's not very special in this forum. Thanks, I regard these as my Free Christmas Gifts. I can now produce nwc-scores of the whole Caplet Mass. And, in turn, make fellow singers (f) very happy. cheers, Rob.
Hello NWC-enthusiasts, At http://www.choeurjussieu.org/cuj/Caplet-Messe3Voix.html I found the "Messe a trois voix" by Caplet. The problem with these Midi-files is that they start with 3/8 rests - which are not easy to get rid of. I fed the Midi-file into a very old version of Midisoft Studio, but as this is mainly a Windows 95 program it does not work well anymore. It only accepts small portions (one staff at a time, or less) and crashes easily. The advantage of Midisoft Studio is that it combines notes that were tied across bar lines - not always a desired behaviour, but in this case exactly what I want. Removing the rest in Noteworthy does not work too well; I am still stuck with many tied notes.
Any suggestions for such a task: is another Midi-editor an option, should I go for a very clever user tool - or am I overlooking something? cheers, Rob.
Yeah - I remember a particular user ending his post with "Conclusion: bug. Meaning: NWC Company, Fix It - It's Your Fault. When you then tell the user: it's not all that bad, it's a bit of both: your fault and mine, users like that are not a happy bunny.
Bug or not, I am still happy with the level of professionalism on the side of the NWC users, whether that is an oxymoron (or a conundrum) or not.
Quite a name you chose there. The choice of pirahna as opposed to piranha is on purpose? There is nothing much I can add to the topic, since your problem has already been solved. cheers, Rob.
Point 1: You want to put two songs in a songfile. The short answer is: You cannot.
Clearly, you want to print two songs on one sheet of paper. In order to do that, you will have to enter both songs separately. When done, copy song 1 to the clipboard and paste in Word, Paint or another program that can process graphics. Then copy song 2 to the clipboard and paste there result.
Ah - you may well have found the answere there! If an instrument is chosen for every staff, this behaviour should not occur. And: the problem could now be reproduced. What did you play before the problem-NWC-file, fitzclan? Did it have silent staves? What happens if you play the same files in progression? NWC could reset all choices of instruments and such at the beginning of a file, instead of leaving them as they are. This has been suggested before, I believe.
That was good! I first played the LayerTest, then rg_LayerTest_01. The musical outcome is quite a surprise, when the choral voice comes back in bar 3 and goes away in bar 4. "Peu importe", as the French say, because your illustration is perfect.
Neither do I understand a bit of it. More experimenting might get you closer to the nature of the problem, but there is something structurally wrong here. I am convinced that if you would send the files to us (rddenheijer at versatel.nl for instance) I would experience no problem. But, then, I do not use Vista. That would be the next thing to find out: how do the other Vista-users fare on this? If you can, put some files on a webpage and post a link here.
I can't help from personal experience. However, there are some standard tricks that you might try. If you copy the file and start experimenting with it, what do you get? If you remove the non-playing staff, are you left with a file where now another staff will not play? If so, what happens when you are down to 1 staff? What happens when you change channels of non-playing staves? Is it always the highest channel that "falls out" ? What if you add another staff, assign a new channel to it, but add no notes - does your whole file fire on all cylinders now?
yeah - and then I forgot it's time for Amnesty cards, for December performance rehearsals, for family visits and other unspecified but nice surprises. And the "Africa! Africa!" show. So it did not work - yet. Thanks anyway.
Anyway, I have hit level 46 a number of times now. Boy I'm happy. The word "Noteworthy" has helped me only once, hope it will pop up more often. Can't advertise it enough!
Haven't seen my favourite word yet. Callipygous. Can't say if it describes me but it's a beautiful word for which we poor Dutch have nothing in our vocabulary.
It might be time for me to do some experimenting now. Unfortunately, I am very busy for a few days, after which I will be out of the country. But "note to self" says that next week I must investigate - and report back. Kick me in the shins if I don't.
I would be surprised if TSE could use stdin... What's the use? With all the ctrl, alt and shift key combinations, not to mention function keys that do TSE's job, what could you possibly accomplish?
I do have a manual from an earlier version. Copyright 1991-1994. Nearly all of it still holds, but no mention of stdin or stdout therein.
Lawrie, I tried the user tools once but did not have much use for it. Rather than learning something I hardly ever use, I use TSE. I can do that blindfolded. I intend to write more combined goodies to work on complete scores using nwctxt. I wrote my own "tripletize" in TSE, but I combined it with other actions that I need to do on Midi-imports. Now that we can work on whole scores, the workaround using TSE starts to pay off.
Grains of rice, of course. The page automagically adjusts to your level. People who aren't very much into words will play on their on level - and score as many correct answers as you or me, thereby feeding the needy (and helping them in a structural way as well - see the FAQ) and learning a bit at the same time. And yes, it's fun to do. Hope they start pages in French and German as well.
A good thing that Noteworthy is called Noteworthy!
I use Semware (TSE, The Semware Editor) a lot. Yesterday, I exported a Noteworthy file to .nwctxt, wrote a small TSE macro to change the whole Tempo Track to 80 % for rehearsing, and read the .nwctxt file back. It's a breeze, but it's still a matter of starting TSE, opening the .nwctxt file, firing a macro, saving the .nwctxt file and re-opening it in Noteworthy.
Never tried TSE with stdin - I don't think it's supported.
Nothing wrong with my vocabulary. My level tends to be forty-ish, but I have played up to 46 (twice already!) - only to drop back to below 40. But good fun for a good cause. And I learn the odd thing on the way.
