I tried to put Andante and Note on each staff, worrying that would be any effect on sound if I do not put it.
Andante is just a text to indicate the tempo; it means "walking" in Italian: "Play so that it matches a nice stroll". It doesn't do anything with the sound. And as all staffs need to play in the same tempo (otherwise, the nice harmonies would not at all work!), such tempo indications are always only placed above the first staff. Lastly, if you put in a real tempo marker (by pressing T), you would also put in only one, typically in the first staff (although in NWC, you could do it on any staff).
How can I write the Soprano..Alto, Tenor, Bas in front of the staf, Can I?
Put your cursor in the staff and press F2 - there, go to the "General" tab, where you can add a "Staff Label". To see them, you must also go to "File > Page Setup" and in tab "Options" under "Staff Labels" select "First System" or "All Systems"
My question is. When we play soprano, it will highlight the note and word as it is playing. Is there any way to make only highlighting the soprano, so that people can see the video, that is is the sound of Soprano. Or anyway to hide the other 3 staffs during the demo of the soprano?.
Press M - like "mute": There you can select the staffs that should NOT be audible on the right.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the "tie" function. It cannot be moved and sometimes it overlaps with slur or other ties.
"That's life, or at least this software". Only meta-advice from me:
a) Scenario 1 is "I want to write scores for reading" (and not playing via MIDI/listening): Then, don't use ties in these cases; replace them with slurs. There are special problems at line breaks, but they can be approximately solved with headless+stemless grace notes - see attachment, which doesn't fully solve them - there's some more trickery needed. One problem here is that listening is often a helpful proof-reading tool - in this case, you need to ignore the separated notes you will hear.
b) Scenario 2 is "I want to hear the right things = ties need to be ties". I only know the solution to have a separate invisible staff for the sound - only there you use ties; the visible staff is done as in a scenario 1.
You can leave the slur directions "wrong" while writing; and then select multiple notes and change the slur direction at once. See this animated gif, where I try to show how this works (on the right, you can see the keyboards keys I pressed):
Sorry - I was away for a day from the internet (playing organ in the church and keyboard with a pop cover band in a Bavarian biergarten ...).
Ad 1. For "Layering", the following checkboxes and commands are helpful: a) In the "View" menu, there is an option "Layering in Edit Mode"; I prefer it to be unchecked, so that I always see layered staves separately ("unlayered") while editing. When I want to see the layered effect, I simply press F11 ("Viewer Mode"); and press it again to get back to Edit Mode. I think this is what you ask for. b) In a score's"Page Setup" (Alt-F G), in tab "Contents" there is a check box "Allow Layering" under the "Groups" list, which needs to be checked for layering. I have it checked in all my scores (even if I don't need layering now - I might need it later). c) In each staff that should be layered with the next one, in the "Staff Properties" (F2) "Layer with Next Staff" needs to be checked.
Ad 2. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the form of a tie. The only way I see is to leave the ties away and replace them with slurs: a) Either NWC slurs, whose ends can be shifted a little with "Markers" (@, on the keyboard). b) Or with Mikes "cubic slurs" (SlurCubic object), which gives you more control, e.g. over the height of the curve and its thickness ("strength"). I have added a score where I use a) in measure 3 and b) in measure 7.
Of course, removing the ties changes the playback sound. If you need to "repair" this, you can either - add the notes invisibly on the second staff with ties; and mute the un-tied notes on the main staff. This is what I did in the attached score; or - add another complete staff which is always invisble (I put it into a Contents Group "Sound", which I leave unchecked in the "Contents" tab of the Page Setup). This staff contains the sounding notes, as a suitably changed copy of the main staff, which is then completely muted (in staff properties' "Midi tab" check "Muted"). This is what I often do, because I also want to change note lengths and articulations etc. anyway for better playback.
At some point, one has to introduce a layered staff - see attachment WhenTheShadowsFleeAway_LayeredStaff.nwc.
Musically, I'm somewhat flabbergasted by a "Duet" having three voices at times - who sings these fill-ins? And notationally, there a few hiccups, or things I'd do differently. I have added another score called WhenTheShadowsFleeAway_LayeredStaff_Hints.nwc, which hightlights these in red. But all of them - with the exception of the superfluous bar line - are "just my personal opinion"!
Interesting problems! In the attachments is an attempt by me. I edited the following text after 2 hours, because of more dots
For the numbers and dots, I use a separate staff with notes that (a) have invisible heads (Q B on the keyboard) and (b) overridden stem lengths of zero (in the properties dialog of the notes). All the invisible notes on this staff are quarters or shorter, so that dots can mark the beats [I forgot them in my 1st version]. If necessary (c) "Extra Dot Spacing" of -1 (minus one) can be added to notes, which makes dots invisible.
For flat and sharp, I use the letter b and the hash mark # - they are not the really correct symbols, but placing the real symbols correctly would be a nightmare, in my opinion; I hope these two are good enough.
There are three lyrics lines on that staff with "Alignment" set to "Top": - "Lyric 1" is for the dots above the notes (up-octave shifting); if there is no dot, an underscore _ prints a blank; - "Lyric 2" is for the numbers themselves; they are shifted to the right with _ for notes with accidentals (the number is behind the b or #).. - I assume that "octave-down" is marked by a dot below the number, so I have added a "Lyric 3" line with special "high dots" - see last note as an example.
The bar lines on the number staff are text items which contain a simple vertical bar; they are aligned with Justification=Center and "Alignment/Placement"=At Next Note/Bar.
For your Youtube questions, I do not (yet) have good answers. As an example which I did, see this canon. If this is about what you want, I could explain how I make it.
no, you cannot change the sizes of these items. And if you enter them only as text, playback (and MIDI export) will not know about them. But, instead, you can add them, then make them invisible*, and put texts near them, with manually adjusted
size
text adaption
even font (but typical font for all the items you mention is "Staff Italic")
See attached example.
* Steps with keyboard to make something invisible: Shift-Right or Shift -Left to highlight, Alt-Enter for Properties dialog, Ctrl-Tab (I use the small finger on the left-hand Ctrl key and the fourth finger to press Tab) twice, N to change "Show on printed" to "Never", Enter to close dialog.
Different MPC controllers have different ranges (and other values). If you open the MPC dialog, fold out the combobox for selecting the controller and then leaf through the controllers with cursor-down/up, you can see that the ranges change for the first few (all the lower ones have a 0...127 range).
And yes, "Volume" has a range of 0...127, and a default value of 64, even though the default channel volume for a staff (Midi tab in Staff Properties) equals 127 - which is a little inconsistent.
Under "Help --> Keyboard Reference", you find a list of all what you can do in NWC with the computer keyboard. Some in this long list, you find:
Ctrl+Backspace - Deletes the chord member just behind the insertion point [what is meant: to the left of the insertion point]
I find it useful to try all these 117* commands once in a trial score - not only for beginners, but also advanced users: There's always something I have forgotten, or some concept I haven't used for a long time.
I am quite sure this is an error (in an SATB score): The A's in the upper chord are against standard harmony rules ("do not double the third") and useless (no-one will hear them against the A in the bass, an outer voice).
In choral writing on separate staves, you will always have the stems oriented into opposite directions. I wrote the first line of your song like that (using my choral template) - see attachment ChoralA.nwctxt; with a screenshot of the editing windows in ChoralA_Edit.JPG. If you press F11, you get a view that is near to the print result - see ChoralA_F11.JPG (of course, you can also use Alt-F V to get a print preview).
To orient the stems, highlight all the notes on a staff (go to the beginning and press Ctrl-End), and then press Ctrl-Uparrow to force all stems pointing upwards, or Ctrl-Downarrow to force all stems downwards (if you press the same keys again with notes highlighted, the stems will "forget" the forced orientation and "behave as usual" - some up, some down).
Four remarks:
The slur at "mansions" should be above the noteheads, i.e. on the same side as the stems. NWC, by default, puts it opposite the stems, so you have to change that in the note properties ("Slur Direction: Upward");
At the end, I made the soprano and alto voices cross each other; I don't know whether this is so in your score, but just for demonstration I added it, and marked the two notes in the soprano voice with a different color: The stems have to show which voice sings which notes, by going "the other way". In such cases, it is customary to offset the two notes by a tiny distance so that is optically clear which stem goes to which head - see ChoralA_CrossingVoices.JPG. Sometimes, this is tricky - as with the dots on the "thee" notes, where I tried to slip the upwards stem between the note and the dot of the B, using an "Extra Note Spacing" of 0.1. An "Extra Dot Spacing" of 0.1 on the B in the alto staff would be even nicer (I forgot it), as the two dots are then again aligned exactly above each other.
Do not repeat the lyrics on staves that are layered - you will get muddled text, as in your example at "mansions". Use the staff with more notes, if possible; and/or adjust lyrics with _ (underscores) which are shown as spaces.
The beginning of my choral template has a number of various user plugin objects - just ignore them, or check them out :-) (one of them is a BarCounter.hmm, which puts measure numbers at every second bar; I find that very helpful in rehearsals, because no-one has to do this "counting from the left margin", which only wastes time; I learned that from brass band scores).
Very short answer: If the "curve" connects exactly two notes of the same "pitch" (notes on the same height in the staff) andthere is no rest or other note between the two, it's a tie. Otherwise, it's a slur.
There are exceptions to this (with tied chords; and sometimes equal pairs of notes with a slur), but they are quite rare; and not used in vocal music, exactly because they might be confusing.
With "Scrolling note chase" on, I can reproduce this with some widths of the player window, but not with others. I'd say this is an algorithm problem in NWC, which for some values of window width and chasing position does not compute a monotone sequence of viewing positions (could probably be repaired with a single "if", essentially "dont jump back, unless flow says so"; but wont happen).
Thus, work around: Try it with a Viewer window that is a little narrower.
On the other hand, I do not understand HMüller's latest remarks.
Please ignore them! - they do not solve any of your problems. I just wanted to contribute to Lawrie's "datastore limit" question, which is a purely technical detail.
This means that a user tool like Global_Mod could probably also change it (the POS). I wonder what the datastore limit is...
I tried a 4 pt staff on an A0 page (about 1,40 m height, more than 4'): Position -6800 at the very bottom was nicely printed on this 1 m² page. I don't see why a Position value of e.g. -1,000,000 on a 1 km² page wouldn't also work perfectly For a technical limit, integral numbers in programs usually are limited to about plus or minus 2^31 = about 2 (US) billion; but floating point numbers can represent more than all of the known universe ...
Actually, you can place a text at e.g. Position -120 - see attached example: Write -99 into the "Position" field, press OK. Then, highlight the text (Shift-arrow), and now you can shift it down further with Ctrl-Shift-Downarrow. The file with this "out of bounds" text can be saved, opened and printed without problems. The only limitation is that you cannot easily modify (e.g., correct) the text, as the dialog will then tell you that -120 is out of bounds - so you have to write -99 in there again and then shift it down as above once more.
... but of course, that's more of a bug than a feature, I'd say.
For full flexibility (jumping measure numbers inside score, suffixes, numbers every 2, 4 or 5 measures, excluding numbers [as they collide with something], etc.), you can use the BarCounter.hmm plugin. By default, it should work like the standard NWC measure numbers (e.g. it knows about bar lines that are "eXcluded").
A somewhat absurd example is attached - I wrote it like that because on the piano, I then need only two pags; the singers use their full score running over six pages, with contiguous measure numbers.
Version 0.6 shows some more or less explanatory symbols if the subsequent semibreves (whole notes) are missing or dont have blank heads; I, as the author, was astonished when "nothing" was visible (and, of course, too lazy to read the help text). Maybe this helps to trigger someone using this and seeing nothing to look in the help ...
"Just write it" - see my attached attempts (I wrote only the lower two staves). Hidden rests extend the upper "long measure" to the same length as the one in the basses - this is the first "trick". The hidden rests before and after the whole rest have different lengths, so that the whole rest is placed nicely above the eighth rest of the basses where you want it.
(There are a few things that differ from the original: missing double beams - two layered staves would help, or a Beam.hmm object; breve - I use the symbol from NWC's font; single eighth rests in last measure; no slurs; and probably a few more. Two layered staves for your center staff would also allow the lyrics jump up and down as in your image. But I hope these are not things you asked for).
However, there is a problem with the lyrics alignment, which should be left-aligned on the breve. The two attempts use different methods for this:
Attempt 1: I use "Align Syllable Using" --> "Start of Accidental/Note", so that the "Tremens ..." lyrics aligns correctly; but you might not want this for all the other lyrics.
Attempt 2: "Standard Rules" for syllable alignment; I put two semibreves (whole notes) with invisible head under the breve and assign the lyrics only to the second semibreve (i.e., the first one has property "Lyric Syllable" set to "Never"). This roughly places the lyrics correctly - adding a spacer between the two should allow for fine-tuned placement of the lyrics under the breve.
... image is missing. Edit your message with "More... Modify", and pull the image onto the area below the text area (do not create an image link with the symbol above). Then we'll see!
It might, with time, be worth to find out what's going on with Noteworthy Software, Inc. On the internet, one can find an address and a telephone number (in North Carolina), and a "principal" by the name of H.B.Zimmerman. Has anyone already tried to, amically, ask about the prospects - short- and longer-term - there?
Ah - and the "grey" rest I see in MuseScore is added by that program, when it sees that a measure is not "full length" (because it is one of those typical "rigid measure-length" programs). Understood. Ok - then it is what it is. Thx.
What is a little strange: In m.6, in the S./A. staff, there is a "hidden? eighth rest" - MuseScore shows it in light grey. This pause is not converted into the nwctxt file, so that from there on, all the bar lines are shifted by one eighth. Could such "grey"/"hidden?" rests also be converted?
A solution is to put the single-line chorus lyrics into the second verse.
The reason for this behavior is apparently that the position of the lyrics is computed as follows: - First, the height of the complete lyrics is computed - it is "Line Count" times "Line Height"; in your case, "2 Lyrics lines" times "14 pt line height". - The first line of the lyrics is then written at the corresponding height above the lower boundary of the staff; if that boundary is raised by a Boundary object, all the lyrics lines are also raised.
Morale: It seems that one must "think the lyrics lines bottom up", i.e., not the first line has a position defined by various boundaries, but the last one. The "lyrics line grid" is not fixed at the upper (first) line, but "jumps up and down" according to the boundaries. And therefore, one must place text parts in this "jumping grid" at the right places to get the desired effect.
Edit: Lawrie, I think, found the right rule: On staffs with lyrics lines, always only change the upper boundary. I have attached a version with two Boundary objects right at the beginning that does that. Is this ok?
This is "just so", "has always been like that". And it's why I wrote the NonFlowBar object ...
Edit: Shouldn't believe everything ... As Lawrie writes, it seems to work fine, also in my 2.75a.2. But your double bars indicate that somehow section 2 ties to the coda - which isn't so according to the flow controls. There's something off here ...
Bart had (and proved) the same idea as I, at almost exactly the same time instant. And I must say that his rule
Use
the staff properties for a good editing view
Boundary objects to adjust the print layout
is very easy to remember and apply.
Also, I think, one should make use of Boundary objects only in the staff with lyrics: This also keeps the modifications managable.
Then, the Boundary object controlling the largest distance may be a "Reset" Boundary. This somehow contradicts Bart's rule, as now a change of the staff size (purportedly to be used only for editing) also controls the print layout. However, as this is the default behaviour we are all used to, it might actually be "more expected".
Finally, looking at the small arrows of the Boundary object is actually helpful, I have found: Adding a hypothetical horizontal line to them helps to understand the result somewhat better. Unfortunately, the arrow tips are too small, in my opinion and for my aging eyes - but so it goes.
At least the two standard songbooks of the Lutheran church in Germany don't place a hyphen at the beginning - see two attached examples.
I managed to do it with a "whiteout" trick - see first staff in the attached example. The idea is:
Place an XText object with Class StaffSig (so that it occurs on each staff), with a white text that covers the hyphen.
Some details:
You need to set one Highlight Color to white (in Tools->Color; I always use "Highlight 4" for this).
The text is "%0x2588% ", which is the "block character" (a black rectangle) and three spaces, with Justification Right so that it extends to the left. With multiple lines of text, you maybe need "%0x2588% %br%%0x2588%" or the like (i.e., blocks separated by line breaks); I have not tried this.
For positioning, you shift this XText up and down (position of the XText) and left and right (number of blanks in text) until it covers the unwanted hyphens.
Then you change the color of the object to "Highlight 4" (or whatever your White color is)
A kludgy workaround, but might help in some cases ...
In case you have multiple layered staves that make up your single visible staff, you must add a bar at the beginning of each staff, otherwise the distance computation will not place some leading items (clefs etc.) at the same position.
NB: When the staff is broken for printing into multiple systems, a single bar will be present also on all following systems. But this is a special behaviour that works only for a single barline - putting e.g. a double barline as first item on the single staff will not repeat it on following systems.
But what do you do when you want a single barline only on the first system? (I would know no good reason for that, but what do I know ...): You add an invisible grace rest before the single barline. By this, the staff no longer starts with a single barline, and the special behaviour copying the barline to all systems does not fire.
Tried it (needed a MusicXML for a colleague with another program).
1. A bug? In the resulting MusicXML, when opened with Musescore, the barlines of 1st and 2nd stave are connected; but not in the NWCTXT. Also a test conversion with https://nwc2musicxml.appspot.com/ does not connect them.
2. Eighths are not beamed in NWCTXT, but are beamed in the result (also with https://nwc2musicxml.appspot.com/). Would it be possible to suppress auto-beaming in Musescore via some info in the MusicXML?
Yes, you're right - adding "learning support" is definitely useful and valuable, even if (or exactly because??) it "only" shows steps on which to build more knowledge*. I don't have time right now, but this would be interesting to write
* We also have a tool "Note Names in Staff" - certainly not the most important tool to use, but nice, nevertheless.
No, probably not - just the knowledge necessary to develop the algorithm.
Mhm. Being a software engineer, including theoretical background, and - hopefully - having a little bit of musical knowledge: I'd argue that there is no (useful) algorithm. Look at my first example (Bach): The sixteenth on "bin's" is a musical decision that stresses the "nicht" some more - I'd say no algorithm would do this (whether it's ok or not ...). Maybe some sort of AI would be able to do this ...
However, the main problem with playing figured bass is, in my humble opinion, voice leading (as with all chord writing): Putting a following chord is always also a melodic enterprise, including decisions about leaving out notes; using typical patterns, most important, of course, countermovement - at least of outer voices; deciding how much movement there is in the chords - one-on-one movement, i.e., one chord per number, is typical, but also arpeggiated chords may be an option. A very wide and, I'd say, "under-determined" (in the mathematical sense) area ... so algorithmic solutions would probably have to be quite inventive, at places.
But, being a hobby musician, I don't see why I would want an algorithm to do this at all: Doing, and learning, it myself is the whole fun!
Just for fun, here is another example, which uses a few more symbols. When you open the attached NWC file, you see only the bass line - you can try to decipher it, i.e., write the expanded chords manually in a separate system. I have given an example expansion in another staff, which you can - then? - make visible and check your (and my!!!) expansion.
How, on earth, can one play this from "just the numbers" in real-time?? First, it's actually ok to just ignore almost all numbers! The only ones you must watch out for are 4 and 6 without 3: - 6 alone is a sixth chord (sure); - 6 and 4 is a 64 chord (ha!). - 4 alone or with a 2 is a some sort of fourth - if there is a 3 later, then it's (was) a suspended fourth; if not, fine, you just played the fourth of a dominant seventh chord. Otherwise, just play a normal triad on the bass note. This will work almost always. If in doubt (or panic), just play nothing in the right hand ("t.s." = tasto solo).
Second, music in those periods used lots of standard patterns - thus, one could risk to just "play by ear with some number-checking".
Last, learning those "changes" is also not that hard - practice, practice, practice, and it will come as second nature.
I typically write figured bass with Texts and XText.hmm objects; I have attached an example rewriting this excerpt from Bach's St.John Passion from Wikicommons:
... There seem to be several styles, so one of the first questions a potential object coder might ask is, which style(s) are needed?
All German notation is heavier on strokes, whereas elsewhere # was used routinely. The meaning is "by convention" and ambiguous; e.g., # can either mean "with sharp" or "a semitone higher" - which is formally different if the degree indicated has a flat in the current key; but in practice it might mean the same: Remove flat.
Playback is, IMHO, (also) impossible because we are talking about improvising music! What might be possible, is a tool which creates a rough chord expansion as a basis for writing the filling chords.
a) Install the NWC2STDA font to Windows (only once). - When you install NWC, the font is not installed for Windows (and therefore for Word). Installing can be done by ** opening Windows Settings (via Start button), go to Personalization,then Fonts: ** open Windows explorer at C:\Program Files (x86)\Noteworthy Software\NoteWorthy Composer 2\Fonts ** drag NWC2STDA.ttf to "Add Fonts" on the Settings window.
b) Open Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer
c) In NWC, open "Print Preview"; hit F11 - you will see that the justification is switched off (see attachment what this looks like)! ... and then Ctrl-C
d) In Word or Writer, hit Ctrl-V: The score will be inserted as a (resizable) image. You can now save/print this document.
This is easy and quick, especially for only 1 or 2 pages.
By default, NWC does it wrong for the second measure of 3/8 example; and also if you manually fully beam the 6/16 example. However, in the last case, NWC at least does auto beaming correctly by only beaming together the eighth and the sixteenth, but leaving the dotted eighth without beam. And of course and thankfully, one can reverse the fractional beams by using the "Beam group start" option on the sixteenths ... see other attachment for all of this.
It seems that the definitive source for notation rules is "Behind Bars." I assume one needs to buy the paper book ($74 on Amazon) or Kindle version ($41) to use this reference work. Are there references online?
I'd say $41 is extremely cheap for all the information you get (about a full tank of my car - from driving around for this amount I learn much less).
V.0.3 added in root posting, replaced examples in second posting: - Corrected access to bool properties - PrintVariation.hmm modifies previous items (so that it is useful for spacers). Because of this, PrintVariation 0.3 is not compatible with previous versions. Also, its properties as well as the internal storage for complete measure replacements have changed.
The object is still buggy with text properties of user objects - strange things happen there, as NWC sometimes (or always?) adds quotes. I do have an idea how to repair this, but it's more work than I hoped.
The meaning is "play c-sharp and c-natural together" - it is in "Behind Bars" on p.50 under "Altered unisons".
On the piano, c-sharp is the same key on the keyboard as d-flat, so my alternative notation above (the first one) definitely sounds the same; and is, I'd say, more easily readable - so I don't understand why it is written with this (quite new, I'd say) "altered unison chord notation".
See attachments for meaning (assuming that the clefs are treble and bass on the two systems), and how to create this with Arpeggio.ms and Markup.rg. I am not sure why this is written like that - is this for harp? - then, I guess, it has to do with the pedal settings that one would not write it with d-flat (however, I'd have guessed that especially for harp one would write it with different diatonic notes ...).
...).
For a technical limit, integral numbers in programs usually are limited to about plus or minus 2^31 = about 2 (US) billion; but floating point numbers can represent more than all of the known universe ...
... attached below as a ZIP. It says KeyError: ('P4', 2, '1') ...