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Messages - hmmueller

151
Object Plugins / Re: BreathMark.hmm (0.3)
Modified code for non-5-line staves according to Mike's suggestion; I use this to place all symbols at a "useful position".

H.M.
152
Object Plugins / Re: BreathMark.hmm (0.2)
Thanks a lot - I modified the object accordingly!

(However, I don't really understand what's going on: Neither NWC's nor Windows's character map show this symbol - and many more - in Times Roman on my Win10 installation; but the symbol is obviously available, i.e. it shows up in my NWC score ... hm.
Edit: The answer is font fallback and font linking, as remarked by Mike in this posting from 2017 - thanks!).

H.M.
153
Object Plugins / BreathMark.hmm (0.3)
There are more breath mark symbols than the "comma" provided by NWC: At least some sorts of V-shaped symbols and tiny vertical bars are also used in vocal and brass scores. Because I don't want to search all the time for the necessary characters in some text fonts, I have assembled a very simple object that draws some of these forms.

The vertical position of the symbols is such that objects at staff position 0 put the symbols (hopefully) at the most useful, standard position, also for staff with more or less than 5 lines.  The small vertical bars are always on the top or bottom line of the staff (even if the object is moved up and down).

H.M.
154
General Discussion / Re: "Scoring Notes" article on the history of notation programs
... that the Sibelius version is far more readable by a performer.
I think we only differ in words - I am very much with you that the spacing and sizing algorithms of NWC could use somewhat improved parameters; maybe would then need (I don't know the internals) changes to these algorithms; and, finally, require a few (but hopefully not too many) control parameters for (probably) pages, systems, measures, symbols.

In my dictionary (but maybe only mine), this does (or rather did) not fall under "further development" - because I suspect that the algorithms and parameters and defaults of NWC's sizing and spacing are, or at least were, intentional: "Developing them further" would require a modified specification.

But I can see what you need.

Minimal remarks about the two scores: The 16th beams in the trumpets in m.3 and m.7 are definitely wrong in the Sibelius score. I'm also not sure why both a tie and a slur are necessary in m.9 in trumpet 2. For the overall readability, yes, I have the same problem as an organ player - also there, the score is quite far away from my eyes; but a larger staff size in NWC requires too much horizontal space = too many systems and pages; contracting everything with spacers is not really an option ...

Edit: I have added an animated GIF comparing a part of the two scores. For my eyes, the main difference is the "boldness" of the noteheads. It seems that NWC's heads are a standard (quadratic) ellipse, whereas Sibelius uses an ellipse of a somewhat higher order - thus, the heads still fit exactly between the lines, but are "optically larger". NWC's SwingDings font seesm to do something similar - so the question is: Can we create and use a font from the normal NWC2STDA that has the head boundaries of the NWC2SwingDings font?

H.M.
155
General Discussion / Re: "Scoring Notes" article on the history of notation programs
And I fear Windows 11, and 12 and... (Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!)
Why? Since WinXP at the latest, Windows has been the most locked-in operating system out there - there are millions of "no longer supported", but vital programs for and inside all sorts of companies: "Compatibility" will remain the most important feature for decades to come. Moreover, even if some programs start getting hiccups, VirtualBox or the like will keep WinXP etc. alive forever.

H.M.
156
General Discussion / Re: "Scoring Notes" article on the history of notation programs
Interesting ...

...unless further development occurs, I will have to continue to move more and more of my work to Sibelius....
Can you explain why? My needs for musical notation do not change over time, so I have no need for "further development" (same for e.g. the text editor I use - a version of UltraEdit from around 2005, I think; and quite a few other tools). I see this development in Capella, but all what they do is part "featureitis", part things I simply do not need.

What I would like (but also not really need), is a program with a much larger scope regarding multiple movements; and with intricate sound creation not via soundfonts, but VSTis (which, AFAIK, Sibelius can do). But this is not "further development", in any sense, but a new product line ...

H.M.
157
General Discussion / Season's greetings, merry Christmas, all the best!
... to all of the musicians hereabouts!

This is the second year we had to cancel our choir's advent concert - we had rehearsed a longer composition "Weihnacht" I had written - with NWC, of course - which would have been nice to sing and, hopefully, listen to. So, next try next year!

Many regards
H.M.
158
Object Plugins / Re: PrintConfiguration (0.2)
V.0.2 added in root posting:
- Code to access staff name in 2.8.x (per Opagust's suggestion)
- Handling of "Staff Labels" corrected (trimming of " did the job)

H.M.
159
Object Plugins / Re: PrintConfiguration (0.1)
No, for sure it doesn't depends on the blank.
I did this way with no problem:
Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
    Item = nwcItem.new("|AddStaff");
    Item:Provide("Name","Perc. staff ".tostring(HighestPercStaffNumber))
    Item:Provide("Group","Percussions")
    Item:Provide("Label","Wood Blocks")
    table.insert(MidiStaves[StaffCount],Item)
Thanks for checking. Blanks do work e.g. for title and other properties. It seems that there is a problem (mine, or NWC's??) just with the StaffLabels enum value ... maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's an enum! (I declared it as text ...).

I'll play around ...

H.M.
161
Object Plugins / Re: PrintConfiguration (0.1)
Quote
I don't mean to throw cold water on this, but why not just save the modified score under a different name? NWC scores only take up a teeny-tiny percentage of space on a hard drive. I do this for parts all the time.

Well, we all probably have our own processes. I compose and arrange directly in NWC; one day or the other, I think I'm done. I let it lie around a day or two, then go over it - and will modify some stretches. But then (or a day later), I create the PDFs (e.g. full score, choral part, maybe a piano reduction) because I am done! ...

... I thought: Certainly, I now find a number of nuisances (typically, overlapping symbols; not nicely aligned hairpins; lyrics too near or too far from notes; lyrics that deserve redistribution to syllables; ...) that need to be beautified. I do this, then it goes to our choir's conductress ...

... who will tell me which parts she'd like to have adjusted (too high, too low, too fast, too slow, too hard, oh no!). So there's a next group of small changes. And as songs often contain equal segments at various places (e.g. motifs, but also complete verses), the changes need to be done at more than one place; so of course, I overlook some of these places, and have to make another tiny change the other day.

On the whole, I'd say that I create about 10 PDF versions up to the final version (which, alas, often still has a few hiccups).

Why don't I "just wait" till the end? I don't really know - but there are probably two reasons:
a) I actually do think that I'm done when I'm not. Overlooking some missing symbols and a few typesetting issues is so easy.
b) I like to create PDF scores, and even print them, and look at them. It is quite satisfying to see one's own creation as if it were real, published music ;) .

So maybe I rush the whole thing, at places, and thus have to repeat it more often than strictly necessary. And then I complain, and then I program ...

H.M.
162
Object Plugins / Re: PrintConfiguration (0.1)
And here is my first discussion posting. I have three questions, as of now:

a) Do the names "PrintConfiguration" and "PrintVariation" make sense? I had called them "ScoreConfig" and "ScoreConditional" first, but "score" is the whole NWC file, thus I introduced the term "print". For the conditional modifications in staves, "conditional" somehow sounds wrong; but is there a better term than "variation"?

b) Is the handling - using "Save" and "Apply" - ok? Actually, this is not really easy: If one forgets to "apply" previously saved settings before changing options or adding additional variations, one can end up with a chaos of options.
For the moment, the last PrintConfiguration object shows a diagonal "Active" text in edit mode so that one can see which configuration was apllied or saved last. Is this good enough?
I will add multi-print configurations to some of my small (organ + trumpet) and also larger (choir + soloists + string quartet + piano reduction) scores and check how happy I myself feel with this machinery....

c) "Staff Labels" does not work. Even when I manually tweak a .nwctxt file, this options is not correctly written into the PgSetup. I suspect this has to do with the blank in "First System", "All Systems" etc., therefore only "None" works. Is this true? and if so, how can I set the StaffLabels slot correctly with a user tool??
Solved.

Thanks for help and comments!
H.M.
163
Object Plugins / Re: PrintConfiguration (0.3)
Here are three typical examples using PrintConfiguration.hmm and PrintVariation.hmm objects:

PrintConfigurationExample.nwctxt is a simple example which only changes global properties of the score for two prints "1 Full Score" and "2 Trumpet" (I used digits here instead of letters; letters are better as they easily allow for ordering 26 prints).

Typically, one would print as follows:
  • Apply and print configuration 1: start user tool "Apply", type "1" and "Enter", save and print,
  • then apply and print configuration 2: "Apply", "2", "Enter", save and print,
  • finally apply print configuration 1 once more and save - you want to see the full score when you open the NWC file next time.

SinglePrintVariationExample.nwctxt shows, in addition, two typical uses of PrintVariation.hmm:
  • In measures 5 a text is shown just in the "Trumpet" print. Here, the fun text "Attention !" is inserted before the trumpet begins anew. To "remove" the text in the "Full Score", it is replaced with an invisible grace rest - removal is not possible for single items (but see MeasurePrintVariationExample below). Note that the PrintVariation.hmm is placed after the item - the reason is explained next:
  • In measure 6, a spacer is modified depending on the print configuration. The behaviour of spacers is the reason that a PrintVariation.hmm object must be placed after the item to be modifed: A spacer would not work when preceded by a user object, as this user object is then between the note and the spacer, which kills its effect on the note.

Finally, MeasurePrintVariationExample.nwctxt shows how to insert a full measure of cue notes in the "Trumpet" print. They replace the single whole rest in the "Full Score". For consistency, also here the PrintVariation.hmm object is placed after the items to be replaced - typically at the end of a measure.

H.M.
164
Object Plugins / PrintConfiguration (0.7)
The PrintConfiguration.hmm object supports the creation of differentprints from a single score. The idea is that for each print, such an object stores all the necessary specific options. Two user tools "Save" and "Apply" are used
  • to save the current options (which are set up as always - by fiddling with them until the print looks right) into the object as strings;
  • and to apply the options stored in such an object to the score.

Conceptually, each print configuration is placed on a specific staff; this is intuitive for typical "voice prints". Therefore, at most one such object on a staff makes sense - all latter ones are ignored.

The score properties saved by a PrintConfiguration are:
  • Title, Author, Lyricist, Copyright1 (but not Copyright2; this is useful for information that you want to change on all prints, like a print date);
  • visible staves (identified by their internal name; if there is a dash, i.e. /,  in the name, the identification starts at the dash. This helps with renaming, see this explanation farther down);
  • master StaffSize and the sizes of all 12 fonts (but not their names etc.);
  • page options: JustifyVertically, PrintSystemSeparatorMark, ExtendLastSystem, DurationPadding, PageNumbers, PrintStaffLabels, ShowBarNumbers;
  • the 4 margin sizes and the MarginsMirrored checkbox.

In addition to the PrintConfiguration.hmm object, there is a PrintVariation.hmm object which allows to modify segments of a staff arbitrarily(!) for different prints. Typical examples are:
  • add/modify spacers for a print;
  • addition of cue notes;
  • enable/disable various objects, e.g. BarNumber.hmm objects on lower staves.

Some hints for usage: Typically, you would set the following values for different prints ("voices"):
  • Of course, the staves to be printed;
  • but typically also a different staff size is needed;
  • as well as a specific title that indicates the print's purpose;
  • and e.g. a different print preparation date (e.g. in a copyright or lyricist field);
  • then, adjusted margins to maybe save an almost empty page at the end.
  • For multi-line prints (like the director's score or a piano score), I always use a separate top staff (with just one line and many invisible rests, layered with the next). There, I can add margins and user controls (e.g. PgTxt) and system breaks at will.
  • For single-staff prints, I put the PrintConfiguration on that staff; and use "Top Staff Only" Visibility settings to enable boundary settings and User Controls (e.g. a BarCounter).
  • In more complex cases, one might add PrintVariation objects for cue notes in some (but not all) of the prints ;
  • and even more intricate changes like specific spacers or differently aligned dynamics and texts (but this is very hard work to make it work correctly).
  • It may make sense to add a print sequence number or letter in the staff names, e.g. "A Full Score", "B 1st Violin", "C 2nd Violin" etc. This documents the print order; and also helps to easily select the print configuration in the user tools from the keyboard by simply typing A or B or C etc.

For examples, see next posting.

V.0.3:
- Corrected access to bool properties;
- PrintVariation.hmm modifies previous objects so that it is useful for spacers.
V.0.4:
- Corrected label in PrintVariation.hmm for V.0.3 change.
V.0.5:
- Allows limited change of staff names, by using only name part after / (if there is one) for selecting visible staves.
V.0.6:
- Copyright2 is no longer part of a PrintConfiguration; see explanation in posting #16 below.
V.0.7:
- Font sizes are stored!

H.M.
165
General Discussion / Re: Digital Whiteout
No, they are not fixed. You can change them in Tools->Options->Color tab->Change button - see attachment. I use "Highlight 4" for White.

H.M.
166
General Discussion / Re: Favourite/preferred Soundfont(s) and VSTi
I assume "soundfonts" also includes "VSTi" instruments.

I use:
a) "Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra" for most everything instrumental, also piano.
b) "Soundiron Olympus Micro Choir" VSTi in Kontakt 5 player for choral sounds.
c) Chorium.sf2 as a standard soundfont for "internal use", I think I also used it for a few brass instruments a few years ago - but I'm not uptodate here.

H.M.
167
General Discussion / Re: Ghost note
Nice :-). Which soundfont?

I overlayed your Ghost.mp3 with a MIDI recording of the NWC file - the Reaper result can be seen in the attachment: This is really very weird: The ghost f# occurs "somewhere in" the 6th beat! (I hope the tempo maps are actually the same; but why shouldn't they be?) ... scratching my head slowly...
168
General Discussion / Re: Ghost note
One possible effect is that if some notes in a chord fade out faster than others, we (or at least I) at times seems to "hear" the slower-fading notes anew. I do many arrangements for crank organs, where I use "Ocarina" of the Chorium soundfont as a sound that is very near to that of smaller crank organs - and I have had such effects at times, which made me search for spurious notes that simply were not there. (In one of my first arrangements, I found out that at least on faster scales, you can trick the ear into "hearing" notes that are definitely missing ... we seem to just "know" what "should be heard", and then hear it ...). This is not a definitive explanation, but I am not totally surprised about this.

H.M.
169
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
This has now, in a very short time, become a standard tool that I use heavily with IMSLP scores (and, recently, paper scores I got from my trumpetist): The chain Audiveris -> Musescore -> MXML2NWC typically delivers enough pieces of a scanned score to NWC that the result is useful.

- Audiveris often delivers very patchy and weird results; but still, complete melody and bass lines can often be extracted from the result (sometimes assembling them from two or three staves) to save a fair lot of typing time.
- The intermediate Musescore step (open MXL, save it anew) usually roughens out a few problems that Audiveris has with MXL files.
- I usually start with a new NWC file from scratch, put the MXML2NWC-created NWCTXT in a second window, "tile" both - and copy-pasting starts.

H.M.
170
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
Thanks for your analysis!

...Or: Audiveris incorrectly read the position. (In part 'P2', measure number "0", I found  a normal 'F,4' clef)...
So maybe I could change my program to ignore the line number (except for the 'C' clefs) and print a warning if the line number differs from the 'normal' one? 
Audiveris definitely finds clefs - especially bass clefs - at astonishing places, e.g. if an eighth flag has a few pixels missing or so. So it would, in my opinion, be the best thing to simply ignore such "impossible clefs".

H.M.
171
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
A great tool - very helpful right now for getting (parts of) PDFs via Audiveris to NWC, for my crank organ arrangements.

I have another problematic MXL file; Audiveris already stumbles on many things in the score, creates a "corrupted" MXL, which I could load into MuseScore and then "beautify" a little. However MXML2NWC then exits with an exception ... I have attached the error message and the MXL file - hopefully you can see what the problem is!

H.M.
172
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
All this looks good. One more thing would be nice: A checkbox that suppresses custom note velocities on dynamics - I might want to use NWC's standard values. I'll now try to "conduct" (add agogics, volume, velocity, tempo, ornaments, ...) to the four symphony movements = this has not much to do with MXML2NWC.  After that, I'll try the process with another symphony - I have three or four more scans lying around here!

H.M.
174
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
Just a short "still working on it" message: I'm right now converting scans of modern prints of the 4 movements of a Kospoth symphony (2 oboes, 2 horns, strings) to NWC.

My process will require two passes through the NWC score: The first one makes all the notes and measure lengths correct - i.e., all notes are where they belong; the second is the fine-tuning process. I'm right now in the first pass, where I learn that Audiveris sometimes ignores (or despairs on) complete pages; first, I rewrote such missing segments manually - but now, I let Audiveris do another scan of that single pages - it comes out roughly right, so that after running it through MXML2NWC, I can paste in the respective segments (what is sorely missing for this from NWC, is vertical - mutli-staff - marking and copy/paste).

Right now I work with a single screen, but this is somewhat tedious. Tomorrow, I'll try two screens - one for the source PDF, the other for NWC.

Re selecting/deselecting item types, right now "Global Modification (adp)" with DELETE is sufficient; at one point I also did a F3-Del-Sequence. What might be helpful, is a switch to remove the "System Break" marks from bar lines - the NWC score will definitely be laid out differently.

H.M.
175
General Discussion / Re: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
On Windows, when the sound pipeline does not work, I look a the byte counter of my virtual MIDI cable  - this helps me to understand whether the problem is before the cable (NWC, i.e. MIDI generation) or after (my DWS, e.g. Reaper):
  • When I play a piece and the counter increases -> MIDI commands are sent out, problem is at receiving end.
  • No counter increase -> NWC is silent (muted staff, ...).

Maybe this is also possible on Linux.
I have no idea about Linux, but here are two links that seem to give reasonable information that might be helpüful:

http://www.tedfelix.com/linux/linux-midi.html
https://askubuntu.com/questions/526275/is-there-any-virtual-midi-loopback-solution-for-ubuntu-linux

H.M.
176
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
Great - all items fine (especially, reopening the converter for more files is really no problem).

So, I now try to use the results to create a useful score. My initial experience with the "Go, tell it" score is: Not a nice job. The voices are not separated as one would hope - sometimes two-voice chords in a staff, but a few notes spill into another staff; long slurs and cresc/decresc, with many haphazard texts in between; and at times there are missing notes or dots, leading to too short measures.

It might be that a more useful process is actually: Remove everything except notes and rests (probably with a user tool), create a correct "naked score" from these; and finally add all the "small things" (and not so small ones) - either manually or, at a few places, by copying something over from the "ORM-ed" score.

The whole enterprise is certainly not for the faint-hearted, at least with this Audiveris+Converter pipeline; where the main "problem", but also "heavy-weight-lifter" is Audiveris: What it can and cannot do essentially defines the result. So be it. I'll see what I learn ...

H.M.
177
General Discussion / Re: Graphics....
... I wonder if any of these things are doable without the developer but as plug ins or objects? ...
I went through the lists in their current state and tried to imagine whether a plugin could be written to do this. On the whole, the answer is a (more or less) sound "no" (unless I have overlooked something intricate).

There is another question: All the large score editors (and competing smaller programs like Capella in Germany) are now "score environments", with many extensive functions - at least for large scores (multiple movements, prints for various musicians), but up to and including scanning and sound production. It seems to me that many of the advanced functions are bought from small specialty shops, which requires a "company strategy" on how the environment is to evolve. I cannot see that NWC, both from its concept and its manpower, will ever be able to do this.

The only way I can see for NWC to compete is to open up even more, maybe to the point of open-sourcing it, but at least to the point of providing an API to call all actions and modify a score temporarily extensively; so that a few hackers like Mike or me could write "tools around NWC": Where NWC is then only a component of a larger system that controls e.g. scan programs like Audiveris, multi-movement scores (probably via ZIP files with name conventions or meta information), print runs which "tickle" various score elements (font sizes, spacers, system breaks, upper and lower staff sizes, margins) to create different print outputs and the like.
This would be a next (final?) step of "community enabling" (which started with tool and Lua integration), which might carry NWC into another decade or so ...

H.M.
178
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
Kospoth's symphony worked nicely* for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd movement. The mxls produced by Audiveris already have a fair share of problems (however, some are from untypical notations in the score), but the result is quite usable. However, the 4th movement stumps MXML2NWC 1.0.2 (I hope - I just installed it over the previous one; does the installer replace it? ... it would be nice if there were a version info somewhere), with another Python error. The zipped .mxls are in the attachment (however, due to renaming, the XMLs stored inside the mxls do have strange names from my scanning operation - I hope this is fine).

* However, there are a few things where I stumble
a) The first staff of each NWCTXT contains "a million" PgTxts at  the start (see NWCTXT result of second movement in the attachment).
b) When opening, the files require a font "Default" which I apparently don't have.
c) Opening another .mxl file often (always?) crashes MXML2NWC later. You can try it with the symphony: First, convert and save movement 1; then, press "SELECT ..." again and open movement 3. "CONVERT" will result in an error - see attachment.

H.M.
179
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
Thank you! - and onwards, to new enterprises:

a) I just scanned a modern transcription of a four-movement symphony of the obscure German composer Otto Carl Erdmann Duke of Kospoth (1753-1817). His great-great-great-nephew or something lives in our town, and for a birthday of the old gentleman I'll play a piano reduction I wrote ... but I'd also like to have the symphony played with some nice soundfonts (I'll try Sonatina Orchestra), and for this, I need the whole score. Instead of writing it, I'll try Audiveris + MXML2NWC! I'll write a separate reply for this.

b) In the attachment are (in a single .zip) two more .mxl files produced by Audiveris. The input for this was a scan of Ruth Elaine Schram's arrangement of "Go, Tell It On The Mountain" (see http://www.hmmueller.de/Scans/RuthSchram_GoTellItOnTheMountain.pdf - "permanently out of print", according to the publisher). I'd like to create a rehearsal voice/mp3 for a soloist singer from this via NWC. Audiveris produces two "movements", where the latter is the separate coda starting on the last page but one. Giving the first file to MXML2NWC 1.0.2 unfortunately creates another Python stacktrace ... Maybe you could look into this.

H.M.
180
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER - the next experiment
Granted, everything  :))

A much more brutal experiment: I found an open source OMR ("optical music recognition") program called Audiveris on GitHub. I took a somewhat complicated score - it is a modified version of John Rutter's "Dormi Jesu", which we currently rehearse in our choir, which I have written with NWC (we had to change a few things, because of SSAB, and because ... well ...) ---> see attachment "20210922-ch+p.Rutter_DormiJesu.pdf".

Audiveris creates .omr files. In this case, the resulting OMR file has about 1,5 MB (also when zipped - seems to be some image file format), so I couldn't append it here.

Audiveris can export to MusicXML, so this is what I did. The result is a .mxl file, which is a zipped XML file ---> see attachment "20210922-ch+p.Rutter_DormiJesu.mxl.zip" - I zipped the MXL, because the forum does not accept .mxl files. Opening the .mxl with MXML2NWC does not work - it seems that it does not see that this is a zipped file which needs unzipping (and yes, MXML2NWC does not accept .mxl as a standard extension for files it wants to open, so this is an "advertised feature"). Still, I have the (small) feature request that .mxl files are accepted, i.e. unzipped and then worked on the XML.

Manual unzipping of the .mxl yielded an XML file, which MXML2NWC actually digested, with a host of messages which I ignored (and did not read; and maybe would not have understood). Still, it created an NWCTXT file which is actually "usable" in the sense that one can extract substantial parts from it in NWC (which is the whole idea of OMR).

I also opened the .mxl file coming out of Audiveris in Musescore. Musescore complained that this was not a valid MusicXML file, but after pressing "Ignore" it also gobbled it up and created a score, which I again exported as MusicXML ---> see "20210922-ch+p.Rutter_DormiJesu_ReexportedFromMusescore.mxl.zip. Once more, I had to manually unpack the .mxl. Now, when I gave this to MXML2NWC, it ran into some Pythonian error.

I daresay I would be interested that this process works - even if with problems and lost information and whatever ... it might help me to create more musical renderings from scores lying around. Is there any possibility to improve, a little, on the problems above?

H.M.
181
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
First of all, thanks! - and wow!!! - this is and will be really, really helpful for me: In Germany, laymen's scores are mostly written in Capella. Being able to get them into NWC is great (even though there's some work to be done afterwards to clean up, of course - depending on the quality I want to get).

There's one thing that I would think about: The installer is not signed, and so it complains about an "unknown publisher". I feel that I would not recommend this program to anyone with the advice "just click on advanced and install anyway" (even though I did this, of course). A "right" solution is of course to purchase a code-signing certificate (quick googling found $83/year, less if purchased over 3 years, at https://cheapsslsecurity.com); but I've never done this, and the process (identity verification) might be a hassle? Publishing the Python script and a starter .cmd/-bat file, with additional instructions on how to install Python might be another, and simpler, way to go ...

Last, the 1.0 version is now quite useless on the website, isn't it?

H.M.
182
User Tools / Re: MUSICXML TO NOTEWORTHY CONVERTER
I tried to convert a file from Capella 7 to MusicXml and then to NWC. Unfortunately, there's some hiccup - is this the right place to ask? I have added the XML file (as a zip) as well as the error I encounter ...

H.M.
183
General Discussion / Re: Graphics....
Just went back to a pdf taken from an NWC score, and you're right, it looks a lot better. I stand corrected. It's still a problem when creating examples, though, where it's easier to do a screen capture than to produce a pdf just to extract a couple of measures.
Well, this is "only" a tooling problem - where I admit that tool-chain setup is always a hassle; and has a lot to do with personal preferences.

For a long time, I have used PDFCreator to print to various graphics formats, but in the last 2 or 3 years it got very slow on startup, so I changed to PDF24 (both are free).
PDF24 is very fast on startup and printing to PNG or BMP (and of course PDF). I print with e.g. 300 or even 400 dpi e.g. to c:\temp (or the "Pictures"folder) - page selection is not really nice in PDF24, but, well ... Then I open the printed file in Win10's image viewer (one double-click) and cut out a piece and save it as a copy, then just use Ctrl-C to get it into the clipboard (saving is necessary in the image viewer so that Ctrl-C works).

Of course, there is also Ctrl-C in the print preview, which actually creates vector graphics (EMF). When one opens the menu in Print Preview ("burger menu" in the upper right corner), one can also save the EMF to a file. Me, personally, I have troubles with EMF because of incorrect font handling (e.g. in IrfanView), but with a correct setup this should also work easily and then, e.g. in a Word file, create a perfect rendering.

Screen-shotting, in my humble opinion, is never the way to go for copying around graphics: It introduces all the parameters of your graphics card and selected display resolution, which plainly adds arbitrary information loss.

H.M.
184
General Discussion / Re: Problème avec Répétitions imbriquées
Hi Annie -

[I use DeepL.com for translation - to me, it seems to understand everything you say ;) ]

the simple answer is "no": Music notation has never known nested repeats ("répétitions imbriquées"). The nearest one gets to this is a combination of repeats and D.C.+Coda instructions - but if one uses this, the repeats are really kept simple and do not have special endings. And NWC is quite near to standard musical notation in this respect (even though you can trick it to much more complicated things - but this is more like creating intricate puzzles than writing music scores :) ).

Some wizard might find a way to get NWC to do it with some nested repeat trick - but this is not nice to the reader: If the repeated section is short, just write it out. If it is longer, leafing back 2 or more pages is even more complicated for the singer/player, so ... write it out.

As Elaine Gould writes on p.236 of "Behind Bars": "When instructions become complicated, a repeated passage is clearest written out." and on p.239 "Be aware that the layout in the example above [an example using Segno, Coda, and D.S.] may be difficult to negotiate without getting lost, especially if involves page-turns between the different sections. Rehearsal time may be used up rehearsing the geography of the piece rather than the music. In such cases, notate all or some of the repeated sections in full, so as not to risk jeopardizing a secure performance".

I therefore remain steadfast that you should not really do this ...

And in these times, where we have computers and programs like NWC which allow us to do copy/paste with just a few key clicks, there is really no reason to not "notate all of the repeated sections in full". It is the right way - I have tried it, with a real choir and quite a few pieces :).

If you want to know how you can do it in NWC, I have added a score "ChansondAnnie4.nwctxt" that does it. But this is totally contrary to standard music notation - no real musician will understand what to play with this score. It's just a trickery to get NWC to do something weird. And if you dont understand how NWC works internally, you will not easily find out why this works at all ...
And yes, you could make some of the endings and repeats invisible, and add others as purely "graphical" (or text) markers so that it looks more like you might think it could be written. But - see all of the above - this is not "how it is done"; it would just be your private hobby notation, which no-one else would understand.

H.M.
185
General Discussion / Re: Problème avec Répétitions imbriquées
Hi Annie -

just to be sure: Would the score in the attachment be ok regarding the flow (the sequence of the parts) - even though I "expanded" the inner nested repeats, and therefore one part of the refrain would have to be written twice in the score (which I indicated in red)?

H.M.
186
General Discussion / Re: Problème avec Répétitions imbriquées
Annie,

Malheureusement, je ne parle pas français - thus I answer in English.

As far as I know, there is no standard notation for such "nested repeats". Usually, one would therefore repeat the refrain part in its entirety - even if it's long - see "ChansondAnnie1.nwctxt" where I highlighted the repeated part in red.

Opagust's score does what you want with local repeats, it seems ... however, I suspect that the text sequence highlighted by NWC is not what you (and I) would expect.

In the attachment "ChansondAnnie2.nwctxt" is a variant of Opagust's method that uses a "D.C.". However, to get the sequence you want, you need a "Coda trick" to  force NWC into all the repeats once more.
Also here, the lyrics sequence highlighted by NWC is probably not what you want.

H.M.
187
General Discussion / Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines
Just as Opagust says. I have added your score with the necessary changes here; and a picture of what it looks like in the editor. You can see that the now visible bracket 2. at the right position already here (and more so after pressing F11 or Alt-F-V for a print preview).

Also, just as a comment, you can shift up (or down) the special endings to place them at a nicer height (shifting is done as always by highlighting with Shift-left/right; and then moving with Ctrl-Shift-up/down).

(In the score, I also added an invisible 1/4 time signature on the upper zero-line staff for consistency; and replaced the superfluous [and visible!] notes with an - invisible - rest there [or did you want to achieve something with these notes?]).

H.M.
188
General Discussion / Re: Graphics....
I almost never include lyrics in my Files, mainly because I find that entering them in the separate lyrics window, and then switching back and forth between that and the staff to make sure everything is properly positioned and aligned, is too much hard work. 

I describe my way of entering lyrics in this new thread - maybe it's helpful. I find the process quite efficient.

H.M.
189
Tips & Tricks / Entering lyrics efficiently
It seems that some people have troubles with efficient lyrics handling, e.g. in this posting:

I almost never include lyrics in my Files, mainly because I find that entering them in the separate lyrics window, and then switching back and forth between that and the staff to make sure everything is properly positioned and aligned, is too much hard work.

I describe here how I do it (mostly composing for a choir, so there's lyrics all the time), but any critique or other ways of doing it are certainly welcome here!

There's a small bug/problem in NWC you need to know; and you need a "process" - then it's quite easy-going.

First, I almost never use the notes' "Lyrics Always/Default/Never" feature - it is really too much hassle to jump between the score, the lyrics editor and single note's properties windows for me. So all my notes have "Lyrics" set to "Default". For one use of "Always", see "in-word melismas" below.

(a) Write the score without lyrics. You already add the necessary slurs here. If you follow the old way of using beaming for multiple notes per syllable, you can add markers to make all the slurs invisible on beamed groups. Don't be too perfect - errors are repaired later.

(b) Prepare the whole lyrics for a single verse/line in a text editor, where you add all the necessary hyphens. For a long text, it's often easier e.g. to replace "ing " with "-ing " everywhere, as this suffix is typically hyphenated off. Of course you will miss a few hyphenation points and misspell some words - also that will be corrected later.

(c) Paste the lyrics in the lyrics window and close it with Ok (I always use <Tab><Tab><Enter> for this - using the mouse or touchpad is much slower; NWC is a very keyboard-centric program, which makes it so efficient).

(d) Now start reading until the first point where the lyrics are "off" (not aligned with the notes as intended; or there is a simple typo). Ctrl-L will open the lyrics window and remember the right tab - easy. However, the text cursor will sometimes (I don't know when) be at a totally wrong position - now press left-arrow! (not up, not down!! - that's the NWC problem). This will place the text cursor at the position corresponding to the cursor in the score. Now, you can directly correct what's necessary - typically, add a hyphen, but maybe also add an underscore _ for leaving a note without lyrics. Repairing missing or overly long slurs is done directly in the score, of course (marking the respective notes and pressing semicolon).

A special case are lyrics lines that are empty on a long stretch. For example, in a song which starts with an 8-bar chorus, only the first line is filled with lyrics there; but lateron, the second etc. lines will contain lyrics for the verses. For these lines, just prepare a line of many underscores separated by blanks in the text editor (_ _ _ _ _ _ ...) and paste it before the verse lyrics. That lyrics will now be shoved back way too much (if not, add that _ _ _ line once more; repeat until the lyrics is too far back). Close the lyrics and go, in the score, to the place where the verse lyrics should start; now press Ctrl-L and then left-arrow - voila, the text cursor will be at the exact place where the verse lyrics should actually start. Delete all the _ up to the verse, and all is fine.

Another special case are long sequences of notes on a single in-word(!) syllable ("melismas"). Such lyrics are typically not marked with a melisma line (for that, see Melismatic.nw), but with multiple hyphens spread over the note sequence. This is the one place where I set single notes' "Lyrics"  to "Always" (e.g. on the start of each quarter in a run of sixteenths); and replace the single hyphen in the lyrics with -_-_-_-. Each _ will be placed at one of the "Always" notes, and the hyphens are placed nicely in between them. The slur is left completely alone by this (and can be hidden on beamed notes if so wished).

- Repeat (d) through the whole lyrics.
- Repeat (b) to (d) for each lyrics line (verse).

I find that this is really quick work.

H.M.
190
General Discussion / Re: Graphics....
Because the graphic output of the "big three" notation programs is now dramatically better than NWC's, and because my scores go to a wide variety of places, I have been forced to mostly abandon NWC for Sibelius.
@William Ashworth‍ - as the initiator of this thread, would you care to share a (or a few?) Sibelius scores and, if possible, their NWC siblings so that we can learn about these dramatic differences? - I fear that otherwise, we (I) might go down the rabbit hole of pushing our pet problems and projects ...

H.M.
191
General Discussion / Re: Graphics....
... using spacers [is] extremely tedious, plus it clutters the score appearance in Edit mode. [...] One option would be to replace the current "two choice" system with a slider with perhaps 10 choices. Another option would be to have a "Custom..." submenu, that lets the individual spacing values for each duration be entered. Also, there should be an option to change the spacing in the score, in much the same way that instruments can be change by inserting an instrument object in a staff.
A general remark: With the (German) Capella music editor, I see (with scores written by a friend; and many on the internet) what happens if it is easy to access too many "raw formatting and positioning" parameters - the results are mostly appalling. Thus, I'd still hope that only very limited additional control is added to repair current deficiences ...

... and thus, I would definitely argue against "individual spacing values for each duration": The relative distancing of durations is one thing laymen get consistently wrong, and even programs do it horribly (look at Capella). NWC is definitely acceptable here, so this should not change. But I would heartily welcome the "sectional spacing objects" akin to instrument changes, although I think that a sort of a start-end logic, as with collapsing, would be less risky: There would be one "default spacing" for the whole score, with some "differently spaced sections". Last, I would think that limiting this spacing-changing factor to maybe 0.75 to 1.25 should suffice (and thereby avoid too awful formatting).

[...] lyrics. Better control over line spacing, font properties like italics, and an easier way to change these values in the middle of the score, using a boundary object or something similar.
Agree.

Text object placement  ... some sort of "position with offset" option, with a +/- numeric value that lets me put the object right where I want it.
Agree (including all other "text-like items", i.e. dynamics, dynamic variance, flow direction, performnce style, sustain pedal, tempo and tempo variance, and user objects).

[...] appearance of slurs [...:] cubic Bezier curves.
Agree.

[...] an easier way to align notes ... Maybe there could also be a way for a layered staff to "see" the notes on the previous staff ...
I'm not sure how this would (conceptually) work without "programmer-like-complexity" for the user. But yes, see A10. in my "list" posting.

... and slurs/ties on multiple layered staves.
I think that especially tie routing is too coarse ("broken"?) even for a single staff: When a chord has accidentals, ties overlap them; on chords with 3 or more voices, it is impossible to specifically route inner ties. Again a general rule: I think that overlapping symbols are almost always wrong in scores; NWC is not too bad at graphically separating things (automatically or with user help), but this is a sore point for me.

H.M.
193
General Discussion / Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines
... and think this looks like a bug, ...
Well, "not really". Noteworthy was, as far as I know, never designed to have a specific "expected" behaviour when there are staves of different lengths. You need to fill up all staves to the same length before anything is considered a bug, I'd say.

That said, the behaviour you describe can be reasonably explained:
* The topmost visible staff defines how much is shown on a print (that's why you need enough bars to spill over into the second line - either by an explicit system break, or by adding more measures).
* For "Bars Connected" to have an effect in a line, there must be a visible staff below that line to connect to (that's why you need to fill the third staff) (I just found out that it needn't be the next staff that's visible - just any staff below needs to extend to that line. But as I said, all this is "unguaranteed behaviour" in my opinion).

H.M.
194
General Discussion / Re: Graphics....
Of course, we do not know how Noteworthy is going to evolve. Still, for the hopeful, it might make sense to create a list of all graphical improvements to bring NWC up to date with what seems to be expected by professional score readers. So here is my "management suggestion" for this list:

- Input: I'd say there are at least two inputs:
(a) collecting existing and new comments here on the forum;
(b) going through Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars" (BB) and check NWC against it.

- Result: Two sublists:
(a) Existing features that need "optical upgrade". A well-known one is a smaller distance of beams for sixteenths and below.
(b) Missing "graphical features". Well-known: Smaller-sized staves.
The difference might not always be that clear (as already in the cases above: Why isn't the second just "smaller distance of staff lines"?!), but I'd say that the first sublist contains "bugs" = this should have been different all along; whereas the second contains "new features".

Of course, each graphical improvement might be adorned with a feature suggestion. For the beams, this could e.g. be: "Make distance smaller, as shown in Behind Bars" or "Add boolean score property for beam distance (large=as today, for backward compatibility/small=Gould)" or "Add numerical score property for beam distance", each with its own respective problems and advantages.

The list should not contain ease-of-use or other features that are not driven by a graphical improvement or capability: The "use case" of all these features would only be "can the graphical output stand up to requirements of professional score readers?" ... well, there are "boundary cases" (or is this much more?):
- For compressing highly patterned parts (like Alberti basses with 16ths or 32nds), instead of adding millions of spacers like today, a new feature "contract this range of symbols by a factor" would be very helpful.
- For creating multiple prints from one score (full score, choir, piano reduction, instrumental soloists), it would be very helpful to add a "score prints" list to each score and allow (a) font sizes; (b) optics-controlling elements like system breaks on bars, spacers sizes, maybe text orientation (left/right-hanging) to be controlled by a "score print" selection.
- How about "multi-scores", e.g. the movements of a sonata? Hm. At least a "print multiple scores consecutively without page breaks" seems necessary. With a somewhat extended (multiline) Text object, it should then be possible to create e.g. a piano-reduction score of an opera (including stage directions), as a test case.

But all the suggestions on the list should be for the benefit of the reader who gets better scores. Definitely out-of-scope for this list are improvements/features for e.g MIDI playing, I'd say.

I'd assemble the list here in this posting, i.e. let me start it right away with just the two requirements from above - more will follow from me today. I have added [plugin possible], where I think it would be possible to write a plugin; or [plugin name if there is already one that is fairly usable; my CueStaff.hmm is [it]not[/i] one of these); currently, there is only a single [plugin ...]:

Necessary graphical improvements:
I1. Beam distance according to BB [possible feature: Add numerical score property for beam distance; default for new scores is BB suggestion, for existing scores current NWC value].
I2. Controllable lyrics line distance.
I3. Cubic-Bezier slurs [plugin Slur.ms]
I4. Correct slur end positioning at system breaks [use of "slur markers" is haphazard at best].

Graphical additions:
A1. Support for smaller staff size. This includes size reduction of all symbols on the staff, including texts, slurs and ties, dynamics.
A2. General horizontal "position offset" relative to current positioning for freely positioned items (text, dynamics, ...).
A3. Lyrics font per lyrics line (at least italics setting).
A4. Straightforward support (including spacing) for multiple hyphens between lyrics syllables.
A5. "Regional control for spacing" [use of spacers for longer sections is extremly cumbersome; and breaks down completely with changes to global score parameters like font size, lyrics font size].
A6. More than 6 user fonts.
A7. Placing arbitrary small images (PNGs, JPGs; maybe also some vector graphics) in score.
A8. Additional "small" brackets for grouping staves (for orchestral scores).
A9. Offsetting tie and slur starts and end from connecting note (e.g. to avoid accidentals).
A10. Reversal of note order in two-stemmed chords.
A11. Per-note control of tie-direction of chords.
A12. Suppression of auto-beaming for single notes (is this a "graphic" feature or a usability feature?)

H.M.

// Updated 2021-10-26 - added I2...I4, A2...A11. and "cumbersome examples" file.
// Updated 2021-11-08 - added [plugin ...].
// Updated 2021-11-09 - added A12.
195
General Discussion / Re: Percussion Staff Bar Lines
Idea for a workaround (which may have problems of its own): Add invisible (0-line) staves above and below; and connect the bar lines from above and to the lower one. See attached example.

H.M.
196
General Discussion / Re: Support for Error: Missing Font NWC2STDA
Aren't the ...Germanic fonts in the standard install?? And which 12 user objects are those missing ones (my choral template has, nowadays, quite a handful of user objects on each staff; there being 12 staves, it seems that there are two of them that need to be installed ... as far as I know, all of them should be in the forum, but I might have used a modified local copy of some).

H.M.
197
General Discussion / Re: Support for Error: Missing Font NWC2STDA
saved all to usb
downloaded demo
copied demo font folder to usb
copied usb nwc2.exe to demo
both work

Still no response to my email.
Could not resist ... https://youtu.be/7Z-fZkyeS-I - maybe "fair use" according to the law, but - ok, I admit it: not fair in in the common sense of the word. And also not helpful.
(I'm always looking for lyrics - your posting is formatted so like a poem that it cries for being set to music - you'll get the full royalities when they start flowing!)

H.M.
198
General Discussion / Re: Does anyone know this?
Hi -

1. "usertool, lua [object] or exe ... input into noteworthy staffs any font symbol in the place of notes and these symbols will play the correspondent note": Unfortunately, I do not know suc a tool and can't remember one. Maybe someone else?

2. "import or copy n paste an image into noteworthy": No, this is not possible (and yes, it would be helpful sometimes).

3.  "usertool or LUA [object] that would use n calculate the MPC pitch bend mechanism and prompt you the equate within a 100 cents of microtunning for 4 prompts one note affected, all same notes on a staff, all notes selected, or all notes on the midi channel, a sort of practical converter utility new mechanismic too": I think this could be done. But I fear it would not be too easy ... and would not be the first tool on my list of things to do (but that's just my interest). Maybe someone else con do it, or has done something like this? But it should also be possible manually with an MPC controller - although using them is not too easy, in my experience.

H.M.
199
General Discussion / Re: Support for Error: Missing Font NWC2STDA
Newly installed NWC2? Or has been used, and now suddenly does not work?
And: Can you change the main font (Alt-F-G -> tab "Fonts" -> "Change" -> "Notation Typeface", select a different one there) and check whether it works?

H.M.
200
General Discussion / Re: how do you do this?
Chiming in ... Flurmy's lower solution is the "best one", in that it creates exactly what you want, with the right number of beats.

In general, a complex voice sequence of overlapping rhythm can often be written with rest chords of the smallest common note length. Here is an example that shows what's possible and what not (see also attached files). In the attached NWC file and image, the upper staff shows the intended result, the lower one shows the rest chords with visible rests so that the "construction plan" is visible:

Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.751,Single)
|Chord|Dur:8th|Pos:-4,-2|Opts:Stem=Up|Dur2:4th|Pos2:-6
|RestChord|Dur:8th|Opts:Stem=Down,ArticulationsOnStem,HideRest|Dur2:4th,Dotted|Pos2:-3,-1
|RestChord|Dur:8th|Opts:Stem=Up,ArticulationsOnStem,HideRest|Dur2:4th,Dotted|Pos2:-6
|Spacer|Width:200
|Rest|Dur:8th|Opts:Stem=Up|Visibility:Never
|RestChord|Dur:8th|Opts:Stem=Down,ArticulationsOnStem,HideRest|Dur2:4th|Pos2:-2,0
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:-6|Opts:Stem=Down
|Bar
|Chord|Dur:8th|Pos:-3|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=First|Dur2:4th|Pos2:-2,0^
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:-4|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=End
|Chord|Dur:16th|Pos:0|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam=First|Dur2:4th|Pos2:-3^
|Note|Dur:16th|Pos:-1|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam
|Note|Dur:16th|Pos:-2|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam
|Note|Dur:16th|Pos:0|Opts:Stem=Up,Beam=End
|Chord|Dur:8th|Pos:-3,-1|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=First|Dur2:4th|Pos2:-1
|Chord|Dur:8th|Pos:b-4,-2|Opts:Stem=Down,Beam=End
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

The first measure works out nicely. If one uses only rest-chords with eighth rests, an additional spacer is necessary for the hidden eighth rest. A better option would be to use a quarter-note rest-chord for the dotted quarter C.

In the second measure, the middle voice should also go to the F, which would therefore need an additional (short) upward stem: This is not possible in NWC, which limits chords to two stems. For three or more voices on a single staff that show some independent voice leading, it is therefore better to use, right form the start, multiple staves with layering.

H.M.