401
Tips & Tricks / Keyboard cheat sheets
- English, A4 format
- English, letter format
- German, A4 format
H.M.
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Messages - hmmueller
H.M.
402
General Discussion / Re: NWC keyboard cheat sheet?
Question: Should/could the cheat sheets be uploaded to the Scriptorium - do I just send them to Richard W. for this?
Re suggestions:
- First, and generally, I think the purpose of a cheat sheet is either to remember something which one knows already, but has forgotten due to rare use; or it is used to quickly get an idea whether something can be done easily. After getting that hint, one will then either (have to) remember the feature; or make experiments to find its actual usage; or look up some documentation - help file, internet, ... - to find out more details. Hence, I don't want to give the "full details" - for example, for the "cycling dots", the cheat sheet has arrows showing the transitions 0 -> 1 -> 2 dots and a heading that says "Add 1 or 2 dots, clear dots." - but it does not say that you get from 2 to 0 by again pressing period.
- I have added a bunch of commands that should be useful, like Ctrl-A or Ctrl-Tab (actually a Windows standard to cycle through tabs, but many people might not know it, and it's really helpful in property dialogs).
- I have not added the "embedded space" suggestion for lyrics - there is almost no space there; and lyrics text needs to be assembled for the specific purpose anyway, so it seems to me that _ is not worse than embedded space (and, me thinks, even better, because one can see it ... but please enlighten me if there is some nice advantage).
- I have kept the arrow for backspace (actually, it occurs twice), but I have made it much longer - hopefully, it can now be easily distinguished from a simple left arrow.
- I have added [Shift-?] where it does something differently from ?.
- I have not added anything about right-clicking chord notes (I did not know this - thanks!) - I want to keep it a keyboard cheat sheet; and wouldn't know how to describe it with pictograms.
H.M.
403
General Discussion / Re: NWC keyboard cheat sheet?
H.M.
404
General Discussion / Re: Midi Mixing
I am very happy with Reaper (cheap but professional); for connecting I use loopMIDI. There are free soundfonts around, but they are, in general, not as good as up-to-date virtual instruments; still, I rely heavily on "Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra". Also, I added the free Kontakt player to be able to use some of the cheaper Kontakt instruments (right now, only the Olympus Micro Choir).
Overlaying with recordings (.WAVs), if you need it, is - I think - not easy, as the timing of your NWC score needs to match with the WAV - if you do everything in the DAW, MIDI parts are moved along the time axis together with sound.
Anyway, producing sound from scores is major work, if only for the fact that deciding on the "right" sounds is a huge area in itself. Also, you will run into the note-length problem: What NWC's crude player believes to be the right note length is often not a good idea.[1]I am thinking about writing a plugin that helps with this; but this might take a year or so.
H.M.
P.S. I plan to create a few demo scores with different synthesizers, especially to demonstrate that the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth is really much worse than e.g. Chorium or Fluid Soundfonts; but that will take some time.
1 You can read here about a very special aspect of this - with crank organs, this is a real problem, as (a) the player cannot change the note length; and (b) an organ sound does not have a natural decay like e.g. a piano, for which the position of the "note off" is not as crucial: So I had to learn how to end notes precisely ...↵
405
General Discussion / Re: NWC keyboard cheat sheet?
I have now written a "somewhat musical cheat sheet" - see attachments. At first glance, it looks quite messy, but I think it is useful because one can look for some symbol on it ... I'd be happy about any comments -
- general ones,
- specific errors,
- things that should be mentioned, ...
UPDATE: The finalized cheat sheets can now be accessed in this thread under Tips & Tricks.
H.M.
406
Tips & Tricks / Marcato sign - German keyboard shortcut
Type ^ and then a key that does nothing. The two most useful combinations are, in my opinion:
- ^ y if you want to use only the left hand;
- ^ ö if you want to use both hands.
(No, ^ Space does not work, for whatever reason - I suspect NWC captures the space and wants to create a rest, but cannot do that with items selected, so it just ignores the combination ... or the like).
H.M.
407
General Discussion / Re: NWC keyboard cheat sheet?
Still, I think I'll create a more "graphical" one, which should show symbols and actions together somehow. Also, I think I'll create two layout versions: One that fits an A4 sheet (or letter format) for printing it; and one compressed one which can be placed below a smaller NWC window on the screen ... I'll see what I end up with ...
H.M.
408
General Discussion / NWC keyboard cheat sheet?
Of course, I'll write one if there is none - also in German for a pupil who wants to learn her first score editor (that's the actual reason - I hope I don't need one ...). But if anyone has got one that would nice - or a nice start ...
H.M.
409
User Tools / Re: (un)mute extreme notes
... saves so much effort when trying to configure cross staff notes.
H.M.
410
General Discussion / Re: Swing rhythm
I'm more or less with Laurie on this; I don't care that much about playback being perfect. However I support the idea of the cheat sheet, but wonder why we might need a whole staff rather than just a single bar with a local repeat set to X number of iterations. It can be hidden and doesn't have to clutter up the edit screen.
I am coming from a very special niche of music writing, namely arranging for crank organs, and sometimes band organs: The MIDIs I produce(d) from my arrangements are punched as paper strips; and for this, the tempo and its variations have to be precisely what I intend - especially if the organ is motor-driven -, because I'm practically the "conductor" of the piece. That's why I had a tempo track almost from the beginning - not so much for swing and other "visible" tempo effects, but mostly for tiny variations like short delays before a final chord (much shorter than the coarse 1/16th breath mark of NWC), "hand-crafted" ritartandos and accelerandos etc. For two more extreme examples, see (and listen to) the last section "Tempo" of my "Short course of arranging for small organs".
With my choir and other compositions and arrangements, I didn't write a tempo staff for some time - but then came back, and just did it the same way I always had. The example in my posting above is actually untypical in its uniformness, as this composition is not really completed - I have not yet persuaded our choir director to sing it; so it might get more fine-tuned tempo variations for demo purposes.
But that's just me - and yes, of course the track is hidden during almost all of editing.
H.M.
411
Object Plugins / Re: Acciaccatura.ms (version 1.3)
H.M.
412
General Discussion / Re: Swing rhythm
Quote
So, do you always use a tempo track in all your scores?
Actually, I do. It saves so many headaches. If you put them on top, they can also double as a system-break staff; and for collecting other general information - very helpful and organized e.g. if you need to extract voices. One day I'll explain how to work with it (and write a few small tools that should help even more).
But it took me some 10 years until I decided just to press Ctrl-A, call it "Tempo" and set the number of lines to 1 in every score ...
H.M.
413
Object Plugins / Re: Acciaccatura.ms (version 1.3)
Put the plugin at the very beginning of the staff; and set its class to "StaffSig".
(In detail: Place cursor at beginning of staff; press J, select the Acciaacatura object, OK --> now select "StaffSig" as Class [where it says "Standard"]).
Re slurs: I'm not sure what you want exactly, but you can always select a note or chord, open its properties (Alt-Enter), and then select some option under "Slur Direction" - this should move the slur where you want it. If you need more control of slurs, best ask back - there are a few possibilities ("Markers", on the one hand; and the "Slur.ms" object, on the other hand).
I have attached a small example, maybe it helps.
H.M.
414
General Discussion / Re: Swing rhythm
And when you asked the question, I thought "why not write a little tool?" ... however, it wouldn't be high on my priority list, because the cheat sheet approach has worked nicely for me for quite some number of pieces ... Maybe someone else has something like that already done?
H.M.
415
General Discussion / Re: Swing rhythm
I have a "shuffle cheat sheet" (see attachment), from which I copy a small segment into the tempo staff, and then repeat this endlessly (see second attachment): I just create a single measure from the segment, and then paste it with the key-repeat of ctrl-V a million times ..
This is good enough for me - even changing the tempo of a section is not too much work - either
- throw away the whole tempo staff and write it new;
- or paste it into an editor, do (if e.g. tempo is to be increased by 10%) "replace all 100 with 110", "replace all 135 with 148" and paste it back.
H.M.
416
General Discussion / Re: New Strange Sound Issue
Where would I look for that information?
Go to "Options" -> tab "Midi" and tell us what you have under "Devices used by play back".
And if you use a virtual MIDI cable (you would know that you do - like MIDIyoke or loopMIDI), what is connected to it on the receiving side?
... and another question: What happens if you start playing a little bit (say a measure or two) after the position where the staff "vanishes"? Is the sound then ok (this would indicate that Lawrie's suspicion is correct)? Or is it also almost unhearable then (that would indiciate that it is not a synth problem, but a problem in the score?
H.M.
417
General Discussion / Re: New Strange Sound Issue
If yes: If you remove these one by one, when does it play correctly?
If no: ... mhm ...
And: Are there definitely no other staves? (I often have "work staves" for copying things around, which sometimes disturb playing with some copied item)
H.M.
418
Object Plugins / Re: CueStaff.test (0.6)
The Rheinberger example shows that one can now write a complete cue staff of a long piece in an (I hope) acceptable way.
This plugin has a few algorithms that try to imitate NWC algorithms: Placement of accidentals, placement of articulations, placement of dots, as well as notehead placement on the left or right side of a stem. The Chord and RestChord example scores in the initial posting show corresponding placements of NWC and the plugin - the plugin's algorithms are simpler, but for its limited uses better algorithms were not worth the effort.
Also, I have changed the name to .hmm, as I hope that this is a "quite final" version.
H.M.
419
General Discussion / Re: New Strange Sound Issue
(The exception to the rule is typically a piano, which can have the same channel for left and right hand - but even there, two channels are often helpful, so that you can e.g. have the accompaniment a little more quiet than the melody).
H.M.
420
General Discussion / Re: staff missing on printout
The solution is in the attachment: At the invisible bars (in measures 6 and 7), you must also put in a bar in the lower staff - then all is fine.
The rule seems to be: If you have a bar with a system break on one staff, there must also be corresponding bars on all other staves.
H.M.
421
General Discussion / Re: Left hand in treble clef
So let me ask: Did you look at my 5 suggestions above? Did you try a few of them? Which one is the one that you like most, or that solves your problem?
Because I'm good-hearted (or not?
), I'll even put four of my five suggestions into your score: See attachment - but now, it's finally up to you to decide.And still, there is my suggestion of layered scores to have these higher notes in the right hand (i.e., top) system. You write that in your original, these notes are "... scored into the treble clef to be played with the right hand" - but you do not tell us the important information: Are they put
- into the right hand (i.e., top) system (which would explain your positioning troubles): a layered staff does help here if the right hand also plays other things; or you can simply use invisble rests and (muted) notes if the right hand plays only these notes (see the second attachment);
- or in the left hand (i.e., bottom) system (as in your example score): then a treble clef in the left hand system, as in my LeftHandWithClefChange.nwctxt example, solves the problem (I get the feeling that you do not know that it is ok to put a treble clef in the left hand system - maybe you should look at a few more piano scores to see what is common).
H.M.
422
General Discussion / Re: Left hand in treble clef
Or - if you really want to do an octave shift - use an octave-shifting clef? - see attachment "LeftHandWithOctaveChange.nwctxt".
Or - if you really really do not want to change clefs (but why??) - use an instrument change to move the transposition up one octave? - see attachment "LeftHandWithTranspositionChange.nwctxt". This is certainly the worst option, as there is no notation that shows the shifting pitch.
Or - if you want an octave shift with accompanying notation - use the Ottavamatic.ms plugin? - see attachment "LeftHandWithOttavamatic.nwctxt".
Or, finally - if you just want to create a MIDI, so notation quality is not important - just write the notes with many leger lines? - see attachment "LeftHandWithManyLegerLines.nwctxt".
H.M.
423
General Discussion / Re: Left hand in treble clef
I'm making a midi file of The Lords Prayer written in 12/8 time. Some of the bass clef notes extend into the treble clef but when I put them into the treble clef it messes up the timing so the bar lines aren't aligned between staffs. I've tried making them grace notes but there's till the alignment problem. Is there a fix for this?
But you want the notes to go into the right hand (upper) system, with "nothing" in the left hand system.
The best method is to use layered staffs - I have added a short example.
- You need many invisible rests in the layered staff for the "upper left hand";
- You need a few invisible rests in the lower left hand staff
H.M.
(@Warren Porter: I don't think @ItmightbeJB wants to import a MIDI ...)
424
Object Plugins / Re: CueStaff.test (0.4)
I changed the logic of the "Tie Direction Downwards" flag - now, "Tie Direction Downwards" always means "away from the stem" (and therefore, "Tie Direction Upwards" is almost useless). One now always uses the keyboard shortcut "Alt-Enter Alt-T D" to move a note or chord to an unreachable position - and this improves the workflow quite a lot, because no more thinking is necessary.
I continued my Rheinberger experiment and have now completed the violin cue staff in a raw form - i.e., all notes, accidentals and articulations are now at their correct places (I have attached the NWC file and the resulting PDF - which shows, for demonstration purposes, both the source violin staff and the cue staff). However, double-stemmed chords are needed, even for this single-line (but not always!) violin voice. So, that's a missing feature.
There are some more problems and missing features, which are summarized at the head of the Lua source ...
... but I will now stop working on this plugin until someone (me included) really needs it and stumbles over the missing features and other pitfalls. For short stretches of cue notes, the plugin is certainly useable and maybe even useful. If anyone follows this development, let me know whether you have any comments or ideas.
H.M.
425
Object Plugins / Re: CueStaff.test (0.3)
- added the missing features (support for "no staff scaling"; "use stem articulation", courtesy accidentals); and
- did a self-experiment with a Rheinberger score ...
The first resulted in version 0.3, with an additional example "OverlaidCueSegment", which shows how one can have different sizes of cue notes in a normal staff. Note placement has been completely rewritten and is now somewhat less buggy - but I still find stems that overshoot their noteheads, alas.
The self-experiment resulted in the insight that using this plugin is somewhat exhausting. I started to write Josef Rheinberger's Gigue for violin and organ (op.150 no.3). You can find the scanned score, as published by R.Forberg in Leipzig, at IMSLP as the third piece in score number 269676; and there, you can see that the violin voice is set in a smaller staff - so I set out to write this staff with the CueStaff plugin. It took me quite a long time to reach only measure 44 (of 153) - it looks roughly as it should, but writing the graces for the accidentals; and moving up and down all the notes is heavy work. On the upside, ties do sort of work (with a single voice like the violin), if one selects the "Tie Direction" in a way that also the tie is bent the right way. I have attached the incomplete, patchy score for those really (really) interested, but ...
... on the whole, I would recommend to use this plugin for longer staves only if you are in very great need to write smaller notes. Instead of using this contraption, try to argue that scores with different staff sizes are totally old-fashioned and of no use to the modern musician - your effort is better spent in such discussions, I'd say (even, or maybe because of, being the author of this).
So much for a nicely spent day!
H.M.
426
Object Plugins / Re: CueStaff.test (0.4)
This posting has now additional examples. One is an excerpt from a C.Ph.E.Bach score, others show how a cue staff runs over a complete or part of a score.
Also, this posting contains the zip file with the explanation images for the initial posting.
H.M.
427
General Discussion / Re: Do we need a "CueStaff" plugin?
H.M.
428
Object Plugins / CueStaff.hmm (0.6)
Version 0.6 is a complete rewrite, which makes the object as feature-complete as I could imagine. This documentation has, on the whole, stayed as before, but many details have changed.
After @William Ashworth again mentioned cue staves in a posting, I thought I'd try to implement a full object. The CueStaff object is not easy to use, but it can create acceptable (I think) cue staves for some cases. It must be said that this is a "tricky object" - it puts notes at places you might not have expected, and it tries to undercut NWC at some places to get the desired result. A native NWC cue staff feature would be much easier to use, and create much more consistent results. However, as long as we do not have such a feature in NWC, this is the nearest I came to supplying a comparable functionality via a plugin.
Let me start immediately with the limitations of the CueStaff plugin:
- Cue staves cannot be played (the notes sound all wrong). You need a separate playing staff to play them correctly.
- Like the CueHeads.ms plugin, also a CueStaff uses NWC's beaming - which is of course too large for a cue staff. This is a compromise - otherwise, the plugin would have been much harder to implement; and harder to use.
- Ties are not supported. You must, in general, simulate them with Slur.ms objects. However, in some cases, ties "do just the right thing".
- Rests and double-stemmed chords are more complex than you'd believe.
- Placement of accidentals and dots is not as sophisticated as NWC's. Still, it should be good enough in most cases.
- Placement of clefs and key signatures works only by fiddling with various spacer sizes.
- Handling of initial and final bars does not always work.
The features of the CueStaff object include:
- Support for complete cue staves, i.e., the cue staff runs from the beginning to the end of the score (this is typically used in scores with solo instruments or voices), as well as cue segments, i.e., short staff segments above or below a main staff (this is typically used to indicate alternative musical lines, or explanatory notations e.g. for ornaments).
- Support for single-stemmed and double-stemmed chords, rests, and rest chords.
- Free scaling from 50% to 150%.
- Arbitrary number of staff lines.
- Additional "overhangs" on the left and right of cue segments.
- Optional dashed or solid connection lines to bar lines on the next staff; transparent bars are not connected.
- Optional clef and key signatures at the beginning of a cue staff or segment, and on each new system.
- Separate CueStaffTimeSig object for scaled time signatures in a cue staff.
- It is possible to suppress the staff scaling, so that only the items are scaled. This allows the placement of cue items of different sizes on a normal staff. An example for this is attached as "OverlaidCueSegment".
Here are four examples that show what can be done with this object (their NWC scores are added as attachments):
CueStaffExperiment_RheinbergerOp150Nr3Gigue.pdf
CueStaff_Chords.pdf
CueStaff_Rests.pdf
OverlaidCueSegment.pdf
The following text tries to explain the concepts behind this plugin, and how to use it.
The current implementation is feature-complete - I believe -, but the placement of some elements is certainly not perfect. I am open to all suggestions on how to create a better-looking score.
Concepts of cue staff drawing
The main concepts behind this object are:
- The main idea is to write "source items" (notes, chords, rests, bars) in NWC's normal size that are not (or only partially) visible. Instead, these source items control how the visible "cue items" are drawn.
- The cue staff is overlaid over the source staff. For this to work, the source staff lines are set to zero. Typically, the center cue staff line lies exactly over the center source staff line (which is invisible, because of the zero lines). It is possible to offset the cue staff lines from the source staff lines; this is not used often, but the C.Ph.E.Bach example (in the next posting) shows that by using this feature, one can align the cue staff with a grand staff brace.
- The source notes and chords are entered with blank noteheads ("Q B" on the keyboard), with invisible dots (-1 as "Extra Dot Spacing" in the note properties) and without any accidentals. However, stems and beaming of notes and chords are visible.
- For a note, the cue notehead is shown "somewhere near" the invisible source head - I'll explain that in detail below, but the idea is that the visible stem goes almost to the cue notehead. A short line completes the missing stem piece.
- If the note/chord needs accidentals and/or articulation, an invisible grace note/chord immediately to its left must carry this information (I call this the "grace companion" of the note or chord, which is the "cue chord").
- The grace companion also carries the additional heads for double-stemmed chords and rest chords, if necessary. The cue chord itself must never have two stems, because the second stem would always be at a wrong place.
- Invisible source rests create smaller cue rests at about the same position. However, as NWC does not always place invisible items at useful locations, these rests might end up at unexpected places. As a remedy, one can also enter rest chords with a blank head, a whole notehead (or stem length zero) and an invisible rest ("Show Rest" is unchecked), which are placed perfectly by NWC. But this does not work with dotted rests, as "Extra Dot Spacing" is not saved for rest chords (this is an NWC bug) - so in this case, invisible rests must be used.
- At its start, a cue staff or cue segment can optionally have a clef and key signature. If the cue staff contains one or more system breaks, these elements are repeated at the start of each system.
- There is a separate CueStaffTimeSig object, which creates a scaled time signature (it looks for a previous CueStaff object to find the scale). The CueStaffTimeSig does not support "common time" signatures.
In order to use this plugin, one must understand how notehead placement works. I'll explain this in a number of steps. The blue elements in this and the subsequent diagrams represent the source items, which are typically invisible in the resulting score (with the exception of stems); the red elements are the resulting items that are drawn by the user object. The examples show the creation of a cue staff of size 75% where the center lines are on the same height.
(I have added a zip of the images to the next posting, in case they are not reachable on my server)
In the first diagram, one sees the basic mapping of a source note:
<Image Link>
First, the position of a "virtual" cue notehead on the cue staff is computed; then, this notehead is moved away from the stem to the nearest valid position. The small gap between the stem's end and the notehead is filled by the plugin with an additional short line. One can see that the note stem is now typically too long - therefore, overriding the stem length with 6 or 5.5 is usually a good idea.
This mapping concept, however, leads to a problem: The possible note positions on the cue staff are denser than on the source staff - so, some cue staff positions apparently cannot be reached from source staff positions! The next diagram shows a five-note scale on the source staff - it ends up with two "holes" on the cue staff:
<Image Link>
The solution is an additional marker that allows a notehead to be mapped one step higher. In the next diagram, this marker is shown as a small blue arrow; for the plugin, one uses the "Tie Direction Downwards" selector of the note (remember that ties are not supported; so, the tie-direction information is "free" for being [mis]used for other purposes). One can see that it is now possible to create a five-note scale on the cue staff by using four different source notes with suitably chosen "shift" markers:
<Image Link>
The direction of a notehead shift is always away from the stem. The reason for this is of course that only then is it possible to add a small segment to complete the stem on the cue staff. However, this leads to the strange effect that merely flipping the stem direction on the source note alters the cue note's pitch, as can be seen in the following diagram:
<Image Link>
I found that I got used to this behavior quite quickly. One adjusts the note position of the note immediately afterwards (with Ctrl-Shift-Up or Ctrl-Shift-Down), and all is well.
Now, let us look at chords. Here, the rule is that, first, the "outermost" nodehead is mapped as described above (i.e., the highest note if the stem points downwards, and the lowest if the stem points upwards). Then, the intervals of the chord are faithfully replicated on the cue chord:
<Image Link>
Again, this will typically lead to overly long stems, so that their length must be overridden.
The stem-flipping effect is much larger for chords, as can be seen in the following example:
<Image Link>
Stem flipping changes the outermost note, and hence, the location of the whole chord on the cue staff varies considerably. Again, I found that moving the chord quickly to the right position is not a problem (of course, sometimes it is necessary to set the "Tie Direction" to "Downward" to place the chord on an otherwise unreachable position).
The rule for assignment of accidentals is: The actual positions of the noteheads on the grace companion are ignored; its noteheads are simply mapped one-by-one in order to the cue chord or note (this picture is wrong: The stems must point in the same direction; I'll repair it soon):
<Image Link>
Articulations (staccato, tenuto, etc.) are simply taken over from the grace companion to the resulting cue note or chord.
Last, one must understand how double stemmed chords (including rest chords) work. Like the accidentals and the articulations, they draw their information from the grace companion. The cue chord (with blank noteheads) only contains the noteheads for the shorter duration (and hence no second stem). The noteheads for the longer duration are copied over from the grace companion. The position of these noteheads is derived from the grace companion's position - this is the only case where its position is important. Rest chords work similarly: The cue chord is a (typically whole) blank notehead with a rest (with "Show Rest" unchecked); the noteheads are copied over from the grace companion.
When creating double stemmed chords or rest chords, ene must make sure that the stem directions of cue chord and grace companion agree, otherwise the results are disturbingly chaotic.
Practical considerations of cue staff writing
In practice, it is a good idea to follow these steps (a user tool might be useful to support the more mechanical steps - I have not yet written one):
- First, completely write the source staff, and set all stem directions correctly.
- Then, duplicate the whole staff so that you have (a) a valid source against which you can compare the resulting cue staff; and (b) a staff for playback if needed.
- Now, create the necessary grace companions for accidentals and articulations. Either you copy the whole note or chord - the keyboard sequence for this is: Shift-Right/Left (to select); Ctrl-C Ctrl-V Ctrl-V (to copy); Shift-Right, = Alt-Enter Ctrl-Tab N Enter (to make it "grace" and then invisible); Right and again Shift-Right and then one or more of 9 8 7 , ' ^ _ (to clear all accidentals and articulations). Or you copy single helper notes (with an accidental, a staccato dot, ... - whatever you need) from some other part of the score or - better yet a "tool staff").
- For rests, add a separate whole note to create a rest chord (using whole note avoids overriding the stem length with zero).
- Select the complete staff or segment to be "cued", and (a) in tab "Notes", set "Extra Dot Spacing" to -1 everywhere and select "No Leger Lines"; (b) set all noteheads to blank noteheads ("Q B" on the keyboard does this).
- Set the "Staff Lines" to zero.
- Only now the CueStaff object should be inserted, with the intended scaling. Almost all notes and chords will now suddenly have jumped to (musically) wrong positions.
- Therefore, all chords and notes must now be shifted (again) to their correct position - by simple selecting and shifting with Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down, and maybe additionally by setting the "Tie Direction". The duplicate staff made in step 2 above is very useful for this.
- Also, accidentals and articulations might show up wrong if the grace companions are not correct - they need to be repaired now.
- Notehead-dependent elements - slurs and triplets - may need additional position fine-tuning (using NWC "Markers").
- Then, additional elements like tie-simulating slurs, dynamic-simulating texts etc. need to be placed correctly.
- Finally, the spacers of the CueStaff object should be configured; usually, this requires checking the layout via "Print Preview" (Alt-F V on the keyboard).
For editing an existing cue staff, the following hints might help: An important NWC feature is the F11 button which toggles between
- "edit mode" - where all invisible items are shown as grey outlines; which can be helpful, but also confusing -, and
- "viewer mode" - where items are roughly laid out by NWC as on a print output.
Additionally, there is a "Show Source" flag on the CueStaff objects, which will show the source staff lines and note/chords instead of the cue items. This is mostly useful when correcting chords, where one has to see the original intervals.
Finally, Alt-F V (Print Preview) is your friend if you want to align the cue staff clef and key signature correctly - I have found no other way than to repeatedly play with the spacers and the left overhang and check with Alt-F V, + and cursor keys whether the alignment is good enough. There is a "Show Width" flag on the CueStaff objects which shows the room used by the clef and key signatures; it might help to place them better.
In the end, however, all this is still a kludge: Native cue staff support in NWC would be much easier to use.
H.M.
429
General Discussion / Re: boxed text
H.M.
430
Object Plugins / Re: XText.hmm (0.92)
There is no way to select margins, line thickness, corner rounding or the like for the box. The reason (which I have explained somewhere else already) is that XText needs all 32 possible parameters right now: 5 parameters for each of the 6 texts, and two for justification and line spread. So I cannot introduce any new parameters.
One could implement a Box object which looks at the next object and boxes it; where the next object could be a standard text, or an XText, or maybe one of some other supported type of item: That way, one could add versatile box controls only once ...
H.M.
431
Tips & Tricks / Re: An experiment in tuplets
... Does that make more sense?
... except that I still think that using a hidden rest is not the best idea, because for finding the end of the stretch into which the plugin then places the noteheads, it has to heuristically use the "next object after the note", e.g. a bar - but then, it does not get from NWC any information about any "padding" around the bar; and it does not work for single staff scores except with manual spacing (which somehow defies NWC quite nice note placing capabilities).
Two stem-0 headless ("raster") notes of equal duration are, in my humble opinion, better - the plugin measures the distance between them and doubles this distance to get the complete distance where to distribute the noteheads.
On another note, I changed the attachment to the initial posting, so that it (a) shows that slurs work nicely; and (b) some length distributions are
H.M.
// Edit: Mhm ... English ...
432
Object Plugins / Re: XText.hmm (0.91)
H.M.
433
Tips & Tricks / Re: An experiment in tuplets
0 stems are OK, but you might as well make the noteheads visible. Easier that way, I think.
H.M.
434
Tips & Tricks / Re: An experiment in tuplets
Imagine that a user wishes to create a custom tuplet at some spot in their score. They would insert the tuplet notation as grace notes, and then make the notes hidden and muted. ... user object, which would have necessary parameters to control the ... playback ...
* BTW, hairpins also seem to require "nicely spreading items" to be shown correctly.
H.M.
435
General Discussion / Re: An idea
I wasn't so much thinking of wiki software for its collaborative nature but more for the way it structures the articles. You get a lot of nice stuff on WikiMedia, such as table of contents generation, easy links to other articles, and a robust search engine. No one is saying you need to actually have more than one user, and you certainly don't need to make the front page as complicated as Wikipedia.
But if you have a vision for how to make it work on some other platform, please don't let me stand in your way. I bow down to anyone actually willing to write documentation, as it's the thing I like least about the IT world!
It's still a plan, however ...
H.M.
436
Tips & Tricks / Re: An experiment in tuplets
Without knowing the durations and appearance of notes on other staves, the user object could not get the appearance right.
H.M.
437
General Discussion / Re: An idea
@SEBC - thanks for your comment - I'll try to suppress that "technical talk"; but some abstractions will be necessary, as with all software. And no, it will not only be newbies - "writing a Mozart symphony" might be a (later) posting, especially as some people have done this, and more.
H.M.
(Tremolo did work, I saw - congrats to you & Mike)
438
Tips & Tricks / An experiment in tuplets
- Dots and double-dots are used as much as possible to distribute the note lengths roughly equally over the tuplet - then, with "extra dot spacing" -1, the dots are suppressed.
- For some tuplet values, dotting does not work. In that case, tied invisible notes are prepended to the visible notes - prepended so that the ties are not visible; the first note, however, is never preceded by a tied note, because otherwise it would not line up with the beat.
- And for some values, an invisible triplet spanning the whole tuplet allows a somewhat better distribution of the note values.
- Drawing the beams is typically done with NWC's builtin beams. However, in a handful of cases, the new version 0.6 of the Beam.hmm object is needed to draw one beam less than the note values would usually request: For example, a septuplet in 3/4 time gets only one beam, even though the "eighths" are a little bit shorter than real eighths (and are therefore created mostly with double-dotted sixteenths).
Of course, this dot/double-dot/triplet combination method always leads to not perfectly divided tuplets when playing - but this is acceptable in many cases, I would say.
For the tuplet bracket, I have for the moment used the LineSpan.nw object, with a manually placed text. It would be nice if the LineSpan object could place a centered text - and place it in its line - out of the box ...
To use one of these tuplets in your scores, I suggest you download the attached NWC file, copy the tuplets to your score and move the notes up or down as needed. Tuplets that do not use 64ths can of course be shrunk by a factor of two (select, then press minus), those not using 32nds can also be shrunk by a factor of 4.
H.M.
439
Object Plugins / Re: Beam.hmm (0.6)
440
General Discussion / Re: An idea
- First, a Wiki is more of a community tool, with "many" (ok, might be "some") people contributing "small"(er) pieces, which is however right now not my goal: I have enough trouble discussing and deciding with me and myself on what and how to write - forming a group and discussing such issues would go over my head, I admit.
- Additionally, I think that the number of links or functions you see on the opening page of a Wiki (be it Audacity's, but also e.g. Wikipedia's) is too large: I would like to target my texts mainly to new users, who should see images and text useful for solving their problem - and not much more.
- Last, this forum is an established and well-working place where our community already more or less effortlessly (good upload facility!) creates and shares advice - I'd not want to scatter that into multiple sites.
@Warren Porter - re wading through tips and tricks: Yes, thanks for that. When I start doing it (after I have written a few first texts of my own), I think I'll do it backwards in time, so that I can stop when the "diminishing returns" go below some threshold (or I simply get exhausted ...).
H.M.
441
General Discussion / Re: An idea
), I'll start ...... and then, of course, I'll take stock also of the scripts; and try to include them into my explanations - and then, of course, ask about each: Problem it solves, status (final, experimental, obsolete, ...) - they'll get their place in all that.
Right now, well, the whole thing is still in some embryonic state ...
H.M.
442
Object Plugins / Re: XText.hmm (0.9)
H.M.
443
General Discussion / Re: An idea
H.M.
444
Object Plugins / Re: Markup.rg
H.M.
445
General Discussion / Re: An idea
Re the plugins, I do not see that too many people write too quickly changing plugins. And anyway, in "my" book/website/whatever, I would risk (and have) to select a limited number of plugins that are stable and have proven their usefulness (mainly for my work, as I would of course have to understand them). In case of doubt, I would rather not include a plugin in my texts ... until shown that I missed something: Which is, of course, one reason to create an (extendible) website rather than a (fixed) book ...
H.M.
446
Object Plugins / Re: Beam.hmm (0.5)
However, the plugin does not yet work correctly on double-stemmed chords with two different durations - it always takes the shorter duration, instead of the one of the "right stem". I suspect fixing this requires a major rewrite, so it may make some time.
H.M.
447
General Discussion / An idea
... and it might be a website, not a book: But not just some random articles about some topics that might be of interest today, but a structured thing, with a plan on what's in there and where, and how it is interlinked, and a common style (e.g.: Many examples, less text; and/or with sidebars for explanations or not; and ... whatever ...).
Who should read it, and how? Everyone who might or does use NWC - it should help everybody over every hurdle that one encounters when using NWC (and there are many hurdles, and of many sorts). Well, not everybody and not every hurdle - but many, and many. So it would be more of a handbook: Not for sequential reading, but for lookup.
And therefore it should be "use-case driven" (not an "enhanced" copy of the manual): I.e. it should be organized by typical usage scenarios - copy an existing score verbatim (or more finegrained: copy an existing single-voice, piano, hymnbook, SATB, canon, ... score); copy a ... score with different size, pagination etc.; extend a score with additional voices; write a large orchestral score (which would include printing a director's score as well as instrument voices) etc. And each of this "for print", "for playback", and "for print and playback".
It would have to be honest: Explain what NWC can't do out of the box, and can't even do with user tools and plugins - and explain how to overcome the gaps and weirdnesses.
First question: Is this worthwhile at all?
Second question: Has anyone already done this - partially or fully?
Third question: Has anyone any suggestions, ideas, convictions, advice on what to include, what not, format, technology, whatever?
Oh yes, it would be a long-term project (years); it might take long and longer, it might fail, it might ... I don't know.
But - I thought I'd ask.
H.M.
448
User Tools / Re: "Remove following rests of same length" user tool (0.1)
Just copy the primary staff into the new layer and ...
In the main, I would say that different approaches to accomplish something come with a package of implicit advantages and disavantages, or - better - consequences. A user should be able to select the right approach for her or him based on these consequences - which, therefore, should be spelt out explicitly. I think of a format like the following:
------------
Problem: Far into a staff, you find that you need to introduce a layered staff because a certain layout of notation elements cannot be created in NWC on a single staff (an example would be a chord with noteheads of three different durations; but there are more common examples). But how do you fill up the layered staff up to the point where you are going to edit it?
In the following approaches to solve this problem, you create the new layered staff manually. If you want faithful playback, you have to change the MIDI channel of the new staff to the same channel as the original staff. You activate the "Layer with Next Staff" on the original staff only after you have fully created the new staff.
Approach 1: Create new staff, copy all of the elements in the original staff to the new staff, mute all of them; and start editing the new staff as necessary. As long as the copied elements remain exactly the same, a printout of the score will look like the single staff.
Consequences:
- If you want faithful playback, you have to set the delays of fermatas or breath marks to zero on the new staff.
- Also, you might want to remove tempo markers on the copied staff so that you do not have to hunt them down later.
- If you create a changing score (i.e., you arrange or compose), which you want to print later, you probably want to set all the copied items to Visibility=Never, so that you do not have to change them on both staffs. Alternatively, you can keep both staffs in sync, which is more work.
- When the staffs are layered in the editor, and you do not have a changing score, you do not see any grey items that might be distracting.
Approach 2: Create new staff and fill it with invisible rests.
Consequences:
- For a changing score (arranging or composing), this is usually preferable, as you can change the original notation without being distracted by the - possibly out-of-sync - copy on the layered staff.
- When the staffs are layered in the editor, you will see the "invisible" rests in light grey under the active elements, which might be distracting.
Approach 2.1: Add the rests manually.
Consequences:
- This can be a lot of work.
- You will still have to copy keys and clefs; if you want faithful playback, also instrument changes should be copied.
Approach 2.2: Use the adp_parts user tool: Copy the staff (as in approach 1), mark the segment to be replaced with rests, then call adp_parts with option Prompt 3 set to nosingle multiple times until all notes and chords have been replaced with rests (using Ctrl-Alt-F8 or Alt-T E - "Repeat Last User Tool" - is efficient from the second call onwards). Finally, set the visibiliy of the (still selected) segment to Never.
- This will typically create quite "fine-grained" rests.
- Like with approach 1, you have to set the delays of fermatas or breath marks to zero on the new staff if you want faithful playback.
- All the notation elements that are not replaced with rests will remain in the new staff; you might want to remove them so they do not contradict the ones on the original staff.
Approach 2.3: Use the "Extend staff below with rests to cursor" user tool: Put the new staff immediately below the active staff, place the cursor at the position up to which the new staff should be filled with rests, and start the tool.
- This will typically create quite "coarse-grained" rests - e.g., half, maybe quarter rests in typical measures.
- Notation elements necessary only on one staff, like dynamics or tempo changes, are not copied over; others, like clefs, keys, bars and flow control items (like segnos and endings), are copied over.
- If you want to have faithful playback, you must still check for MPCs that might have an effect on the audible segments of the new staff.
------------
Whew - it seems it is not that easy to describe such answers ... still: I'd like to share all the knowledge there is about NWC in some form like that, one day.
// Edit: I no longer think of a format like the (above) - this is typical textual wasteland ...
H.M.
449
User Tools / Re: "Remove following rests of same length" user tool (0.1)
I am no longer confused.
450
General Discussion / Re: My (new, and long) NWC wishlist
[Beams] are easy enough to kludge that they're pretty far down my list of things that need improving. Assume four beamed 16ths, the first two on the lower staff and the second two on the upper. Then: ...
Actually, the Beam.hmm user plugin requires exactly the same steps (and some more). Its new feature - for cross-staff beams - is that it can create beams that lie between the notes - see attached example, where the left 4 notes are created without the plugin: You can flip the beam so that it is on top of all 4 notes or below all 4, but not in a way that puts it between them. The plugin can do that ... in case someone needs it, e.g. to mirror an existing score.
H.M.