Greetings Folks;
Have been away from NWC and transcription in general. Been doing mostly Gregorian Chant and it is a SERIOUS pain in the neck.
For me the biggest problem with NWC has always been how it handles slurs. Yes I know that there are a number of messy work arounds, but there should be an easier way to place and edit them. My first time back doing anything with NWC has brought me back face to face with it again.
I figured I would ask to see if there has been any improvement in this area in the ear or so I have been away.
Regards
Keith
Nope. Not in the last few years. There's a new version of NWC coming out shortly, but it won't do anything about the slurs, either. Lots of other good changes, though.
Are you familiar with this one, which I think came from Rick? Insert a muted grace note at the offending end of the slur arch and use it to push the curve arc up or down. Make it a headless note and change note properties to stem length= 0, muted and no leger lines.
It doesn't give you a perfect arch, but it's not hard to do and it is probably acceptable to most.
To add a bit to David's excellent advice, you don't need to do anything with the stem length if you use a whole note as the grace note. As long as it's muted, it won't affect anything except the shape of the slur. And you can insert them anywhere the slur needs to be adjusted, not just at the ends. Save all your slur work for one session, and then, after you've created the first muted grace note slur handle, just copy-and-paste and adjust as needed.
Why didn't I think of that?
I'm not at my NWC-installed computer right now, so I can't play with this... I did know that a hidden grace note could be used to bend a slur upward/downward (i.e. make the arch steeper), but I wasn't aware that they could be used to adjust the end points of the slur. Specifically, if I have a stem-side slur, the anchor points are always just beyond the end of the stems, instead of being closer to the note head. Is there any way to adjust this without the layering tricks?
I didn't say the end-points could be adjusted.
You can also make the grace note Visibility:Never. This has fewer side effects in Print Preview.
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