In arranging some music for my church choir, I have run across a small problem with NWC. There is no way to insert a dotted (or broken) tie. This is sometimes necessary when the words of a verse are not sung at the same time as the preceding verse. Any ideas on how to place a dotted (or broken) tie would be appreciated.
Perhaps something with Digital whiteout (https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=6153.0) is what you need since NWC can't generate a dotted slur.
The underscore character "_" can be used in the lyrics when a verse doesn't have a syllable on a specific note.
Digital whiteout probably will work, but it may be finicky. I'd give that a try if you expect to print a whole bunch of copies, or if you want to preserve the song file for future printing.
However, sometimes the easiest thing to do is just print the music, hand-draw the features the program doesn't provide.
What I do is, if there are too many notes, as Warren says, use the undersore to space the lyrics. If there are too many words, just put a dot ( or an undersore) between the words without any spaces to put multiple words on a note. The singers will pick up on the timing.
Digital whiteout has worked quite well for me. I have a dings fonts consisting of various-sized rectangles, along with a few blank spaces that are narrower than the normal space. I insert a string of characters and spaces ("yûyûyûyûyûyû" for example) highlighted white, justified right. If the slur/tie is in the staff, the staff lines will also get "whiteouted." Layering is one way to compensate for it, but I also have staff lines included in the font and add those as well.
Be nice if I didn't have to go through all that, though.
[edit - typo]
MusiCruiser,
For my choral scores where there should be a dotted slur I place text brackets around the slur. It's now our standard convention and the choristers soon learned what it means.
Use <Justify Left>, <At next note or bar> and don't preserve width.
It ain't elegant but it conveys the message.
Cheers,
Bill.
That's clever, and much easier than what I do.
.
Thanks K.A.T. It took my ancient brain a long time to wake up to the fact that bracketing is the standard procedure for notes that are not wanted in some verses, so why not slurs?
Bill
I have had to deal with this problem too. The problem with putting the brackets around the tie is that if you are also changing to a different note between bars you do not really want a tie/swipe between the two notes you just want to go from one note to the other without a break in the forward motion of the song. If the song is exported to a MIDI file it is played as a tie. My solution is to place a text note at the appropriate point. I use NoBr or NB to indicate that there is no breath to be taken.