NoteWorthy Composer Forum

Hi - I have NWC 2.5.  I'm modifying some SATB music that unfortunately doesn't seem to be layered.  SA has its own stanza, TB has its own stanza - but I can't separate S and A or T and B.  Is there some way to turn on Layering after the fact?!
Here's an example of what I want to clean up: the soprano line has two quarter notes, and the alto line beneath it has a dotted quarter and an eighth.  I want that alto eighth note to lie a little bit to the right of the soprano quarter note.  As it is now, the eighth note is directly beneath the quarter note.
I've tried searching the forum but haven't come up with an answer (but it could be I'm not using quite the right terms - sorry...).
Thanks!

Greetings, Catsby.  Welcome to the forum!

You are correct that layering would have been the best choice for creating the SATB file that you have.  However, you do have several options:

1. Explore workarounds for the parts that need fixing.  For example, the construct that you complain about can be fixed like this:

!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.5,Single)
|Chord|Dur:4th|Pos:0|Opts:Stem=Up|Dur2:4th,Dotted|Pos2:-2
|RestChord|Dur:8th|Opts:Stem=Down,ArticulationsOnStem,HideRest|Dur2:4th|Pos2:0
|Note|Dur:8th|Pos:-3|Opts:Stem=Down
|Chord|Dur:4th|Pos:2|Opts:Stem=Up|Dur2:4th|Pos2:0
|Chord|Dur:4th|Pos:3|Opts:Stem=Up|Dur2:4th|Pos2:1
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End

What I've done here is helped NWC out by chording the soprano part with an eighth rest instead of the eighth note.  The rest is then hidden and the eighth note placed after that.  The deal here is that NWC essentially sees chords as just a note of the smallest duration within the chord.  Once you know that, you can usually use some combination of RestChords with hidden rests to achieve the correct notation.

2. Use layering to just fix the parts that you want.  Provided that you don't want to assign different instruments or pan to the different voices that are on the same staves, nothing is stopping you from copying the entire staff onto a new one, turning on layering, and then just fixing the areas that need fixing.  For good measure, you can mute the duplicate notes.

3. Use the Parts user tool (part of the starter kit, available here: http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/nwc2/usertools/ ) to try and create separate Soprano and Alto parts so that the music can be layered as intended.

I hope that makes sense.  Once again, welcome!

Francis,
thank you for the example.

PLEASE, give, step - by -(every) step how one creates a rest-chord with hidden rest.

(I've been using NWC for many years, but that's one which I have not figured out yet.)

• Display the properties of the  rest-chord
• Select the Rest Chord tab
• Uncheck 'Show Rest'

Note: Help for the entire Rest Chord tab is strangely absent from both online help and nwc2help.chm

Thanks Rick.

Thank you, Rick.