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Topic: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note. (Read 9869 times) previous topic - next topic

How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

In the pictures below, a half-note sounds across beats 2 and 3 in a proper way when it is used as an interval with a quarter-note.
However as in picture 02, if it is notated as a single half-note it adds another beat to the bar.... so I am forced to change the value to a quarter-note to keep things status quot (as in picture 3)...  I guess the second beat could be a quarter-note tied to a same note (quarter-note) as an interval in the 3rd beat as in picture 04.  But that's wierd.

In past I have created another layer, hidden the 2nd beat's note as a quarter-note on the original staff and allowed the half-note to be seen and heard on the 2nd layer.  This is awkward and time consuming, requiring me to hide the prior bars with whole rests which are not shown.  Is there an easier way without layering?

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #1 –
Yes. Use a rest chord.

In the same way as you have a chord with a quarter note and a half note, instead have a rest chord with a quarter rest and a half note.

You have to enter the rest first with the imaginary stem direction set to opposite of the stem direction for the half note then enter the half note as you would for a chord.

When you have done this, you can then select the rest chord, go to its properties (ALT and Enter) and then on the rest chord tab, you can deselect the "show rest" if you do not want to see the rest on a printed copy.


Rich.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #2 –
I was posting the same reply as Rich, but he beat me to it. I'll leave out the explanation, but here are the notes from your example:
Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]
!NoteWorthyComposerClip(2.51,Single)
|Chord|Dur:4th,Slur|Pos:-6,-4
|RestChord|Dur:4th,Slur|Opts:Stem=Down,ArticulationsOnStem,HideRest|Dur2:Half,Slur|Pos2:-3
|Note|Dur:4th|Pos:b-6|Opts:Stem=Up
!NoteWorthyComposerClip-End
Mike

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #3 –
Well thanks.  I pasted the code into 2.51 and I see how you did that.... the rest chord tab.  I am thinking that this can not be done in 1.75?

(Most of what I do is in the earlier version.  A lot of anchors and stuff going on in the newer version.  I seem to be stuck in the old one.  It works with win 8.1 and I was not forced to change.  I guess I should kick my self and convert everything.)

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #4 –
You can have a rest chord  in 1.75 , no problem. What you can't do is to hide the rest. There is not a rest chord tab in 1.75.
(Start using version 2 or you will be well behind when 2.75 comes out !)


Rich.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #5 –
I had no luck with 1.75.  I can't seem to make the rest invisible, only.  Tried steps in differing orders but what happens to the rest seems to happen to the note as well.   Must be missing something with version 1.75.  Can't seem to operate on the rest alone and if I hide it before adding the note, then the note is hidden regardless.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #6 –
Please read my post again. What I said was that you can have a rest chord in  1.75 what you can't do is to hide the rest

Your best option in 1.75 is layering.
Rich.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #7 –
My oversight,  Thanks for the help, Rich and Mike.   I corrected the piece in 2.51and it worked out well!  A big relief!

Paul

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Richard Woodroffe –
what you can't do is to hide the rest

Well, if I remember well you can do it by shifting it far, far away (offset 2000 or so).
It's a trick Rick used often at the time, but I'm glad I don't need to resort to it anymore.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #9 –
Well, I don't think 1.75 allows you to do that .

Also, I believe Rick now dislikes the use of this in version 2 (but I still like it !)
Rich.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Richard Woodroffe –
Well, I don't think 1.75 allows you to do that .
I don't know since I haven't used NWC 1.75 in over a decade, but this quote from 1999 suggests that Vertical Offset predates NWC 2.0
Quote from: Blair Dowden –
You can't hide rests, so all I can suggest is to put the rests in, select and edit them (Ctrl-E) and set the Vertical Offset so they appear below the staff. Then white them out by hand.

Quote from: Richard Woodroffe –
Also, I believe Rick now dislikes the use of this in version 2 (but I still like it !)
I have always disliked it. I use VertOffset=2000 when needed. I think that NWC 2.75 will finally make it obsolete.
Registered user since 1996

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #11 –
I still have 1.75 (for reference purposes). Vertical offset for a rest works.
It also works for a rest chord with some tricky manipulations.
If you move a rest in the editor to say vertical offset 100 and then copy it to a text editor, you get :
|Rest|Duration:Quarter|Opts:VertOffset=100|Visibility:Default.

If you then try and paste this back in, it won't paste.

What you can do is to move the rest down to an area that you think will be suitably hidden. (copy and paste to a text editor to see where it is). Then form your rest chord.

You can then copy the restchord into a text editor if you like - but the resultant nwctxt will not now tell you the position of the rest.
The nwctxt cannot now be pasted back into nwc but the actual restchord can be copied and pasted within nwc.

So moving the rest down to 522 will give you this nwctxt:
|Rest|Duration:Quarter|Opts:VertOffset=522|Visibility:Default

Then making a restchord out of it will give you this :
|RestChord|Duration:Quarter|Opts:Stem=Up|Duration2:Half|PitchPos2:A 5@1|Visibility:Default

(ie no rest position easily identifiable)

So in a way you can do it if you are prepared to manually move the rest far enough away so that it will not appear on any of the staves on a printed page. Unfortunately, you cannot do it by altering the nwctxt because you cannot paste that nwctxt back in.







Rich.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #12 –
Quote
I have always disliked it.
So do I!
Quote
I I think that NWC 2.75 will finally make it obsolete.
Isn't obsolete yet, since we have the checkbox to hide the rest?

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #13 –
Well, I for one really appreciate being able to move rests off the page (don't need it for rest chords, but for straight rests I do).

The reason for this is the changed behaviour of hidden notation.  I often use rests to attach text chords to in my "lyrics" stave which I then layer with other voices so I can have chords for any instrument (useful for jazz players).  Using hidden objects makes the placement of the text chord very iffy, but having a visible rest and moving it off the page works beautifully.  I will normally place the text chord either left or centre justified at next note/bar.

Eric; please, please, please don't deprecate this.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #14 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
the changed behaviour of hidden notation. [...] Using hidden objects makes the placement of the text chord very iffy
This was true, but since NWC 2.5, I find the position of 'Visibility=Never' Notes/Rests/Chords/RestChords to be stable and predictable. I am not suggesting that anything be deprecated.
Registered user since 1996

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #15 –
The following are my personal views/opinions, offered free of charge. If anyone disagrees with them, I offer double your money back.

To the best of my knowledge, the visibility behavior of NWC regarding rests or other objects that are moved "way off" a staff is not guaranteed or specifically defined. Therefore, relying on this behavior in a score could be dangerous, since there is no guarantee that a future update or bug fix could change this behavior, intentionally or otherwise. I can understand that there may have been legitimate reasons in the past for doing this, such as for version 1.75, when there was no "hide rest" option for a rest chord, or for the positioning reasons that Lawrie mentions. However, even with options for hiding these objects in the current version, I have heard people state that they continue to use large position offsets for RestChord rests, instead of marking them as hidden, so they don't clutter up the score in Edit mode. This has caused me confusion when I've tried to edit some of those scores, because it wasn't obvious that the note I was selecting was a RestChord.

I guess what I am saying is that people need to realize the risks of using undocumented/unspecified behavior when they create scores. If you are not sharing a score with anyone else, there is probably less impact in how you decide to create and format the objects, but I think it's best to follow the rules when possible, to assure that the scores we share are consistent and forward compatible with future versions.

Mike

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #16 –
Seems I've got more info then I bargained for, Thanks to all.
I tried a vertical offset of a rest but my version only allows 50 (and I guess -50) otherwise its out of range.
Editing the text is fine but it won't paste back and at this point I am out of my league.  I'll have to look over the forum
and some of the more specific faq to learn more about edit mode.  For now I want to convert the 1.75c files to 2.51 and I posted a question a bit ago as to whether there is a way to convert 500 plus files in a less tedious manner.  But that's the subject of the other post.
I had to use 2.51 for the violin arrangement of La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin, a problem that 2.51 handled well.  So its upgrade my head time!

PB

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #17 –
Hi Mike,
I don't use large offsets for rest chords, ONLY rests in my "Lyrics" staff.  This is because I usually use this staff for Lyrics (duh) and text chords.  It is also used for common annotations

The lyrics line up fine when the staff elements are hidden (and I hide EVERYTHING), BUT there are occasions when a text chord will fall on a location where there is no useful placeholder.  In these cases I need to set up a rest and leave it visible or the chord will not place where I want it.  So, in order to prevent the rest from being visible when layered and confusing the score I move it off the page with a user tool.

I could use a headless, stemless, muted note and leave it visible, but using a rest is easier.

I don't need to set the offset until the last minute which also makes editing easier as I can see the rest where a headless, stemless note is kinda hard to find...

I have only needed to keep the rests un-hidden since a change in NWC altered the space use of hidden notation.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #18 –
Hi Lawrie,

Thanks for the explanation. It always helps to know how people are using NWC and its features. There's always the chance that I'll learn a new trick now and then :)

One obvious solution to your problem would be to put the text chords on their own staff, which would contain only rests of the desired duration. I think in that context, you would be able to use hidden (non-offset) rests. I'd be interested in seeing a sample score where you are doing this. I am guessing you are currently using regular text for your chord labels, and not something like ChordPlay.nw (which would let you pick the chord name via dropdowns and optionally play the chord). If you were using ChordPlay, it would make sense to put them on a separate staff, so you can specify the appropriate playback instrument, etc.

Mike

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #19 –
Hi Mike,
for a synopsis (now a little dated) of how I do things please see:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful/leadsheetsinnwc2.pdf

I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #20 –
Hi Lawrie,

Thanks for the link. As others might have noticed, you get a "forbidden" error if you click it, but I was able to access the file from its parent page on the Scriptorium.

I've read through your tutorial, and I see what you're doing and how it works. Obviously that was written a number of years ago, and there are a few new features, such as Filtered Properties, that might make some of the steps a bit easier. There is one thing I noticed about your technique for text chord alignment on the lyric staff that might cause a different problem, which I'll try to describe below.

I also create choral music scores, and I've started using 2.75, so I can use the Melismatic object to add the lyric extender lines for syllables that are on a slurred or tied note. (I find the lines are helpful for singers, including myself.) You obviously didn't use this in your tutorial 5 years ago, but if you were to try to add the Melismatic object to the Lyric staff for the score in your tutorial, there would be an unpleasant side effect: you would have extra extender lines every time you converted a single note to two tied notes (since Melismatic's logic would decide an extender line was needed in such cases).

This is just my opinion, but I think if a distinct staff were used for your text chords, it might be less work, since you could just populate that staff with invisible quarter note rests and add your text chords on the appropriate ones. Plus, that way you could leave the lyric notes intact, and Melismatic would only add the lines where they were needed (of course, assuming you wanted lyric extender lines).

However, all that said, you have a process that works and that you are accustomed to, so there probably isn't a need to change what you're doing. One of the strengths of programs like NWC is that there are multiple ways of achieving the same results.

Mike

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #21 –
Quote from: Mike Shawaluk –
This is just my opinion, but I think if a distinct staff were used for your text chords, it might be less work, since you could just populate that staff with invisible quarter note rests and add your text chords on the appropriate ones. Plus, that way you could leave the lyric notes intact, and Melismatic would only add the lines where they were needed (of course, assuming you wanted lyric extender lines).
That's the bit that doesn't work.  I CAN'T use invisible rests because the placement is unpredictable - believe me I've done the experimenting...

Also, I prefer to keep layered staves to a minimum where possible ;)
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #22 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
I CAN'T use invisible rests because the placement is unpredictable - believe me I've done the experimenting...


But you CAN use headless, stemless, muted notes instead of rests. And I understand the desire to stay away from extra layers because of the work involved, but you really only have to do the grunt work part once. Just create a muted staff the full length of the piece but with nothing in it except invisible rests, and then clone it as needed and replace the rests with headless, stemless notes in the relevant measures. Or, for that matter, create a whole staff of headless, stemless quarter notes. Again, it will only have to be done once. You can even copy it between scores (adjusting length as needed, of course).

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #23 –
If I create my lyrics staff from the staff that has the melody, hide everything (I now also have to turn off the auto clefs on this staff), unhide the rests, enter the lyrics as required (they work with the hidden notes) and the rests are already exactly right - especially important when chords don't land ON a beat.

Once the lyricas are in I can enter my chords on the notes (hidden) and the rests (visible) then move the rests off the page - it's very easy and no real extra work as I have a user tool to move the rests.

I COULD do it other ways, but only if I want to embrace additional work - I'd much rather move the visible rests off the page...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #24 –
I understand, Lawrie, and I'm sure what you do works best for you. Not trying to change your practice, just outlining another method that some might find useful.
 

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Flurmy –
Isn't obsolete yet, since we have the checkbox to hide the rest?
You misunderstand what I wrote. I dislike using 'VertOffset=2000'[1]
The ability to hide the rest portion of a RestChord was, is, and will continue to be useful.
1 Mainly useful for adjusting brackets↵
Registered user since 1996

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #26 –
Quote from: Rick G. –
You misunderstand what I wrote. I dislike using 'VertOffsert=2000'[1]
The ability to hide the rest portion of a RestChord was, is, and will continue to be useful.

Hi Rick,
do you have a particular reason relating to specific problems from doing this, or is it that you are being a purist?
1 Mainly useful for adjusting brackets↵
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #27 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
Hi Rick,
do you have a particular reason relating to specific problems from doing this, or is it that you are being a purist?
A bit of both. 5 or 6 years ago I had problems with the rests sporadically appearing. Now, I'm just being a purist.
Registered user since 1996

Re: How to notate a half note that is held while playing the next quarter note.

Reply #28 –
Thanks mate,
fair enough.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.