NoteWorthy Composer Forum

Looks good, Mike. Thanks. Now if you can just make it play....

I am hoping that others here can help me with the choices, based on what is most common/prevalent.

To that end, I have attached snippets of my wife's flute/piccolo music for her next concert.

Thanks very much for those examples. Here are a few starter questions:

I concur with Rick on both counts.

"End trill" is only useful when a note is to be held beyond the length of the trill. On the rare occasions that I use it, I don't consider it part of the trill symbol, just a courtesy to the player.

I'm not sure it's necessary to include alternate means of indicating trill accidentals. I suspect players can read any of the common methods without much trouble. If someone were trying to duplicate the exact appearance of a score, he or she might need that option, but that's really not what NWC is about. I did notice in Rick's examples, however, a cross between placing an accidental between the "tr" and the wavy line and placing it above the beginning of the line: in Topic 9201 rg02, the accidental is between the two parts of the symbol but is elevated in the manner of a superscript. Not sure I like it, but it is another possibility to choose from. Here is yet another:

tr(#)~~~~~

OK, I'll shut up now....

it should be fairly easy to implement all of these choices via a single "style" option.

They could be numeric and spun. Span is not needed for trills. In the absence of other instructions, trills continue for the duration of whatever you are calling the "principal note."

imagine a semibreve with the trill symbol appearing later in the bar than the note, OR a pair of tied notes with the trill appearing over the second note OR partway along the tie.

Span is not needed for trills. In the absence of other instructions, trills continue for the duration of whatever you are calling the "principal note."

For now, I will remove Span, but other logic can be added later. Let me know what you think.

It seems that you left Span in, but it no longer has any effect.

one final question: is it ever possible for a trill to be applied to a chord?

Speed - I am thinking of a drop-down with note durations (i.e. 8th, 16th, 32nd, 64th). Is that enough? Too much? Triplet or dotted needed?

I am interested in playback, and I have a somewhat different set of suggestions from Rick's.

I agree with his observation that a trill over notes with a shared stem requires all notes on that stem to be trilled, but I would observe that trilling more than two notes at a time on just about any instrument is impossible, and most can only trill one note at a time (keyboards are the principal exception, although a really good string player can pull it off). I think if users want more than one note trilled simultaneously, though, they should write them on separate staves, layering if they really want the finished music to be on only one staff. If the object encounters a chord, I would lean toward having it trill just the top note and sound the others normally. Others may have a different opinion, and it might be necessary to allow a choice between top and bottom notes.

On speed, I like your idea better than Rick's. However, two questions remain: (1) whether to start the trill on the written note or the trill note, and (2) whether to trill up or down. I think these should be handled as options. Default should be to start on the written note and trill up. The method I'm familiar with to indicate starting on the trill note is to place it before the principal note as a grace note or acciaccatura. Trilling to the note below is uncommon, and I know of no standard way to indicate it, although I don't do enough performing to be sure there isn't one.

From my limited reading,

)From my limited reading, I thought that the optional accidental symbol gave the cue on how to play the trill:

• No symbol = play up one "note" from the principal note, in the current key (i.e a half step for 'mi' or 'ti', a full step otherwise)
• Accidental = the auxiliary note is the note above principal note with the accidental applied. (Again, the current key needs to be known)

Any other step size, including downward, seems to require the stemless cue notehead in parens, And, that style can be used for upward trills too, I guess.

Well, you can probably ignore the downward trill. However, the choice of whether to start the trill on the upper note (the trill note) or the lower note (the principal note: the note that is written in the score) does need to be handleable. If the playback recognizes a grace note or acciaccatura before the trilled note, it can probably be handled that way. Better would be if the object had an option for which note to begin the trill on, and would draw the grace note or acciaccatura itself.

Accidental = the auxiliary note is the note above principal note with the accidental applied. (Again, the current key needs to be known)

I think I've found a time-saving reliable answer to this by creating an articulation library that includes 30 different articulation shapes covering flat, natural, and sharp auxiliary notes up to 3 ledger lines above and below the staff.

I think Rick is wrong

I do not think that the key needs to be known.

The upper auxiliary is always a note occupying the next staff position higher than staff position occupied by the principal. The accidental applies to that position. The key and prior accidental state are therefore irrelevent.

how is it taken out of context?

Thanks, Mike. Looks good. I haven't tested it extensively yet, but it seems trouble-free so far. I appreciate the offset ability for the end of the slur. Not so sure about the wavy line (I'd prefer thicker and a bit more angular), but I'll probably get used to it.

The is one occurrence I've seen that doesn't seem to have been discussed.

Unfortunately I don't have an example to show, but imagine a semibreve with the trill symbol appearing later in the bar than the note, OR a pair of tied notes with the trill appearing over the second note OR partway along the tie.

It seems to me they all mean to hold the note steady for a while (half the duration?) indicated by the location of the trill symbol and then start trilling.

The second type is handled by the current test object, as shown below:

Or, possibly like this:

Code: (nwc) [Select · Download]

!NoteWorthyComposer(2.75)
|PgSetup|StaffSize:18|DurationPadding:N
|StaffProperties|EndingBar:Open (hidden)
|Clef|Type:Treble
|TimeSig|Signature:4/4
|RestChord|Dur:Half|Opts:Stem=Down,HideRest|Dur2:Whole|Pos2:0^
|Spacer|Width:200
|User|Trill.test|Pos:8.5|Span:2|AuxiliaryOffset:1|LineType:Jagged
|Note|Dur:Half|Pos:x-1|Opts:Stem=Down|Visibility:Never
|Spacer|Width:200
|Bar
|Note|Dur:Whole|Pos:0|Opts:Muted
|Spacer|Width:400
|Bar
!NoteWorthyComposer-End

"End trill" is only useful when a note is to be held beyond the length of the trill.

... a cross between placing an accidental between the "tr" and the wavy line and placing it above the beginning of the line

...  imagine a semibreve with the trill symbol appearing later in the bar than the note, OR a pair of tied notes with the trill appearing over the second note OR partway along the tie

Specifically, I'm referring to the new parameters (Style, ExtendToBar), and whether it makes sense to have a parameter to specify a minimum number of marks after the tr. The majority of your examples didn't include a wavy line at all, but the ones that did showed the line extending to the end of the measure.

[a piece in] D major that has two accidentalized notes marked to trill sharp.
The note progression is A tr  A#tr#  B tr    B#tr#    C#      D        D#        E   

Going back to a question I posted a couple of years ago, using this example:

Quote

[a piece in] D major that has two accidentalized notes marked to trill sharp.
The note progression is A tr  A#tr#  B tr    B#tr#    C#      D        D#        E

Since the composer's wishes for the trilled A# and B# are ambiguous (read, "confusing to many musicians"), a solution is to show the upper note of the trill as a bracketed target note over the beginning of the trill squiggly. I think the script or LUA (I'm easily confused) should allow for such a ghost-note as well as an accidental.

...
Another notation I've seen is a stemless cue notehead in parens, positioned on the staff line/space with optional accidental, in lieu of the accidental symbol above/next to the "tr". I am planning to support that in the next version....