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slur technicals

I looked at a bunch of conversations about slurs in the forum but I couldn't find any one that discussed how to move the slurs around and place them differently and such.  What I want to do (but if I can't it really isn't a big deal) is have a slur start very close to the actual note and not a little bit above the top of the stem (that is, for stems up notes).  I have a piano score and am trying to conserve space by doing this.  I think I heard about some kind of font that deals with slurs or something but I'm not sure. Any suggestions?

Re: slur technicals

Reply #1 –
Try the new slur font Mus6 in the scriptorium.
You can set these anywhere you like and they are indexed to help find a suitable one.

I'm still checking out the indexing but the slurs work well and match the NWC style. If they don't fit exactly for width they can be modified by choice of font sizing.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #2 –
Indeed. NWC "thinks for you" by placing slurs according to an algorithm. Unfortunately, the only user variable is whether the slur should be concave upward or downward. It is not possible to set parameters that will change how the end points interact with the note heads, or degree of concavity.

Some time ago, I created a not-very-good user font NWslurs, which is on the Scriptorium. This font contains slurs of various lengths and heights, which can be inserted as text. When used as text (and with the ends padded by spaces, if necessary), there are more ways to interact with the notes. Unfortunately, whereas "real" slurs are calculated with respect to the music, "text" slurs are static, and cannot respond to surrounding changes automatically. Worse, the relative positions of musical and text object may be different in the music editor and in print preview, since NWC wasn't really designed to accomodate fake text slurs.

As mentioned above, there is now another slur font, recently created, and probably better than mine.

NWC2 allows additional possibilities for the use of slurs. This was one of the first things I played with, when the beta test was private. Not only do the slurs automatically swoop, the amount of swoop can be controlled by the use of hidden objects that affect the slur routing, but not the music (this is a trick). But unfortunately, it is still not the case that endpoints are easily controlled, without using complicated tricks. Nevertheless, NWC2 slurs are MUCH better than in NWC1. The improvement is more noticeable when printed to paper - on screen, the slurs look uglier than they really are.

When NWC2 introduced the new slur algorithms, I began looking more closely at professionally printed music (SATB), and noticed that in many cases, some of the slurs were evidently hand-drawn using a template, rather than inserted automatically by the music software (which was probably Finale, for commercial music). It is just the case that in some instances, it is easier to just draw the curve, rather than figure out how to tell the computer to do it!

Re: slur technicals

Reply #3 –
Robert' right - sometimes these things have to done afterwards. he old music was actually engraved by stamping each element. That is how they got the control.

I have found Pagemaker invaluable {there may be other programs that could do this too} for afterwork. For brackets for choral parts I pretend the choral staves are orchestral, get rid of the rest so the brackets appear. Then print to a postscript file and extract a 600dpi bitmap in Ghostscript. That get opened in Photoimpact,  {a junior Photoshop} and the desired bracket lifted out and saved to a tif file. These can then be placed in pagemaker directly onto the proper choral pages where they are needed. {The EMF copies from NWC2 are read directly by Pagemaker.} I haven't had time to experiment with Open Office this way - it may do it equally well, although it does change the margin settings, but that may just be a matter of settings the defaults.

The new slurs were made similarly by setting some work in NWC2 and extracting the slurs as graphics and passing those to a font program. As a work round extracting graphics is very useful and surprisingly quick. It can also fix problems like dropping out staves for page fitting.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #4 –
Yeah, that's very true.  your right, hidding a stave with things to move the slurs around works great.  Another thing I sometimes do, but even this doesn't always cut it and that's why I asked the forum, is just simply to do the good old layering trick.  The only thing is you can't slur two rests together the distance apart that is desired and then simply highlight those rests or notes and select "never" under the visibilty tab.  This hides the slur too.  You have to insert a no-notehead note and put the stem length at zero and mute the note then manuever it around in order to do that, but it gets to be very meticulous and time consuming to do that to every individual case where you need a special slur. I was thinking I might add that to a wish list. that is, a feature such that when you want to hide a note or rest that has something like a slur or, in the case of an eighth note or shorter, a connecting bar attached to it but you want to see that connecting bar or eighth note, then you can check a box or something under properties that will hide the note or rest but not what is attached to it.  It won't treat the bar or slur and the note itself as one unit.
Actually, I'm not very good with NW2 yet so if that feature exsists already, or something to that nature, that would be cool to find out about it. thanks again

Re: slur technicals

Reply #5 –
John, you wrote:
but it gets to be very meticulous and time consuming to do that to every individual case where you need a special slur.

Why not just create the secondary layered staff at the beginning of the piece.  Make one bar full of 16th notes, stem length 0 and no noteheads, all muted. Highlight and copy it repeatedly until you have however many bars you think you'll need for the piece.

Now when you need the special slur, you just tweak the appropriate batch of 16ths, without having to do the preliminary stuff (it was already done in a couple of quick steps).

This doesn't solve the problem of now yet having embedded slurs that are fully satisfactory, but it might make your method a little less onerous for you.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #6 –
Even so, it is rather tedious...

But NWC has been around for a long time, with its WMF (EMF in v2) export. I gather that from its original concept, NWC intended to present the most essential part of the notation, which could be modified in a word processor for those seeking further refinement. This can be done quite well, and I still do it. But when the user seeks to do all of the processing within NWC, without exporting the pages, some things are missing or difficult.

I know a Finale user - a very experienced musician - who finds using many of that program's features very tedious. The features are not in NWC or even NWC2. But even though they are available in Finale, that program is oriented towards commercial music publishing. When one needs to crank out the music quickly, the advanced features just take too much time and effort to master. It is easier to get the basics in, then hand-draw the modifications before photocopying.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #7 –
yeah, that is a good idea.  I never thought of simply making a stave with all of the rests already placed and all.  it might still be, like Robert A. said, a little tedious but it would work. Thanks

Re: slur technicals

Reply #8 –
I seem to have cut through this nuisance with the new slur font. Nearly all are fitting well. They work best by setting the placement left at next note and moving them vertically to just above or below the note head. The horizontal placement seems to normally need a few leading microspaces and these can be used to get something that feels right. If the sizing is not right the font size can be changed to fit. The font was designed around the option of note spacing varying with duration so in the one movement their seems to be consistency of spacing but a change of sizing may be needed for another. I have found so far that I have had only to use two different font sizes in the one movement; mostly one is sufficent and that the normal size.

One or two are not true to label in the index and I will fix these shortly and possibly add a few more.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #9 –
Kevin, I haven't done any notation for a couple of months, so I haven't had a need to try out your font yet.  I'm looking forward to it, and want to thank you for making it available.

Robert, I have Finale, and have never learned how to use it.  The learning curve for me is 90 degrees.

John (and Robert), to take a little more of the tedium out of the process, the pasting part of the copy operation can be done just by holding down Ctrl-V - as with any Windows based program, the pasting will repeat rapidly until you lift your fingers from the keys.  Probably takes less than 5 seconds to do a hundred bars or so.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #10 –
How has the expression steep learning curve come to mean exactly the opposite of what it represents? Steepness actually indicates that the learning is rapid (and therefore easy!)

Re: slur technicals

Reply #11 –
No, steep implies you have to learn a lot to get started. If a hill is steep, you have to walk up it very slowly. Yes, it does have the added implication that you get there in a shorter distance, but distance and time are not the same thing.
On the other hand, a shallow learning curve implies that you can get started fairly easily, although you actually have further to go to become an expert.
What this analogy doesn't take into account, though, is how high the hill is - i.e. how much knowledge you have to gain to become an expert.

Robin

Re: slur technicals

Reply #12 –
Sorry to disagree, Robin, but technically a learning curve shows how much you have learned plotted against time. Eventually the curve gets to 100% when you have learned everything. So a steep learning curve means that you are learning rapidly. A shallow curve implies that you are learning slowly and taking longer to reach total knowledge. The curve itself has no information about the amount to be learned.

Strictly therefore we should talk about a long learning curve.

It's the same with Lowest Common Denominator being used to denote something so basic that everyone can understand it, when Highest Common Factor is really the expression which should be used.

To answer my own question, the technical terms have words in them that imply the opposite of the actual meaning. So steep implies difficult, and lowest implies basic. But the expressions actually mean precisely the opposite.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #13 –
In Kiwiana (newzild) a steep learning curve is a tough one, ie hard going, darn right difficult etc. A bit like climbing an S curve: a lot of work to start but gets easier at the top as the slope changes.

Ain't words fun.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #14 –
If the new slur font fits better than my old NWslurs, then the Scriptorium should be told to relegate mine to "archival" status - use only when needed for an existing file. I'll let others make that decision. Having a few famous fonts, I'm not in need of NWslurs to strut my stuff.

Re: slur technicals

Reply #15 –
Since it is my usage of the expression steep learning curve that is under discussion, it doesn't matter a hill of beans how "logic" applies to it.

I'm not discussing mathematics, I'm attempting to convey an image, in words.  The meaning I'm conveying is that of climbing a vertical cliff, and a high one at that.  Very difficult to do, for some of us.

I contrast Finale with Noteworthy.  NWC has a very gentle learning curve.

Language is funny, isn't it?

Re: slur technicals

Reply #16 –
Strange how we've digressed to a discussion on the learning "curve" while on the topic of slurs...
 

Re: slur technicals

Reply #17 –
... or, the topic could have digressed to the subject of Polkas, while discussing dotted notes.