Underlne lyrics

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Underlne lyrics

2008-08-26 08:04 am

Hi,

I need to underline a few of the words and characters in a vocal line.

I tried selecting the word in the lyrics editor and pressing Ctrl + u to no avail. I thought of adding a second lyric line with Alt + 0151 's under the to-be-underlined words and otherwise spaces but it didn't look that good and was going to be very time consuming as the underlined words and characters are dotted about in various places.

There is probably a simple answer to this and I'd be very grateful for any help. Thanks.

Nick

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #1 – 2008-08-26 12:44 pm

G'day Nick,
The NWC lyric editor won't do what you want, but if you don't mind using an alternative font you can try one of my *Dings suites.

There are under and over lines as well as brackets etc. in the fonts that are designed to be used in conjunction with the normal characters.

Visit the Scripto to get appropriate links to the suites: http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful.html#Fonts

There are 3 "types": Sans Serif, Serif and kind of hand written... The font you'll want will be the *Text font in the selected suite.

The character at chr$151 is a single width underline that consumes almost zero horizontal space, simply place it prior to the character to be underlined and then enter the required character.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #2 – 2008-08-26 12:49 pm

There are two possibilities (maybe more) that come to mind.

You cannot intrinsically underline lyrics but one way would be to layer another staff with underlines as lyrics where appropriate.

Alternatively you can use text underlines. The basic expression placement would be centred at next note, but you'd have to adapt this for slurred/tied notes and multi-syllabic words.

And as I write Lawrie has demonstrated a third method!

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #3 – 2008-08-26 11:17 pm

Wotcher Lawrie and Peter,

Many thanks for your help.

Unfortunately, in this particular case I'm transcribing extracts from Romanian folk songs and need to use a Romanian font.

So it has to be layering; although as far as I can see there is no way I can underline a whole word spread over a number of notes. The best I can do is to underline each syllable and put up with a space where the 'breaking' hyphens/spaces go. I used Alt + 0151 as my underline and adjusted the lower vertical size of the 'underline' staff in the lyric editor configuration so that the underline is at about the right depth when the two staves are layered.

I thought at first it was going to be really hard to get the underlines in the 'underline' layer in exactly the right places with empty gaps of just the right distance for the long stretches of lyric that did not need underlines. But with a bit of practice I have found I can do it quite easily using search and replace. I copied the whole original vocal line into my word editor and using 'replace' changed the 'breaking' hyphens into spaces; otherwise, of course, one gets two sets of hyphens at slightly different levels in the layered staves. Then I changed any real Alt + 0151 dashes into underscores. Then I substituted Alt + 0151 for whichever character/s I needed to underline. Then using wildcards for all letters and punctuation marks, etc. I replaced all of them with underscores. Of course, 'underscore shown as space' is checked in the lyric editor configuration. I left any existing white space as white space.

And having pasted the result into the vocal line of the 'underline' layer and layered the two staves together I have a fairly satisfactory solution.

Thanks again.

Nick

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #4 – 2008-08-26 11:31 pm

G'day Nick,
glad you have a solution.

RE the Romanian font... My suites include a *TextEuro version of the text font - perhaps this can help as they may include the characters you need...

BTW, you might also be able to add underlines as text entries after you get the pagination etc. sorted. This could allow you to get the full length underline you're seeking.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #5 – 2008-08-27 08:19 am

Quote

The best I can do is to underline each syllable and put up with a space where the 'breaking' hyphens/spaces go.

If you go the text route, just use three strings of text entry underscores.

First, put this text entry , left justified and placed at next note, at the first note where the underscored lyric begins.

___________________

That's just a bunch of underscores from the QWERTY keyboard. Adjust the number of them for whatever length you need.

Second,
Write the same text string, centre justified and placed at next note, wherever you need it, to fill in a gap. You can lengthen or shorten it as much as you need, or use it more than once between the first and third underscores.

_________________________________

Third,
And finally, put this

_________________________________

at the final note you need the underscored lyric to land on, right justified. Adjust the length of the line, and it will extend back to meet the second or first lines.

(Edit: Kahman correctly illustrated this in the attachment to his next message.)

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #6 – 2008-08-27 01:56 pm

To see an example of text entries as underlines (as David has just described), see the attached file (NWC2 file). (Or at least I think that's what David's describing. Note that the staff's lower bound is 16 and that the underscores' vertical position is -14. Also, the underlines do not quite cover the whole word in the first staff, but that can be patched up, as demonstrated in the second staff.)
About using the Romanian alphabet, I did a quick test of a few Romanian letters in NWC2 and it could deal with Ă, Â, and Î, but not with Ș and and Ț. I looked up the character map for *TextEuro fonts, and they only include Â and Î of those characters. (I think. Lawrie, feel free to correct me.) You may need a specialty font, if such things exist.
On the other hand, it'll be worth it. I like listening to Bartok's transcriptions of Romanian folk songs.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #7 – 2008-08-27 03:16 pm

Quote from: nickforster – 2008-08-26 11:17 pm

I have a fairly satisfactory solution.

Good. A better solution would be for NWC(2) to support escape sequences for bold, italic, underline and strikethru. These could be simple toggles like: \b, \i, \u and \s or a more formal tag like is used here on this forum. If supported in text objects, this would solve other problems.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #8 – 2008-08-28 11:25 am

Wotcher,

Yes, the text entry route is easy. At first I thought it would be ok with just one entry left justified at the first note of the word/syllable to be underlined and then the underscores extended the required length. It looked fine in the main window but luckily I had a peak at the print preview and realised why David included the middle and final note text entries.

However, it seems the text entry for the last note of the word is better when it is left justified. I can't get it to work as well when it is right justified.

There are also three slight glitches. The notes are pushed away a little from whatever precedes them; adjustment of the length of the underline is not very sensitive as can be seen in the attached file with the two endings of 'Lerloi', both of which have the same code, (presumably something to do with the semi-quavers in bar 1,) and by comparing the two 'tu's; and actually the underline for 'tu' should only be for the 'u' part of the syllable.

I've attached a very short folk song with its underlines (NWC2 file). The staff lower limit is 21 and the vocal line is offset 7 to show the underlines clearly. The text entry staff position is -12 and QWERTY underscores were used.

PS. Changed the file as prev. attachment had Romanian font! Sorry.

Yes, it was Bartok that first got me interested in Romanian folk music and then I came across Maria Lataretu, etc. and the urban blues of Romica Puceanu, etc.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #9 – 2008-08-29 06:13 am

Hi Nick,

Quote

The notes are pushed away a little from whatever precedes them

I suspect this is to do with the lyric editor itself rather than the text underscore.

Quote

adjustment of the length of the underline is not very sensitive as can be seen in the attached file with the two endings of 'Lerloi', both of which have the same code

You can use just one underscore character, or two, or twelve, or whatever you need to get the right length. You also can add a space or two at the beginning of the underscore text string if you need the line to be pushed a little to the right.

Quote

actually the underline for 'tu' should only be for the 'u' part of the syllable

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #10 – 2008-09-09 04:18 pm

Hi,

Belated thanks, David.

I hit another little difficulty, probably rather obvious but which had me perplexed for a while.

In another folk song there is a drum accompaniment. I used two orchestral staves, vocal (with lyric) and drum, and put the drum on the lower with a single leger line. Thanks to Rick G.'s post in 'new barline type?' I could use dotted bar lines across the staves where needed.

All went well until a rather long underline in the top staff passed through the dotted bar line. As I had put my central 'text' underline immediately after the dotted barline, this put the dotted bar lines in their respective staves out of sync. However, if the central 'text' underline is put before the dotted bar line there is no such problem.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #11 – 2008-09-10 12:19 am

Quote

All went well until a rather long underline in the top staff passed through the dotted bar line. As I had put my central 'text' underline immediately after the dotted barline, this put the dotted bar lines in their respective staves out of sync. However, if the central 'text' underline is put before the dotted bar line there is no such problem.

I haven't used the dotted bar line so I'm not sure how it is created. I'll look for Rick's message with the info, but not just now.

Having said that, I think you could avoid the challenge altogether if you copy the contents of the top staff to a new one, move it into position to layer it with the top staff, then remove any bar lines in the new staff that screw up the positioning of the long underscore lines.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #12 – 2008-09-10 02:00 am

Quote from: David Palmquist – 2008-09-10 12:19 am

I haven't used the dotted bar line so I'm not sure how it is created. I'll look for Rick's message with the info, but not just now.

It is <here>. Works even better now that muted grace notes don't steal time.

Re: Underlne lyrics

Reply #13 – 2008-09-11 05:42 am

Thanks, Rick. One of the things I love about NWC is the flexibility of the workarounds, and the creativity of those who find the solutions and share them.

Well done, all!