Vibrato and other effects

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Vibrato and other effects

1999-01-26 05:00 am

Is there any way to add crescendo, decrescendo, vibrato, and other effects to notes that will export to MIDI. I can put in a crescendo, but it's just in the notation...it's not in the actual MIDI itself. Is there anyway to do this or am I just stupid?

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #1 – 1999-01-26 05:00 am

One of the beauties of NWC is that, unlike other programs, it _does_ actually do dynamic variations in its midi output. You just have to specify a starting and ending dynamic, and NWC takes if from there. Example:

| | | | | | | |
p cresc. ff

(starts here...............to here)

Obviously, if you're starting at fff (the default), you won't get any crescendo. Similarly, if you specify decresc. but don't put an "ending dynamic" somewhere, you won't hear a change.

Vibrato is a lot trickier... involving the use of many pitch-change MPC's. Similarly, tremolo would need many fast volume MPC's.

Hope this helps.

Fred

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #2 – 1999-01-26 05:00 am

Hmm...I tried that...I put piano crescendoes to fortissimo, but I still didn't hear a change. Is there something I'm missing, or some detail that I didn't get? Do they all have to be in a particular place in relation to another (except obviously that it needs to be in order)?

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #3 – 1999-01-27 05:00 am

Silly question perhaps, and apologies in advance, but are you using the correct <Insert> <Dynamic Variance> <Crescendo> command? If you're just inserting a text item, NWC won't pick it up.

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #4 – 1999-01-27 05:00 am

As Fred already mentioned, NWC sets the staff default to full volume. Did you set each staff's properties for Part Volume (on the Midi tab of Staff Properties) to something less than the maximum? NWC always defaults the staff volume to 127, which is maximum loudness possible. In order to have variation, the staff property must be set lower, usually very much lower if you want to go from something like ppp up to fff on the staff.

Hope this helps.

Sue

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #5 – 1999-01-27 05:00 am

Ooooooh, okay! Man, I knew it was something obvious. Okay, so let me get this straight. I have to set the volume to something significantly lower than 127, then insert piano, then insert crescendo, then insert forte? And yes, I was inserting dynamic variance, not just adding text. Something tells me once you learn how to use the intricacies of NWC, you can figure out more things by yourself

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #6 – 1999-01-27 05:00 am

Yes. You insert
Dynamic - piano
Dynamic Variance - cresc.
and some notes later
Dynamic - forte

On play back, that should give a cresc. sound, as well as the correct note down velocities in an exported midi file.

You DON'T need to adjust the volume of the channel.
I expect that the lack of results before may have been due to not having a quiet dynamic to cresc. from.

Andrew

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #7 – 1999-01-27 05:00 am

Nope nope, that's what I did. Nothing happened. I'll figure it out one of these days. Life's so complicated sometimes... heh

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #8 – 1999-01-28 05:00 am

As Andrew pointed out, you DON'T need to adjust the volume. The dynamics only affect the velocity.

But if I remember, in early versions of NWc it was necessary to "recompute" staff after adding cresc (with F9 or so).
Besides, how many notes do you have between piano and forte? If you have only one note, it may be normal that it doesn't changes "volume" during the note (since velocity normally affects the beginning of the note).

Anyway, what happens exactly? The velocity changes at once when encountering forte, or it doesn't change at all ?

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #9 – 1999-01-28 05:00 am

Okay I got it to work, but only because i used multiple notes. I was tying two whole notes together and doing the same thing, and it didn't crescendo. I used 5 or 6 quarter notes and it did crescendo. So...how do you get dynamic variances to work on a drawn out note?

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #10 – 1999-01-31 05:00 am

Aha. The thot plickens. Changing dynamics once a note is struck is an entirely different operation. You have to use, in this case, Volume MPC (multi-point controller). Here's the reason:

VELOCITY affects how hard the sound is struck. Each note in a midi file has a velocity value assigned to it. This means that you can't "go back in time" and change the velocity once the note has sounded.

VOLUME affects the overall volume of that channel. Once a volume setting or change is invoked, all subsequent events (notes) will be affected by the new volume setting.

I know it's confusing. Re-read the difference a couple times, and experiment.

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #11 – 1999-01-31 05:00 am

Many sound cards do not support volume swells on notes that are already playing. Some good ones do support this, but yours probably does not support it. If this is the case, then there is nothing you can do to change the volume (loudness) of a note that is already playing (since your sound card simply will not support such a change).

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #12 – 1999-01-31 05:00 am

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #13 – 1999-01-31 05:00 am

Further to your question about vibrato, etc. apart from the desc/cresc based on multiple notes, the others require a midi system that does more than el cheapo basic Soundblaster 16. As Eric explained, if you have a card that supports volume change on a channel which will change the volume on notes already down, then use a multi-point controller to vary the volume. You may want to set the initial volume (on the Staff property) to 100 or so, to give you some headspace for crescendo's. I just experimented with using velocity overrides with the dynamics, and this seems to work as well.

w.r.t. vibrato, some synths will support this and tremolo, with specific commands not supported in Noteworthy. In this case, you'll need a midi program to insert the correct midi commands. These commands can be instrument specific, and you'd best refer to your instrument's implementation manual to see what the commands would be.

HTH
Andrew

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #14 – 1999-01-31 05:00 am

Yeah! I experimented a lot with multi point controllers yesterday, and now i can get tempo, volume, and pan changes to work perfectly! Still having problems with pitch bend...*sigh* glissando had better hurry up and get here

Re: Vibrato and other effects

Reply #15 – 1999-02-12 05:00 am

As funny as it may sound I am (planning on) using the music written on NWC for recording purposes. If I use however volumes (MPC wise) that are not as loud as possible, then the .wav file that results by recording the midi playback at full midi-playback-volume/recording-sensitivity is very low volumewise. Amplifiying it introduces distortion and clicks. So everytime a write a song, I start every staff at volume 64, adjust levels between the instruments, then knock up the values of all the mpc's used so that the one with the highest value gets a full 127. A LOT of work...