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Topic: non-metrical music (Read 3942 times) previous topic - next topic

non-metrical music

Psalm tones, for example ... I want to produce sheets where the words are neatly lined up under the tone, but can't work out how to do this: the number of syllables to be sung to each note varies from verse to verse. This sort of thing is normally notated with white notes and black notes without stems: any way of doing this with Noteworthy?

Re: non-metrical music

Reply #1 –
I'm not sure I understand all of your question (my native language is french), but maybe I can help you for a few points.

1) If you want to have less syllabes than you have notes, look at online help about Lyrics, particularly the use of underscore ( _ ) character.

2) If you want to have more syllabes than you have notes, maybe it will be possible in NWC, using hidden notes, but I'm not completely sure of that.

3) I don't think it is possible to draw notes without stem. Maybe for white notes if you use whole notes instead of half notes (possibly chorded with a hidden half rest in 1.70), but there may be problems near the bar lines.

Re: non-metrical music

Reply #2 –
Olivier, me semble que vous avez bien compris; mais aussi, de votre réponse, que cela que je cherche à faire ne sera pas possible. Peut-être qu'un nouveau mode "No audit", plus quelque chose pour indiquer où les paroles devraient s'associer à la note suivante, plus un noir sans queue. Y'a qu'à ;-}
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Looks to me as though Olivier did understand, and also that what I'd like to do can't be done. Perhaps we need a new "No audit" mode, plus some way of specifying which syllable starts on the next note, plus a black note-head without a stem. Not much to ask, really ;-}

Re: non-metrical music

Reply #3 –
It is possible to have more words than notes. Just use underscores ('_') to connect the words that go together on the same note. NWC counts underscores as alphabetics but prints them as spaces.
 

Re: non-metrical music

Reply #4 –
I was quite interested to see this query as I have to copy out the psalm into Noteworthy once a month when we do one at our church. I use the underscore to keep the first part of the verse under the chanting note, and it's a real pain to do when you're used to hitting the space bar between words normally! Sometimes I have problems when a double chant doesn't fit the page properly, but I get over this by endless adjustment of the staff size, lyric font size, and page margins. As our psalter is printed with semibreves for the chanting and last notes, with minims inbetween, I don't have the problem of headless notes! But perhaps Neils is doing something in the plainchant line.....