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Topic: are these 2 features interesting? (Read 6585 times) previous topic - next topic

are these 2 features interesting?

Hi.
I'm so glad to know that a version 2 is going to be released.

1-
I often annotate my parts with chords (text function).
When I transpose a staff, chords become false, of course.
Would it be a good idea to have a chord feature (like lyrics feature), that would be transposed automatically ?

2-
There is only a triplet sign. How about having -2-, -4-, -5-, -6-, etc. ?

thanks

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #1 –
I'm not sure whether or not anyone else has requested the first feature. Seems like that would be a major change to the program. Your second request has been made before (often!).

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #2 –
Speaking of features.

I use NWC to transpose and add lyrics mostly to Folk music.  NWC is far more capable than I need, but it has one major shortcoming.  It won't read / write ABC notation.

Thanks,
Allen

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #3 –
Greetings -

I have requested a "text-type" for transposing chords on several occasions.  I'm not the programmer, of course, but it seems to me that it wouldn't be too hard to achieve.  It could follow the same rules as tranposing the staff.  Of course, slash chords should be accommodated as well.

I do a lot of "lead sheets" for playing at church, and every time I have to transpose to a different key, I have to go back and change every single text chord letter.  That can often result in errors.  It would be nice to be able to transpose the staff and have NWC automatically transpose chord letters accordingly.

John

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #4 –
... I would guess that for transposed chord text, the only way to do it would be to choose from a dialog box, the way it is now done for key signature.

Instead of thinking in terms of the chord, one would have to think in terms of the scale degree. Thus IVm7 or whatever. When transposed, it would still be IVm7. The only difference is what the IV would signify.

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #5 –
I have exactly the same problem as John, using the music for church and having to go back and change all the chords when transposing, this is very tedious and also difficult for someone like me who isn't conversant with chords!

Kath

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #6 –
Robert A. suggests

... Instead of thinking in terms of the chord, one would have to think in terms of the scale degree. Thus IVm7 or whatever. When transposed, it would still be IVm7. The only difference is what the IV would signify.

I thought that this feature, which I also would very much appreciate having, could be handled by transposing only the note value thus for if a Bb 7  chord is transposed for an Eb instrument the Bb would be changed to G but the 7 would remain the same. That would require working with only 12 variables rather than an galaxy of possibilities.

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #7 –
... Indeed. In the example given, the IV would actually be written on the score as the proper letter key. I was thinking of how the dialog box might look. But I'm not a programmer; it's just my guess.

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #8 –
My feeling about this is that I should be able to enter the text for the chord (like we do now), except that instead of pressing X to get the text entry box, maybe we press a different letter, or maybe we still press X, and there's a check box to indicate that this text is of type "chord", at which point maybe the entry screen has two parts - 1) the base chord letter and 2) the chord modifier.  The base chord letter could be entered as (A, A#, Bb, B, Cb, B#, C, C#, Db, D, D#, Eb, E, Fb, E#, F, F#, Gb, G, G#, and Ab).  Granted some of these are non-standard and you don't really see them much, but could be valid.  Then you would enter some text in the second field (i.e., sus, min7, Maj7, etc).  The program could concatenate the two for display.  Then when you transposed a staff, the chord letters would change accordingly (probably using the same rules for transposition - i.e. minimizing flat/sharp, etc.), but the modifiers would stay the same.  You could probably even support Roman Numeral notation, which would stay the same when transposed, or Nashville notation (which would also stay the same).  Optionally, you could even change back and forth between the various formats.

Anyway, it's up to NWC to write the program and there's probably a much better way to do this (if they choose to do it at all).  I just know that this is the thing that takes me the most time to do in NWC and the manual changing of chord letters when I transpose is very prone to error.  I have requested this feature in the wishlist.  I suggest others who would want to see it to do the same.

John

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #9 –
Workaround:
Try using lyrics with a layered staff with hidden rests and hidden muted notes for your chord symbols.

Then you can copy the notes from the lyric editor into a word processor, and use search/replace to convert them.

You have to change G before A, B, C, D, E and F to get it right.  For instance, to transpose up one key, you would do something like this:

Change all G to H (this will be corrected later)
Change all F to G
...
Change all A to B
Change all H to A

Then paste it back into the lyric editor.

It's not perfect, but it's a lot easier than going to a large number of text entries and changing them individually.

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #10 –
Hi, David -

I agree that your workaround would work; however, I'm approaching this feature request more from the angle that since this is a new version of the program, this would be a nice feature that could be an inherent part of the program for which no workaround is required.  In fact, just this past weekend, I took a 4-page song (it was just the melody line with chord symbols, but a lot of chord changes) and ended up transposing to two different keys to find one that a) I could sing comfortably and b) the other players could play comfortably.  That involved changing the chord letters twice, being extremely careful not to make a mistake (I'm prone to transpose letters if I'm going too fast; i.e. an A/D becomes D/A).  This would be a feature that would help me greatly in the way I use Noteworthy Composer.  Other notation programs do this, but I've invested too many years in transcribing a lot of music using NWC to even consider switching.  So, I'll just ask for it as a feature; if it's granted, then great, if not, I'll wait until the next version and ask again.

Thanks,

John

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #11 –
Hi John, you and I are in FULL agreement.

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #12 –
I have been an on-and-off user of NWC for a number of years.  Mostly an 'off" user because of the lack of a feature for transposing chord symbols along with the staff.  It is essential for what I do, and I am forced to use programs other than NWC :-)  I see that it has not been implemented in NWC2, and I suppose that enough request have not been submitted to cause it to happen.  I have submitted a new feature request to the 'Wish List' again in the hope that it will happen in the future.

Regards to all,
Don

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #13 –
About the second wish, then:
It would be a good idea to implement -2-. A hemiola can be simulated using dotted notes, but visually it's quite different. Don't know about -4- and such. If there would be a fixed set, then entering them could be quite easy.
Just the way a dotted note changes to a double dotted note when you highlight it and press '.' again (check it folks - it works!) you could do that with Ctrl-T for triplets and hemiolas. Maybe.

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #14 –
Don,
I hope you are still around.
Transposing of Text chords has been implemented by me using a user tool.
It is a PHP script, so you need NWC2 and also need to install the user tool toolkit

And then visit my User Tools page at http://nwc-scriptorium.org/nwc2scripts.html

There you will find instructions on how to set yourself up to use my Chord Transposition tool. It is written in PHP, so you can peruse the code to satisfy yourself that there are no nasties in it before running it.

Goeil's second request (tuplets) is still one of my most wanted features as well. I wrote a quick tool to implement the playback of septuplets and nontuplets (for a special request) but I truly believe that such things really need native implementation in NWC to look and sound right. I personally need 2, 4, 5, and 7 for most of my notations, but a generic would be fantastic.
 

Re: are these 2 features interesting?

Reply #15 –
Thank you Andrew... I had asked about this in another post, and I will definitely check it out.  I don't know anything about PHP, but I am ready to learn if this will resolve the issue!  I appreciate your work in making the tool available.  Take care, Don