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Topic: Hidden altered notes (Read 5679 times) previous topic - next topic

Hidden altered notes

I just discovered that "audit accidentals" is a bit too crude.
If you have a hidden altered note before a visible one (altered) and you do an "audit accidentals", then NWC assumes that the second alteration is implicit and removes it.
That's ok for playing the score in NWC, but the poor one that has to read the score has to guess that the note is indeed altered!

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #1
If the hidden note with the accidental is a grace note (e.g., hidden arpeggio), check out this message and the next from an earlier thread.
Since 1998

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #2
If you have a hidden altered note before a visible one (altered) and you do an "audit accidentals", then NWC assumes that the second alteration is implicit and removes it.
If one is doing this to hide the accidental, having it reappear after audit would not be wanted.
Without an analysis of other staves, Audit Accidentals will always be a crude tool.

If you want to expressly force accidentals, try <this>.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #3
My bad memory!
Of course I read the thread but forgot everything and, what's worst, it's something quite recent.
Thank you Warren.

Quote
If one is doing this to hide the accidental, having it reappear after audit would not be wanted.

Rick,
I agree that in that case the restored accidental is not wanted, but I think it's very rare the case that a non-muted hidden altered note precedes the same note that must not show the accidental but must be played altered.
I can say that statistically it would be better to be prepared to be careful in that case than in the far more frequent case of Warren's scenario.

Anyway, thank you for the workaround.
At least this one is not so recent and I'm more justified to have forgotten it. :-(

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #4
You didn't spell out what type of hidden accidentals you were using.  My webpage and (probably) the user tools insisted on a Grace Note (not chord) and Tied.  It was also to be run only after all guitar chords had been imported and right after audit accidentals was run.  If that is your situation you are good to go.  If not you will need another user tool.

BTW, my page did not check visibility.  If run on the above conditions there would have been no need.

HTH
Since 1998

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #5
Thank you for pointing out the details, Warren.

My score is for harp and it uses a lot of arpeggios :-) so I widely used a version of ArpeggiateChord modified by me that creates the arpeggio using grace notes, hides them and inserts the arpeggio marker (from Lawrie's fonts) in the right position.

I didn't analyse it, but your tool worked perfectly for me.
I don't understand why you say "(use only) right after audit accidentals was run". What's wrong using it in any moment?

I was quite surprised when I discovered that audit accidentals made the accidentals "disappear".
I still think this is a misbehaviour.

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #6
The visibility status of a staff item is a print time decision taken when rendering the print job. You will find that almost all of the NWC tools will analyze and process notes without any regard to their visibility settings.

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #7
I didn't analyse it, but your tool worked perfectly for me.
I don't understand why you say "(use only) right after audit accidentals was run". What's wrong using it in any moment?

I was quite surprised when I discovered that audit accidentals made the accidentals "disappear".
I still think this is a misbehaviour.
I created the fixup website with a specific situation in mind:  All the guitar chords have been read in (all naturals and sharps), the key signature has been inserted, and audit accidentals has just been run (possibly knocking out real accidentals when it was on the hidden grace note).  Keeping a copy of a typical arpeggiated chord handy, I started writing the code to "fix it".

IBM was famous for a line in many of their technical manuals, "Results may be unpredictable."  If many things had been done to the score after audit accidentals, the tool/webpage might act on something which should have been left alone or not perform its mission on a specific chord.  I don't know what would happen if something were inserted between the hidden, tied, grace notes and the main chord; just run the tool before you do it.
Since 1998

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #8
Quote
The visibility status of a staff item is a print time decision taken when rendering the print job.

That's sure, but the visiblity attribute is present in any moment and I don't see why not to take care of it during "audit accidentals".

Quote
You will find that almost all of the NWC tools will analyze and process notes without any regard to their visibility settings.

...because almost always that attribute is not relevant for those tools.
Then there is the almost...

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #9
I just had one of those "Well, Duhuh" moments <g>.  Who cares whether it is a grace note or not or whether it is tied?  If a note or chord is hidden and contains an accidental, the tool  needs to remember that and place it on the next visible occurrence of that note unless it finds a barline first.
Since 1998

 

Re: Hidden altered notes

Reply #10
Quote
If a note or chord is hidden and contains an accidental, the tool  needs to remember that and place it on the next visible occurrence of that note unless it finds a barline first.

That's exactly what I expected from NWC's audit accidentals and, not being so for reasons I still don't understand, from the relevant tools.
It should be standard, with Rick's scenario being the exception.