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Topic: Notation of notes that should be played one octave (Read 3719 times) previous topic - next topic

Notation of notes that should be played one octave

Is it possible in any way to insert a dotted line over the staff with a (8)e.g.
(8).............
to say, that the notes should be played one octave higher or lower(often used in piano staffs)?

Thanks bodo

Re: Notation of notes that should be played one octave

Reply #1 –
Well, you could try just inserting it as text. If you want it to sound right as well, insert a new clef with an octave shift. You can hide that if you don't want it to appear on the print-out. Oh, and don't forget to put a (hidden) normal clef when you've finished.

I agree it would be nice to be able to do this properly, rather than working round it, but being able to hide things, plus of course layering, are the biggest bonuses to me of version 1.70. Not that I used NWC all that much before that, but I use it a lot now, and I find the more I use it, the more features I find. It pays to fiddle!

Robin Withey

Re: Notation of notes that should be played one octave

Reply #2 –
Bodo -

Robin's suggestion is a good one but you have to be careful about the clef.

If a staff break occurs during the 8va, the new staff will be printed with the current (hidden) clef. If you care how the printout looks (as I assume you do or you wouldn't want the 8va bracket in the first place), you will need to find out where staff breaks will occur and, if necessary, insert the correct visible clef.

If you care how the playback sounds, you'll then need to follow this with another hidden clef to get the right octave displacement.

- Grant

Re: Notation of notes that should be played one octave

Reply #3 –
Good point - correction accepted!

Re: Notation of notes that should be played one octave

Reply #4 –
To get round the invisible octave clef problem when the 8va extends over two systems you can layer the stave with another stave which contains a visible ordinary clef and invisible bar lines/rests etc.

Re: Notation of notes that should be played one octave

Reply #5 –
There is a problem with the dashes after the 8va, in that they don't expand with the bar when the bar is justified for printing.

To cure this put the dashes on the empty stave (see above) as multiple text/rest pairs. That is a visible hyphen/space followed by a hidden demisemiquaver rest. Use ^C and ^V to copy lots of them. These will expand as the bar expands. Play around with text alignment ('best fit' is not the best here) and insert a right justified hyphen at the beginning of the bar to fill in the gap.