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Topic: Vertical alignment of staves (Read 5803 times) previous topic - next topic

Vertical alignment of staves

The uses I would have for NoteWorthy Composer are a bit unusual, but I see messages in this forum from others with similar concerns, so there may be hope. Currently I am comparing versions of a folksong tune, and I have been trying to put each version on its own staff and align the staves so that the corresponding measures of each version will be directly above/below one another. The tune is in 3/4 time (versions printed as 6/8 I can just convert to 3/4). The first problem I encountered was that one singer doubled the length of a note in one measure, so that that one measure (only) was in 4/4 time. Even though the number of noteheads in that measure was the same as in all the other versions, the amount of space taken up by it was substantially longer both on the monitor screen and in print. I have found no way to overcome this, and it buggers up the vertical alignment. The thing in Page Setup/Options seems to have no effect at all.

Second, the early measures on the staves are of reasonable length (physically--nothing to do with the number and length of notes in them!), but about a third of the way through the song each note begins to take up more space. By the end of the song, the bars are ridiculously far apart. I should be able to print the whole song on three pages, and if the spacing of notes remained the same throughout the song I would be. But with each note in the later measures claiming a huge envelope of personal space, in fact it reqires eight pages, which pretty well destroys the utility of the whole project.

Can anyone tell me what is going on and what can be done about it?

Stephen Reynolds

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #1 –
For your first problem: Where Singer A has the double length note insert the standard length note as per the Singer B staff. Hide this note. Then insert a double length note as a text item. If you want it to play back as Singer A sang it add a fermata with the correct delay on this note.

For your second problem: Err, um ...! Over to somebody else? What you describe seems very odd behaviour - perhaps you could post an example to the newsgroup.

HTH

Stephen Randall

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #2 –
I'm guessing that the fermata, or ritard, is what's actually happening in the sung version. Unless the Guitar, or banjo, or whatever, actually plays something on that 'extra' beat to cause the ear to hear it stressed as a beat.
It's unlikely that a folksong would have one measure of a different meter.

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #3 –
You can see it for yourself. My source for this is Bob Copper, 'Songs and Southern Breezes: Country Folk and Country Ways' (London: William Heineman, 1973), p. 294. Bob Copper transcribed the song from oral tradition (no guitar, just the unaccompanied voice). He gave a time signature of "3/4 4/4"; the song is 3/4, but the sixth and tenth full measures have four eighth notes (quavers) and a half-note (minim), whereas all the rest have notes that add up to 3/4. So these two measures are where the 4/4 comes in. People do hear these things differently sometimes, but an experienced person like Bob Copper is not likely to make a half-note out of slightly lengthened quarter-note that could be indicated by a tenuto or fermata, especially when it interferes with the time signature.

I find that notes taking up excessive space is a chronic problem. There are instructions on how to increse the space after a note, or, to look at it from the other end, how to move the following note to the right. What I need is to reduce the space, that is, to move the following note to the left.

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #4 –
I may be totally off base here, but I've had some situations where exceptionally long measures (with correspondingly widely spaced notes) are created in a piece when NW decides that only a couple measures can fit on a line. (A piece can start out with four/five measures per line, and then all of a sudden I get two measures on a line due to the specific note content of the measures.) Anyway, I've had good luck with fooling around with the margins. Sometimes setting the left and right margins just slightly larger and smaller can make a big difference in the way the whole piece is layed out. I've gotten around alot of strange measure layout problems this way.

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #5 –
Since it is transcribed from oral tradition, and unaccompanied, I can't decide whether to claim "I stand corrected" or not. In the interest of forum etiquette, I stand corrected.
see the other thread on note spacing regarding your other problem.

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #6 –
About the 3/4 versus 4/4 :

If I understand, the different versions of the tune can't be played together, but you want to do a visual difference between all of them. You can then do the following.

- where you have a 4/4, insert the new 4/4 time signature at the beginning of each such measure, and add a 3/4 time signature after its end.

- if the other part keeps the 3/4, you may add the same 4/4 + 3/4 time signatures, then add an extra quarter rest, and hide all three items.

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #7 –
Thanks to everyone for responding to my problem.

Part of the problem was an unintentional dynamic which I have deleted. That straightened out most of the staves. But the original problem of 4/4 measures in a 3/4 tune remains.

David Ripley: It doesn't seem that the condition you describe is what's bugging me. There are no exceptionally long measures, just two with a minim or half-note where a crotchet or quarter-note would be expected, and the program doesn't seem to think that there are too many measures on the staff--they are all there, but won't align. See the next part of this reply.

Olivier Miakinen: I did as you suggested, putting the 4/4 signature at the beginning of each 4/4 measure and the 3/4 signature at the beginning of each immediately following one. It still puts a long, long space after the minim, even though it is programmed not to put longer spaces after longer notes. I don't know what to do about this, and the affected staff will not align with the others.

Oh, yes--no, I don't want to play all of the versions simultaneously. If I did that, the presence of the two 4/4 measures in one version and not in the rest would bugger everything up. But I only want a visual comparison of the notated airs.

Art Thompson: I don't know if you 'stand corrected' either. I think the original song is available on a cassette, but I don't have it. Anyhow, in this kind of work I have to trust my source unless I have an overriding authority--someone who listened to the original song and found that the oddball note is not really twice as long as the expected quarter-note would do, but as far as I know there is no such thing, and as I said I thing Bob Copper is not likely to get such a thing wrong.

Thanks for the comments, and if anyone knows how to get NoteWorthy to stop putting extra space after the minim I will be very grateful!

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #9 –
I can not for the life of me recreate this measure growth problem

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #10 –
Indeed. NWC will not randomly add to your measure length. One of the following MUST be true for this behaviour to occur:

1 - mismatched bar lines or vertically misaligned durations, where a measure on one staff differes in length from another staff at the same time (horizontal) position

2 - one or more expression items inserted in a staff that have Preserve Width enabled

3 - File | Page Setup | "Increase note spacing for larger note durations" is enabled

4 - extra space allocated to a note via the "Notes" property sheet (Extra Accidental or Note Spacing)

5 - an extra long lyric syllable attached to the notes in question

6 - and, most obviously, a series of smaller duration notes on another staff that are occupying the time space of a longer duration, single note in the staff that you are viewing (which would obviously cause extra space, so that the series of shorter notes would not overlap with notes in the other staff that are to occur later)

If you unsure how to proceed or have any doubts about this, please send us a sample, so we can identify which of these points applies to your scenario. A sample is worth a thousand words...

Re: Vertical alignment of staves

Reply #11 –
Thanks for the sample. Your problem is #1:

1 - mismatched bar lines or vertically misaligned durations, where a measure on one staff differes in length from another staff at the same time (horizontal) position.

I will elaborate:

--> In staff "Staff-1" bar 7, you have notated 4 quarter note beats. In all of the lower staves, in the same bar, you have correctly 3 quarter note beats. This results in the bar lines in "Staff-1" to be misaligned with the other staves inthe piece. You cannot put a 4/4 measure (although you do not label it as such) on top of a 3/4 measure in other instruments. This does not work, and is improper notation construction.

--> In "Staff-7" bar 10, you notate 3 3.5 beat bar (you have an extra 8th note in the bar), but all other staves have the proper three beats.

--> In bar 11, you again notate 4/4 on top of 3/4, but this time you even include a time signature change in "Staff-1" but "Staff-2" through "Staff-12" remain in 3/4 time at the same bar. This again is improper notation construction.

--> In "Staff-10" bar 12, you are missing a 16th note that would complete a full 3/4 bar. All other staves contain a proper 3/4 measure at this bar.

--> I do not understand what is supposed to happen on your ending, but I padded all bars in other parts with hidden rests to match the longest measure in whatever staff contained it.

I have attached a version of your piece in an e-mail that shows you how you can still notate this contradiction, although I do not know how any actual group of performers could ever play it successfully withoutu turning the invisible rests that I added into visible ones. Even then, the notation is contradictory to the time signature, so I suspect that it would be difficult for most musicians to follow.