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Topic: Can certian note patterns be entered? (Read 9968 times) previous topic - next topic

Can certian note patterns be entered?

There are certian note patterns in the scores I have been entering which I have not found any way to represent gracefully. A typical example would be a 4/4 measure containing a: Two half notes b: One quarter note, one half note, one quarter note The only way I have been able to do this is to split the half note in the second group into a pair of tied quarter notes. UGLY!

Is there anything else I can do?

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #1 –
I've encountered this problem countless times.

Breaking a half note into two quarter notes tied together is one alternative.

The only other alternative I know is to use two staffs. This will look less ugly, but it's not always a desirable solution.

There is no great fix for this. I suggest you submit this problem to the wish list and cross your fingers.

Sincerely,

Tim Reichard

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #2 –
I've been fiddling with this, and looking at the score on NWC. To be honest, I'm not sure that what Cyril wants is the most readable form anyway. Can't say that I've seen it, except maybe in quarter notes and eighth notes.

One other alternative would be to use quarter note chords all the way and tie the appropriate notes to get the desired effect.

Cyril's example looks quite pretty and wavey when done this way. Though legibility is arguable.

Regards,

Andrew

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #3 –
Example not clear. Send me a sample of the measures as an attachment to an E-Mail message and include your E-Mail address and I will contact you directly. Your explanation of the pattern looks like it covers two measures of 4/4 time.

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #4 –
To clarify: Yes, what I have are multiple voices on one staff of a keyboard score. In the current case, I am trying to enter some of the pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (which has other problems, as well, but more of those anon).

Unfortunately, I am a one-finger piano player, but the original scores look perfectly clear to me-- just too hard for me to play.

I have run into many of the same cases in the Cecil Sharp English Country Dance arrangement, and in scores from Chappell's Old English Popular Music.

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #5 –
Can't say that I've seen it, except maybe in quarter notes and eighth notes.

It's very common in piano scores - which have to be on only two staves. A typical example is when the left hand plays a semibreve at the start of a bar (which lasts the whole bar) and then fills in a middle part of shorter higher notes later on in the same bar. It would look silly (and unreadable) to have to break the long note down into tied notes corresponding to the upper note lengths.

Some time ago NWC pointed out that one had to fake independent voices on the same staff and this does lead to the problems we are encountering. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to assign notes to different voices on the staff? I would envisage giving each note a property similar to stem up/down. A note's position in the bar would calculated only by reference to preceding notes with the same property.

Could a similar problem could also be solved at the same time. NWC won't let you put a rest of the same length or longer than another chord member in a chord. I can't see any practical reason for this, and it makes faking even harder!

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #6 –
Yes, but it is still ugly. In a spirited exchange with Mr Ferguson one of his examples led me to experiment with unobvious (to me) combinations of multi-value chords. Let me attempt to present the results for a single measure.

On a 2/2 staff combine two polyphonic lines, one consisting of 1/2 notes, C followed by D, the other consisting of a 1/4 rest, a 1/2 note on G, and a 1/4 note on F#.

My first attempt was: a chord made up of the 1/4 rest and the 1/2 C; a 1/4 G tied; a chord made up of a 1/4 G and the 1/2 D; the 1/4 F. This works, but is marred by the tie (to my eye, at least).

The alternative is: a chord made up of the 1/4 rest and the 1/2 C; a chord made up of a 1/4 rest and the 1/2 G; a chord made up of a 1/4 rest and the 1/2 D; the 1/4 F. This, also, works, but the aesthetics are not much (if any) better, with two seemingly irrelivant 1/4 rests intruding. In fact if the second and third rests could be made invisible one would have exactly what is realy wanted.

I had not realized, although it is implied in the documentation, that one could cascade such multi- value chords in this way. I wonder if this is an anticipated side-effect, or if it will (however strange looking) remain a property of the system.

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #7 –
Watch out for a bug in cascading chords.

In your first example (with the tied quarter G) try chording a half note (C say) with the final F# quarter note. The length of the bar stays the same, even though the top voice is now five quarter notes long!

Re: Can certian note patterns be entered?

Reply #8 –
Yes, sorry I forgot to mention that interesting case. It is one of the reasons that I worry about the whole feature vanishing. In fact, I am going to experiment, to see if I can actually use that behavior in a score where two notes are tied across a change in time signature, which doesn't work in WNC. I would end the previous measure with a 1/2 note (or whatever) paired with a 1/4 rest, and start the new measure with a 1/4 rest. Of course, while it will sound right, it will print totally incorrectly!