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Topic: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member (Read 11297 times) previous topic - next topic

insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

I have troubles to insert a white note on 2 black chord member notes :

On a 3/4 time signature :
insert E note (1/4 duration)
Ctrl+insert
____________________

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #1 –
A couple things:

- Your 1/2 note must be completely above, or completely below your existing 1/4 notes

- If you set the stem direction of the existing 1/4 notes, you should set the opposite stem direction for the half note, or no stem direction at all

If, for some reason, you cannot conform to these rules, your primary option is to use Staff Layering.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #2 –
I have troubles to insert a white note on 2 black chord member notes :

On a 3/4 time signature :
insert E note (1/4 duration)
Ctrl+insert G note (1/4 duration)
- - -
Ctrl+insert B note (1/2 duration) : this is impossible

How to do this ?

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #3 –
Key this in exactly:

0
Down Arrow
Down Arrow
Down Arrow
Down Arrow
Enter
Up Arrow
Up Arrow
Ctrl+Enter
Up Arrow
Up Arrow
2
Ctrl+Enter

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #4 –
Then, my problem is this when I key exactly :

0
Up Arrow
Up Arrow
Enter
Down Arrow
Down Arrow
2
Ctrl+Enter
Down Arrow
Down Arrow
3
Ctrl+Enter

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #5 –
This cannot be done yet.
You should try to use layered staff instead.

It is not the difference of lenght that causes the problem, it's the mix of up/down stems which crosses (down stem of a note higher than a note with up stem)

Si tu veux plus de détails sur les possibilités "layer", cherche dans le forum ou l'aide en ligne, ou écris-moi :)

HTH!

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #6 –
See above: "Your 1/2 note must be completely above, or completely below your existing 1/4 notes"

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #7 –
I have just bought your software to key in classical music : I do this job for a choir : we sing DVORAK. I did not write this music, but he did. I need to sing his music.

Thanks for enhancements.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #8 –
Michel,

What you wish to do is possible, but you have to use "staff layering" to accomplish this. The half-note is created on a separate staff which can then be superimposed on the chord containing 1/4 notes. You can also adjust the horizontal position to make the notation clear. See also the "SATB" file in the "templates" directory

If you are not sure how to proceed, Marsu or one of the other francophone users would surely be happy to help you.

HTH,
Bob

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #9 –
Forgive me if I'm wrong, I get the impression you have not yet considered/understood the concept of staff layering.

Have a look at a file Organ Example that I submitted to the Scriptorium. Bar twelve has an example of what you are trying to do.

In fact there are eight staves, all visible, but only four show on the page because they have been layered in pairs.

It is a very powerful and flexible concept with few drawbacks, and one well worth getting some practice with.

Peter

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #10 –
Michel,

The other thing to consider is if you are only entering the music into NWC for rehearsal purposes so that it "sounds" as written and if you are not concerned about the visual appearance of the score (i.e. that it looks exactly like the music you are keying in), you can accomplish what you want on a single staff by using a combination of tied and untied quarter notes.

Hope this helps.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #11 –
Thanx for this,

But as already explained to Marsu, I have to manage 8 staffs : 4 voices + 3 organs + 2 orchestral reduction.

This is Dvorak music : and the problem I am having is on the organ staff : you will certainly understand it is already complex enough to manage, so that I don't have to add another staff to by-pass these problems.
I'm really expecting enhancements on this.

Anyway, thank you again for your help.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #12 –
Thanx to all of you.

Indeed I have tested the layering capabilities that I did not know (neither investigate) earlier. But anyway, I find it as a non acceptable work-arround on the music I am scripting because much too heavy. So far I have been typing this classical music song with limitation on Organ staves :
from bar line # 274 to # 365 I have been unable to type my notes in chord member on following bars :
276 - 277 -285 - 306 - 338 - 348 - 349 - 350 - 351 - 357 -362 ....
Don't you think it would be a pity to create a fake staff to enter rests from bar #1 to bar #275 and then fill with rests until problems encountered on bars mentionned above ?
I do.

I regret it because so far I felt confortable enough with NWC to buy it. I wish I could tell other members of my Choir to buy it as well soon with enhancements.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #13 –
There are at least two ways round the problem of lots of empty bars.

The quick and dirty one is to insert a time signature of 99/1 (for example), a semibreve(whole note) rest and a bar line. That covers 396 crotchets (1/4 notes) in one go. Then put the proper time signature when you get to the point you need it.

More elegant is type say ten bars of semibreve rest/bar line in an otherwise empty stave. make them invisible. Then press the following keys:
home
shift+end
control+C
end
control+V as many times as you want

and in about 30 seconds (I timed my own clumsy efforts) you can get 200 empty bars.

BTW you can get one empty bar in seconds flat - just ask who's buying the next round ;-)

You might also find that there are other places in your score apart from the ones mentioned where perhaps layering will improve the look. e.g. where slurs or beams need to be duplicated - which can't be done on one staff.

HTH
Peter

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #14 –
Peter, I'd be wary of the "quick and dirty" approach because NoteWorthy has been very clear about not supporting staves with different numbers of measures. This isn't to say it won't work, but if it should happen not to, I imagine the response from NW Support would be "don't do that".

Michel, I agree that it seems a lot of work to create an almost-empty layered staff for the sake of one measure, but I've found that the extra work is tolerable in practice if you use cut-and-paste as Peter has suggested. It's always possible that the next release will bring a solution to this problem, but even if not, I still think NWC's flexibility and ease of use (not to mention the low price) make it the best notation software available for most uses.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #15 –
A slower but effortless method of getting an appropriate blank staff is to open your piece of music and turn the recorder on. Make sure that there is at least one midi event (from your keyboard) at the point where you wish the blank staff to finish and , lo and behold, you have a staff with whole bar rests and all the appropriate time signatures in it too.

But there are some oddities.

The clef on the recorded staff is usually but not always the treble clef.

Why in 3/4 time are the whole bar rests dotted minims rather then semibreves? (Not really a problem since you can select them and press 'full stop' and '+' to correct this.

What is the purpose of the a second staff in the recording window? This extends up to the bar with the last time signature change in the original.

On the subject of proper recording, it would be a nice feature if the clefs and key signatures from the original staff were picked up in the recording window so that we did not have to force/audit accidentals to get the recorded music into its proper format.

Peter

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #16 –
The need is basic :
being able to provide electronic sound support to a choir.

To do so, I have the booklet of the song we sing in besides my computer and I need to copy the notes of the book on the computer to get a playable sound.

NWC is very convenient to key in notes on a staff (i.e. soprano) then another one (i.e. tenor) and so on for all the voices. But it becomes more tricky when you need to key in either piano or organ staves or orchestral reduction staves : because already melodies were grouped by the author on different staves but still you can have 2 or 3 melodies in a single staff for the piano for instance. There is the limitation of NWC that I encounter. So if I need to create extra staves to by-pass NWC current limitations, it is quite difficult to be able to key in notes for all voices , page after page on the booklet by keying note for a staff from the booklet, then jump to the next staff (very convenient with Page Up/Down) but then needing first to know if it is the real staff or the fake one needed for NWC. And on top of this , NWC does not support, as of today, capability to jump from staff to staff but stay on the same measure : this is where I get lost when copying from my booklet , being currently at the measure nu
mber 240 and finding a limitation on the piano. I create the staff, add the 239 rest, fill up my notes. Then I continue to key in on the "normal" staves untill I find the same problme on measure 319 : when jumping from normal staff to fake staff : the current position is lost : I was at measure 319 and when getting to fake staff I go back to ... 240 (which I do not know since numbering is put on the top staff only).

This is all I have , no instrument to plug so that I could record.

That's all folks.
Thanx for tips anyway.
Looking for next NWC upgrade.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #17 –
>provide electronic sound

If you are only interested in the sound, then you do not need layering (even though it is the proper way to do SATB arrangements). You can just use ties to create the sounds of the different voices. Layering is still the best approach, though, as you can mute speicifc voices, print out various voices by themselves, etc...

>And on top of this , NWC does not support, as of today, capability to jump
>from staff to staff but stay on the same measure

Please explain. Unless you use a different bar structure on different staves, you should be able to do this without a problem.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #18 –
What Michel wants is the ability to jump from measure <n> of one staff to the same measure on another staff, even if one or more of the intervening staves has fewer than <n> measures. This is, IMHO, a reasonable thing to want to do: for example, if you're entering music one staff at a time, and you are keeping parallel hidden and muted staves, and the staves you're working on happen not to be contiguous.

Most text editors I'm familiar with have this ability. As you move up or down between lines, when an intervening line appears that is shorter than the one where you started, the cursor moves to the end of the short line - but when you then move to a line at least as long as the original one, the cursor resumes its original position.

There seems no a priori reason why NWC couldn't treat a sequence of <page up> and <page down> keys the same way, by remembering what the current measure was when the "paging" started and making that measure current on any staff that's long enough.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #19 –
You have a point. We shall see.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #20 –
Just a hint for Michel (and others :) about the current measure number (useful to know how much empty measures you have to add, for your problem): simply type Ctrl+G, et hop, the number displayed is the current measure number on that staff. Échap to stay here.

C'est simple et pratique.

Note: if you do this *prior* to use pgUp/pgDn keys, you can memorize (simply with Copy/Paste) the current measure number where you were before changing of staff :)

Eric: what about to show the current measure number in the status line, after staff name for instance?

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #21 –
Thanx about the hint but it does not solve the problem.

Because when using pgUp/pgDn keys : if you reach a staff with fewer measures (i.e. 239) then the one you were in (i.e. 319) : you are forced to stay at this measure (i.e. 239) :
==> We would need instead some mechanism like "persistant note tool" : allowing you to navigate from staff to staff :
- either with the current mode
- or with the new expected mode : staying on the current measure .

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #22 –
Yes Michel, and I think Eric has understand this need, by reading his reply 19 :)

Now with another hint:
some of my own "templates" files are filled with staves which have hundred (in fact, 128, for some reasons) rests measures (with no time sig.).
This allows me to insert the music where I need it. I always have a lot of extra measures, who allow me to move up and down across staves whithout trouble, as long as the measures are complete (particularly the one I'm writing).

At the end of the editing process, I remove the remaining extra measures (3 keystrokes per staff).
Add I constantly keep an extra staff, to
- keep some items that appear often (pp, ff, special MPCs...)
- transpose a part of a staff (copy from origin, paste&transpose in that extra staff, cut/paste to where needed)
- keep rest measures

HTH :)

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #23 –
I did not know that online@noteworthysoftware.com was Eric. Hello to Eric then.

I thought already as you to start from such templates but I find it not easy to manage because if you do so in a SATB + organ template , you don't know which rest was intended from which was in from the template definition :
i.e. I'm currently keying an "Agnus Dei" which starts with an organ play for 20 measures, then Basso only until 22 then soprano until 40 then other voices ..... And Since it takes time to key this at night after work I do this over several nights (which I do not complain about by the way). But since I need to retrieve my song in the same context as when I left it the night before this method of using templates with plenty of rests is not affordable.

Plus the fact that you have to remove useless rests ...

What would be great ,by the way, would be to have an automatic bar line entering based on the time signature : as it was the case on a former tool I used.

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #24 –
Well, I clearly see your kind of working for music after working "tout court", as I live(d) it too.

Something I used to find where I was after re-opening a file not yet finished, is to store that information in the ..."Info" window, as I explained in https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=2076.msg11455#msg11455

Otherwise, the "automatic" beam is not a bad idea; however, the "Audit _B_ar lines" tool is already useful. (Warning: if no time sig. is present, it assumes C (4/4); and expect that the first measure is complete, i.e. no "anacrouse", unless you fill it with hidden rests).

"Undo" works fine with it anyway (as with the rest of NWC), if you don't like the results.
Bar line is also usable with the '*' sign on the numpad (an old wish that one, from a right-hand user (was it Sarah?)). I prefer the tab key.

HTH...

Re: insert a 1/2 duration note on a 1/4 chord member

Reply #25 –
If the problem is that you only need the second layered staff for a few bars here and there, just copy the main staff (alt+e, a, Ctrl+c) and then paste it onto the new staff (Ctrl+v). Then add the changes in the bars that are needed and layer the staves. It's often the best way to write keyboard music.