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Topic: Arpeggiating Chords (Read 17584 times) previous topic - next topic

Arpeggiating Chords

For arpeggiating chords (you know, that little squiggly symbol in front of a chord, meaning "ripple up"):

  • Go to sixty-fourth notes.
  • Run the chord up in a run of individual notes, and bar them together to make them look neater. If you have three or six notes, you may want to tripletize them to make them a little faster. If you have five notes, you could tripletize just the first three.
  • Work out how much time you have left in the chord and enter the chord using notes of that length. This will probably require dotting and maybe even double dotting or (rarely) tying of two individual chords to get the right note length.
  • Tie (using the "/" key) each arpeggio note to its corresponding chord member.
  • Press F9 to implement all the ties.
  • Press F5 and be amazed!
This works well, though if you are using very fast tempi you may wish to increase the note length of your "arpeggiators."  Download the file arpeggio.nwc (1K) to see an example.

Re: Arpeggiating Chords

Reply #1 –
Editors Note: Though arpeggiated chords are not supported in NWC, the song moonlite.nwc in the NWC Samples folder uses Insert: Text to show the symbol { in the Standard Group top staff. The arpeggiated chord sound is then notated in the Hidden Group top staff. Measure 59 is one place the arpeggiated chord is located in the song. The Standard group is for printing (and display). The Hidden Group is for play back. Thus, while playing back the file and displaying the Standard group, it looks as though the { is playing back like a arpeggiated chord. To see all of the staves, go to File: Page Setup, Contents and select all the staves. To put staves in different groups like Standard and Hidden, etc. use Staff: Staff Properties, General tab, enter name.