Highlighting Two Different Lyric Lines at Once

2002-05-03 02:08 pm

There are many pieces of music around which have lyrics in more than one language. For example, Plaisir d’amour where both French and English versions are common, Schubert’s Ave Maria (Latin and English) etc. NoteWorthy Composer highlights the words as well as the music when you are playing back. With these dual language songs, changing from one language to another could be tricky if you do not wish to double up the number of verses. Using the layering feature, you can highlight both language versions at the same time.

For each staff that has lyrics attached, copy the music to a new staff directly below. In the first staff, enter lyrics for the first language and in the copy staff, enter the lyrics for the second language. The position of the lyrics with respect to the staff should be modified (from the lyric configuration tab) so that the first set of lyrics has a different position with respect to the staff than the other set on the copy staff (They can be both at the bottom or the top as required though). Finally, on the first staff, select ‘Layer with next staff’ from the Staff properties and you will now have what looks like a single staff with two different language lyrics by it. Both of these language lyrics will be highlighted on playback.