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sustain trill

Hi everybody !

I have somewhat of, I think, a rather excentric problem...
an it goes like this :

I want my score to look exactly like a printed score.
so, when I encounter a "tril" I'm using the "text expression" to write "tr", and above I'm using a hidden Staff to control the performance of the actual tril.

so far so good.

but what shall I do if I have a "Fermata" over the tril ?
that means, the tril should be plaid longer then the actual exact duration the computer gives it.

If I'm using the "Delay" atribute of the Fermata -
the tril will stop playing.

ok, naff said ... - I hope I was clear enough.

ori

p.s.

I'm quite sure there is a finer word to be found then "tril" - I just don't know it ...

Re: sustain trill

Reply #1
There are different ways of introducing delays.  If you don't mind slowing down the trill, don't specify a delay in the fermata but add tempo changes before and after the fermata on the hidden staff.  If slowing the notes isn't an option, then on the hidden staff add two more notes to the trill and change the last six notes into a triplet.  You can then temporarily reduce the tempo by a third but the notes in the trill will sound just as fast.  This file from a user tip attachment shows a way to do the temp tempo change.

BTW, you can make your trills look better than just trl with "tr~~~~~~~~".  Better yet, use the Boxmarks or Boxmark2 fonts from here.
Since 1998

Re: sustain trill

Reply #2
Warren!

of course slowing down is not an option,
I tried  your triplet sujestion - ok it gives me a few additional notes that i can add ...

but my problem is different :
I want a tril, in a certain speed (not too fast, not too slow) to be plaid sustained much longer then the actual duration (due to the Fermata).

ori

p.s.

I have already thought about how better do introduce the trill.
i don't need additional fonts.
I used several "~" ("tilda") at "page-text" size and it worked fine.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #3
Insert hidden notes (or rests) immediately after the trill notes.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #4
If you mean to set it's properties to "visibility = never",
then I don't see how this can help me :
the rest still apeares on the staff, although somewhat gray.
and in the printed version I was all set before.

so - maybe you ment something else ?

ori

Re: sustain trill

Reply #5
The rest will appear in the edit window, which is where you do the work to create or modify the music.  It should not show in the print preview window nor on the printed sheet of music.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #6
I'm trying to understand the problem. See if it seems to fit this example: You have a piece in 4/4 time. A measure contains 4 quarter notes. You wish to trill the fourth note. On your hidden staff you have 3 quarter notes and 8 thirty-second notes. This is fine, except you wish to place a fermata over the last quarter note, to hold it 50% longer. Three choices are possible. All involve extending the measure by one eighth note. You can change that measure on the hidden staff to 9/8: 1. You add an additional 4 thirty-second notes (same speed trill, more notes); 2. you add an eighth rest (same trill, followed by a pause); 3. add a dot to each thirty-second note (same number of trill notes, slower). Do any of these options help?

Re: sustain trill

Reply #7
I'd play around with 16th notes or 16th note triplets on that last beat in the hidden staff, rather than 32nds, depending on how fast you like the trills to be.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #8
so - maybe you ment something else ?

No, I meant precisely what I said. You asked for a mechanism which extended the playing time of the trill. So on the visible staff insert hidden rests after the trill note to extend the playing time to what is required, and on the hidden staff put the actual notes of the extended trill.

Yes, the rests show up in grey in the editor, but they don't show on the printed score (nor in the Player or Plug-In). So your printed score is correct, and the music plays as you want it.

As a cautionary note, you can't audit barlines after this unless you add a hidden time signature in the altered bar (and the next one too to reset it)

Re: sustain trill

Reply #9
OK, everybody!

let's get it straight :
I don't care about the f... printed version!.

If I'll ever want to print this thing -
I'll just use a "tr~~~~" and a Fermata :
and when i'll play this printed version  on my piano - i'll sustain this trill as long as i want -
no one will come to arest me on that
(at least i havn't heard they formed the "tril-police" ...)

for all other advises:
they damage the way i want my tril to be sounded like
(speed or time length).

I think my specification of the problem was clear enough :
I want to be able to isolate a time fragment of the score,
and do with it what ever i want - without having to effect the appearance.
otherways, i'll just add a whole bar of grace to every staff except the one preforming the trill ...

Re: sustain trill

Reply #10
You are obviously a very impatient, unreasonable and, I fear, rather spoilt young(?) man(?). Forgive me if I have either your sex or age wrong, but you really don't seem to have tried to understand any of the help and advice you have been proffered.

If only you were prepared to try out this freely granted assistance you would find that, indeed, your question has already been answered. To be fair, any written instructions probably need interpretation and a certain amount of trial and error before they do what was intended, but you seem incapable of investing any time or effort in working out the problem. Rather, like some Roman Emperor, you would prefer the solution to be available at the languid inflexion of a supercilious imperial hand.

Let's get real.

You want the trill (with BTW a double 'l') to sound correctly. Then write it out on the hidden (layered) staff as you want it. That satisfies your first requirement. Or if it doesn't then you're just incompetent at writing out what you want, which of course could not possibly be the case.

Now comes the tricky bit, especially for the arrogant and impetuous. Your realisation takes a certain length of time: somewhat longer (by an ascertainable amount) than the visible Trill note with its fermata would suggest. Don't put any delay on the Fermata but pad the bar out with hidden rests to the exact same length as your realisation of the trill.

Then it plays right - you've written it out yourself so there's no problem there: and it looks right when printed - just a note with a fermata over it.

QED

Re: sustain trill

Reply #11
This is a long message, in which I think I can show you how to do what you want to do, Ori.  I suggest you print it out and follow it step by step.

Please quit complaining.  Peter, William, Warren and I have been trying to help you with YOUR problem, and we're doing it for free.

There is no question there is more powerful music notation software available, but you will spend a fortune to buy it, and spend a lot of time learning to use it.  If you want to learn to use the inexpensive Noteworthy, which meets the needs of most users, stay with us.

You will find Noteworthy is excellent program.  While it won't do everything, the Noteworthy crew responds to user demand.  Eric and his crew have made many modifications over the years, and often there is a way to work around a limitation that a user such as yourself identifies.

Your issue:  I can't understand if you want to print something out to play on the piano, or if you want to use this software to play back your music, sounding like a piano or recording.

Your messages give the impression you're going to put your computer monitor on top of your piano, read the music you see notated on the screen, and play it on the piano keyboard.  Or sit in front of the screen with your recorder, and do likewise.

That is not what NWC is designed to do.  It was developed to allow music to be notated and played back.  The edit window is your working surface, the print preview window is to give you an idea how the music will look when printed, but is not really intended to replace the printed paper.

You can use it as a practice aid, if you have the edit window open and play back the music; the program will indicate which note is playing.  I think it would be simpler to print out the part you want to practice, put it on a music stand, and play it, with the computer playback to accompany you.  You can do this quite well, emulating the Music Minus One concept, but NWC will not play jazz 8ths and you have to be fussy about setting up dynamics and dynamic variances.

OK, saying all that, write your music out on one staff.  Notate the last note in a normal manner.  Put the fermata over it, giving it a pause value of zero.  This is what I will call staff one.

Add a new staff (staff two).  Highlight and copy everything from staff one to staff two.  Go to the fermata in staff two, and delete it.  Take the note it covered, and change it to a series of oscillating 16th or 32nd notes, however many you anticipate the pause to last.

You now have two staffs.  You will see the bar lines don't line up at the end of the bar where the fermata is.  Go back to that bar in staff one, and add a bunch of rests, until the bar lines line up again.

Highlight those new rests, press Control-E, and set the visibility to never (hide the rests, in other words).  Go to Tools, Options, Color, Hidden Notation, Change Color, and select white, OK, OK.

Now you have two staffs showing, and the rests, while not perfectly hidden IN THE EDIT WINDOW, will only show very faintly, slightly interfering with the smooth staff lines.  (They will be perfectly hidden in the Print Preview window and on any printed copy).

Set staff one to muted (F2, Midi, Muted).

Go to File, Page Setup, Contents, and turn off staff 2.

Now, when you play back, you will see staff one, notated "correctly," but you will hear staff two, which will play the trill.

One problem that remains is that when the playback is running, unless you deactivate the "chase note" feature, the hidden rests will show, one at a time, during the playback.  You can deactivate the chasing note if you to to Tools, Options, Editor, Chase Playing Notes, and uncheck it.

Let us all know if this works for you, please.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #12
Peter and David, congrats for your patience.

Ori, two more things about NWC and related NWA software.
NWC is made for writing and playing music. And it does it well. But it's not [abbr=WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet, such as Word pretends to be]WYSIWYG[/abbr], and it's a chance.
If you want to see your score while playing along, then you should open your file with the browser plug-in instead.
Open a browser window, and simply drop your NWC file on it (that one of the many ways on how to do it). Then click on the right arrow to play it, and it will look correctly without the gray items nor hidden staves. You can even fiddle with the slider to pause/rewind/...
If you find (at composing time) that the piece is not what you want, switch back to NWC and modify your score at will. Save. Switch back to your browser (alt+tab again) and press F5 (if you're a mouse addict, all  this can be done by clicking or course). Now it has the new file loaded.
And so on.

And do not forget to read the inline help and look at the examples. They're there for you. If you don't have time to look at them, I'm afraid you won't have time for anything of value.
Happy and Holy Christmas anyway!
M.A.D.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #13
"It was developed to allow music to be notated and played back..."

By this I meant notated for printing, and for listening in midi format.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #14
Hi Marsu,
Merry Christmas!

(Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go - your workday must be finished by now.  Sigh.)

Re: sustain trill

Reply #15
Peter !

You've given me the same advise al over again
(with an addition considerable amount of "preaching" ).

I told you that if by stating "hidden rests" you ment for me to go to "notation properties" ->visibility==never.,
then I said I had already done that - and didn't like the resaults.

David, I'll try out later what you've offered.
Thanks.

ori

Re: sustain trill

Reply #16
Yes, I repeated it because you obviously didn't understand it, or possibly you don't understand the purpose of the editor. Perhaps could you indicate rather more clearly exactly what is unsatisfactory. There are essentially three choices - please feel free to select one.

  • The playback doesn't satisfy you. The remedy is to rewrite the hidden staff appropriately.
  • The printed output fails to satisfy you. Difficult one, this, since there's really not much that can go wrong. You do realise you have to put the hidden rests on all the staves apart from the hidden realisation staff.
  • The note-chase irritates you in the Editor. The solution is to use the Player or the Plug-in.
And believe me, I wasn't preaching, but rather pointing out your arrogance, ignorance and general bad manners. And, although we don't normally mention it because we all make typos, your appalling spelling. Nevertheless all of us NWCers try to help and will continue to do so in spite of the slings and arrows.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #17
mmm...
indead!

the hidden rest is not shown on the player.
I didn't know that - and this is why i wasn't sure that by "hidden" you ment what I thought you did - and aked again.

didn't got an answer.

but I get it now.

Re: sustain trill

Reply #18
All's well that ends well!