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Muting a staff

Is it possible to mute a staff for a repetition (Master Repeat Close)on playback?

Pierre

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #1 –
If you want to dynamically suppress play back in a special ending, you could override MIDI Volume in a Dynamic change.

If you just want to mute one or more notes, each note has its own Muted property.

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #2 –
I think what Pierre is asking relates to "1st time only" or "2nd time only" indications for a repeated section.
What I do for this is place a hidden dynamic before the Master Repeat Open and another one before the Master Repeat Close.  These are not the "normal" places to insert them, so they should be hidden.  Then insert as text items the dynamics in their correct places.

hth

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #3 –
I wallow in ignorance with regard to some of the capabilities of NWC.  Perhaps there is a simple setting that will effect the ends that I obtained in the following example.  If so, I defer to greater knowledge and experience, and ask that those possessing such please enlighten us all.  Otherwise...

I assume that you are inquiring about the SOUND of your piece on playback as opposed to its VISUAL appearance.  I faced a similar problem once.  I wanted one part, bass, of a SATB song to sound on the 1st verse, be silent on the second verse, and sound again for the third (and final) verse.

I solved this problem by placing a MPC on the bass stave immediately preceding the MASTER REPEAT CLOSE sign and setting the volume to zero for the APPROPRIATE NUMBER OF BEATS so that the bass stave of the 2nd verse would be silent for its entirety on playback.  The MPC would return the sound to the appropriate volume level after that number of beats had passed.  Then I wrote the entirety of the 3rd verse so that all parts, including bass, were inside the final ending and all would sound on playback.

This is not a very elegant solution.  It sounds great, however, it will not work for printing.  Luckily, I was interested only in recording the SOUND for use as an accompaniment to sheet music that was already in existence. IF I HAD wanted to PRINT the score, I would have found it necessary to modify the piece so that its printed appearance would be acceptable and use one iteration for recording and the second iteration for printing.

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #4 –
Thank you all, NWC, Pete & Debo.  I sould have been more specific.  The piece I have is "O Holy Night", with two verses, slightly different, but with the same accompaniment. So, my piece has four staves : two staves in Treble clef for verses no 1 & 2 and two staves in bass clef for the piano accompaniement.  Here's how the song goes : Soloist sings from measures 2 to 27 and the choir comes in from measure 16 (Fall on your knees) to 27.  Then soloist sings verse 2 from measure 2 to 27 and the choir then sings from measure 16 to 26, skips measure 27 and sings measure 28.  I added a special ending measure.  That is ok for printing.

But playing back in NWC, I need to mute verse 2 while verse 1 is playing and verse 1 while verse 2 is playing.  I tried inserting hidden dynamics, but the system did not seem to recognize them.  I am probably doing it wrong.  Of course, I could have written the whole thing out without repetitions but it makes for over a dozen pages of printed text.  Thanks for helping.

Pierre

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #5 –
Perhaps it is possible to easily do what you seem to be trying to do from within NWC and use only one iteration of the score. However, I seem to get "all balled up" and waste much time and effort when sequencing complicated scores such as this.  If someone can suggest to us both a simple method then please do so.

However, IMHO...

The simplest way effect your end is to write the entire piece continuously (without special endings) using muting, rests, etc., where appropriate for getting the SOUND correct.  Use this score (iteration 1)  FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECORDING (and producing CDs for practice) only.

Then,

Write (and save as a separate file) a 2nd iteration of the song so that the VISUAL, i.e., PRINTED effect is the way you want it.  Do this by entering all the dynamics, etc., as TEXT ONLY, and use this 2nd iteration of the score for the purpose of PRINTING ONLY.

Now, if you are trying to write only ONE score so that others may download this as a NWC file, and that will LOOK AND PLAY correctly on a computer, then you are back to "dancing the dance", using internal dynamics, etc., and all the aggravation that this implies.

Again, I defer to those with superior knowledge and experience...

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #6 –
One way to achieve what you want is to 'absorb' the 1st or 2nd time repeats into a single local repeat bar.

So for the first verse: switch the special endings (the real first time bar will never actually happen) and then turn the real second time bar into a local repeat bar with a repeat count of 28 (the skipped first time bar plus 27 bars of the tune). You should hide the local repeat bar lines. So this verse plays and then seems to stand still as the second verse plays.

For the second verse: construct the first bar in the same way as the last bar in the first verse. Again swap the special endings. This verse will seem to stand still for the first verse and then miraculously spring into life.

To get the page to look right you'll need to layer a conductor track as the top staff with the special endings the right way round!

Re: Muting a staff

Reply #7 –
Thank you all.  I will try this, Peter.

Livain