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The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

   It is a universal rule of all engineering practice (I am also an EE) that a system incapable of producing a required output, such as a refrigerator that will not cool, is seriously deficient.  In the software trade we call these deficiencies bugs.  In the case of the orchestral staff attribute, the standards of music engraving demand that all and only those staves so marked should have an orchestral bracket, and that the tops and bottoms of each such bracket in the system must have little circular finials.  NoteWorthy puts a bar across the entire system if any stave is marked orchestral, and the finials appear only on the top or bottom staff of a system.  The designer of a system that is to interface with the outside world in which standards already exist does not have a free choice of the way he wants to handle such items.  I provide four examples from the 138 scores I have made Worthy of Note in the last three years, and will testify under oath that I have seen no counterexamples.
 
   This one wart on its nose makes NoteWorthy a joke as a serious printing program, for all the wonderful things that have happened with respect to slurs, hairpins and stem controls.  It is all the more ironic, then, that after finally reviewing the entire example directory in detail, I find that NoteWorthy can produce a virtuoso performance, at least if the performer it emulates is a precision monger like Glenn Gould.  For God's sake, get this fixed, issue NW2, and start working on NW3, which should print, understand and play all the standard abbreviations for tremolos, repeats, arpeggios, trills, mordents, turns, appoggiaturas, acciaccaturas, glissandos and whatever else one can find in ten minutes of googoling, as well as provide an alternative to dragging over items to select them, and the ability to select and modify a note in a chord, as well as a fully floating C-cleff (see the Chorus of Peers example) as well as countless other rarely needed but essential when required bits of feature and notation.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #1 –
I wonder why I am now thinking of that old but famous (and often parodied) book "How to win friends and influence people" ?
 

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #2 –
Some people don't realize how negative they are in their writings.   Scanning some of bidderxyzzy's 21 posts to this forum, I came across:

Quote
This one wart on its nose makes NoteWorthy a joke as a serious printing program


Quote
... the horror of using NoteWorthy to engrave a score

Quote
This whole area of tricker

Quote
I just think that there are a few needless


Constant harping isn't going to get his demands pushed to the top of the cue, especially when they aren't ones that have been identified as priorities by many users.

Quote
the standards of music engraving demand that all and only those staves so marked should have an orchestral bracket, and that the tops and bottoms of each such bracket in the system must have little circular finials.
What is your reference to support this, Bidderxxy?

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #3 –
That's "...xyzzy", as in the oldest adventure game.
If you ever try a textual game of long ago and you find the program saying things to you like "You are at the end of the road again" of "You are in a twisty maze of passages, all alike" you are there. Xyzzy (and "Plugh") ware magic words, having effect at crucial moments.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #4 –
Quote
the standards of music engraving demand that all and only those staves so marked should have an orchestral bracket, and that the tops and bottoms of each such bracket in the system must have little circular finials.
Quote
What is your reference to support this
bidderxyzzy is correct in this, but I cannot quote a reference right now (I'm not at home), but there is probably something in the Lusk/Gerou notation book.
There are other threads which discuss this issue, along with a few simple solutions posted by me and others (don't have time to search for those right now.).
I don't agree, though, with the use of the term "bug," unless you also want to include "cleff" as a bug.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #5 –
bidderxyzzy is correct in this.  Though he expresses himself rather strongly, we mustn't get defensive on Noteworthy's account just because we don't like his tone.  Whether this is the way to "win friends and influence people" is not the issue.  The issue is the one he states, so let's not try and sidestep the point.  As for not being an issue for many people:  I expect it is an issue for many people, but that those people haven't found a succinct way of articulating it.  Or, there are people like me who are not ones to complain about things like this, or figure that mentioning it is not going to do any good.  I have, for example endeavoured to carry the flag for the inclusion of a breve, as have others.  That has always come to nothing.  This isn't necessarily saying that Noteworthy doesn't listen, as I believe they do, but they may not always respond or explain their actions or inactions on every point.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #6 –
Is it a coincidence that those who "express themselves rather strongly" have non-human names? Remember user111?

The thing is: if you have a girlfriend who(m) you want to present with some chocolate, you do not give her a paper bag in which you indiscriminately, and in an unorderly fashion, have deposited lumps of chocolate.
You find a box of the finest (the one you know she likes) and present this neatly wrapped box with strings attached (no coincidence?), uttering a few appropriate words, to the object of your affection.
The message (Here, Chocolate!) is the same. The effect is not.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #7 –
Gentlemen:

   Yes, I am aware of my tone and yes, that is part of the reason I don't identify myself by my "human" name.  Another reason for the name is to emphasize that I have been in the software business since 1965, and have an in depth knowledge of the development of programming techniques over the decades, which now make massively extensive but conceptually simple tasks, like enumerating [music notation] abbreviations and their meanings, routine.  For example, I just installed a new Windows XP driver for my TV tuner card, freeware written by a lone hacker, which understands some two hundred or more different models, and includes a user definition language for describing a card for which a good technical specification exists but the author overlooked.

   Yes, again, "cleff" is a bug, and I have never found denial helped me produce better work or learn to spell better (which is a work in progress). 

   My "reference" is contained in the scores displayed.  Or is "authority" the only way of establishing a fact?

   If I were wooing a girl, the comment about chocolate would be germane.  In this case, I think the best tired old saw is "the squeaky wheel gets the grease".  One of my boss's comments when I stopped getting complaints about Data General multi-user basic (which supported twenty users on a 16 kbyte mini running at .8 MHz, and on which "Adventure" first ran), which was "maybe no one is using it" is also germane.  No one can use an unusable (in this case for producing quality engravings, not "some computer printout") product.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #8 –
Oh, wow! Did you ever work with Nova-3 or Nova-4? Did you ever play Empire or Star Trek on an MV-4000?
I wrote Fortran on Nova-3 and Nova-4. 24 K to work with (if at all), with Edit, and later Speed, as editors. We even resorted to assembler where necessary. Couldn't anymore, for the life of me. But I can still solder connectors to a serial cable ;-) 2 x 3, 4 x 5, 7 - 7, 6=8=20, never mind the DSR, DTR and DCD. Such fun.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #9 –
Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
In this case, I think the best tired old saw is "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". 
Not in this forum. I won't discuss the merits of anything you write while you alternate between screaming and bragging. Perhaps in a different topic where you establish a better tone. But not here.
Registered user since 1996

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #10 –
Rob,

   I played Star Trek on a Nova 800, but left the company before the internal support lab got an Eclipse.

Rick, Sir:

   There are things in my background I could brag about, but I think a sober mention of where I am coming from, to help the other members of this forum evaluate the technical content of my comments, is not "bragging".  And since your input may well be of value, or even sorely missed, I hardly think your denying the community the benefit of your wisdom because I insist on playing hardball will do anyone any good.  But then it's your call.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #11 –
I've been having the same reaction as Rob has to bidderxyzzy's posts. I suspect some of my posts have had a similar effect on some people, but I do try to modify my tone when others point it out to me, or when I spot the problem myself. I'm afraid I don't see any such conciliatory attempts here.

bidderxyzzy, some of the rest of us also have some programming experience (I worked in C before C++ existed). We also recognize that NWC is largely a one-man operation, and that one man is only human. Suggestions are welcome. Demands are another matter. Demands coupled with insults to the program really don't belong in this forum - or anywhere else, for that matter. Cut us all (including yourself) some slack. You'll be much more likely to get problems like the orchestral brackets (which you are correct about) fixed.

And by the way, a bug is a flaw in the code that creates unexpected results, not a part of the rfp that hasn't been fully implemented yet. If you're going to bitch, can you at least bitch with the correct terminology?

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #12 –
Bidderxyzzy, William's message expresses my thinking very well. 

I have written 3 lengthy reponses to your negative postings.  Each time, I decided not to send my comment, remembering the adage, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Written messages are prone to misunderstanding.  After you've drafted one, you might consider letting it sit unsent for a while.  Before you send it,  have a cup of tea or whatever, then read the message a couple of times.  If you still want to convey the message in the same tone, send it.  I suspect you'll find yourself editing the message quite a bit.

Then your intended audience won't then react by thinking, "Good Golly, Molly, here we go again..."  We may even see the merits of what you have to say.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #13 –
G'day bidderxyzzy,
umm, no offence intended mate, but have you read the manual/help at all?

Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
...as well as provide an alternative to dragging over items to select them.

From the "Keyboard Guide" in NWC help:
Shift+L/R Arrow Selects notation as the insertion point moves

Not that this should be a surprise - it's standard CUA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access) as used in all m$ products (although m$ have made additions now - like a "Start" button) - as well as those of the rest of the world...

<sigh> "cleff" is either a typo or you simply can't spell...

If I may offer a small suggestion: "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar".  If you want to be deliberately offensive then that is your choice, but in the past those who have behaved that way seem to have made a big noise, displayed their ignorance and then disappeared.  I hope this won't end up applying to you.  You are insightful and articulate - please be friendly too.

I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #14 –
   Having been properly chastised, I will try to tone things down a bit. 

William

   I do recognize that NoteWorthy is a one-man operation, but it isn't Windows Vista.  Note that I am not strident about things that would be great to have, like beaming between staves, only things that are bugs.  The behavior of the orchestral staff attribute is not an unimplemented RFP item, it is something that is implemented and is done wrong.  It is even called out in the documentation as being "improved", but there has been no change between NW1 and NW2.  (Oh, and I worked in 7094 assembler and even 1620 absolute bi-quinary long before "C" or even BASIC existed.)

David

   I too use your method, and I don’t think you would like to see what I wrote as a first draft.

Lawrie

   Your keyboard synonym for a mouse movement, which I use along with shift and click to select long stretches without worrying about "catching" the scroll at the right instant are still "dragging over".  And they don't solve the problem of editing notes in a chord.  The ability to select and modify the individual notes of a chord in the same way as notes not combined in chords would go a long way toward making NoteWorthy a whole lot better.  But it doesn't make the thing unusable, so I can wait for it.  Remember, "Only Death comes to he who waits."

   And Yes, I can't spell.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #15 –
G'day bidderxyzzy,

Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
Lawrie
   Your keyboard synonym for a mouse movement, which I use along with shift and click to select long stretches without worrying about "catching" the scroll at the right instant are still "dragging over".  And they don't solve the problem of editing notes in a chord.  The ability to select and modify the individual notes of a chord in the same way as notes not combined in chords would go a long way toward making NoteWorthy a whole lot better.  But it doesn't make the thing unusable, so I can wait for it.  Remember, "Only Death comes to he who waits."

I, perhaps erroneously, differentiate from between a mouse drag and <Shift-Arrow>.  My reason for this is accuracy.  There are some objects you just can't easily catch with the mouse pointer which a simple cursor movement with the <Shift> key down does get easily.  But you know this already.

To be able to select an individual note in a chord would certainly be useful, but how to do it with the keyboard?  This is important - IMHO NWC's biggest claim to fame is the user interface which is heavily keyboard oriented.  Perhaps an <Alt-Arrow> combination with the cursor at the right height?

To be honest, I don't find the current situation a big problem, <Ctrl-BkSp> to delete the dodgy chord member, choose the right attributes and <Ctrl-Enter>, could end up being just as fast as selecting and modifying the offending chord member.  That said I wouldn't mind being able to test it out.

There are other things that probably should have priority, including better orchestral staff bracing.  I'd prefer to be able to control the grouping without resorting to the workarounds that already exist.  BTW, have you checked them out - they may be quite useful for you.  Unfortunately I don't remember which particular discussion had the best suggestions, but I do recall that they usually involved additional (single line) staves as separaters...

David Palmquist does this semi regularly IIRC

Then there are slurs, augmentation dots, fractional positioning (both vertically and horizontally), negative horizontal positioning - you've named several yourself.  Not to mention direct CC access in the MPC dialogues, proper gliss control (a 2 tone range in the pitch bend MPC just ain't enough!) - the list continues.  Ultimately we will see many if not all of these updates, in the meantime I can get most of what I need in my printouts which is, of course, the primary requirement for most of us.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #16 –
Quote
The behavior of the orchestral staff attribute is not an unimplemented RFP item, it is something that is implemented and is done wrong

Nevertheless, it is not code that is doing something unexpected, it is code that is doing something incomplete. It isn't wrong from the standpoint of what the code was designed to do, only from the standpoint of what the code should eventually be designed to do. That isn't a bug, just a shortcut to get things up and running. A sort of built-in, temporary kludge. I suspect all of us have done a few of those.

....but thanks, bidderxyzzy, for offering to tone things down a bit. And welcome to one of the most literate, well-informed, creative users' forums on the Net.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #17 –
About the main problem of finials and orchestral staffs:
When I first joined this forum, I wanted desperately to complain about it.  However, although it is an incomplete implementation, there are workarounds.  (I don't know how to get the finials, though.)  See attached for the best possible.
What is done here is that a blank "standard" staff is placed under the end of a group through layering.  (I didn't make it invisible, but it does work.  This was mentioned on a previous post, but I'm too lazy to look for it.)

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #18 –
Greetings, Gentlemen,

   There is a good reason that I harp on the Orchestral Staff Attribute, and that is that it's use is required in nearly every score of any complexity at all, while NoteWorthy's behavior is utterly unacceptable for any purpose whatever.  It would also seem utterly trivial to fix.

   My main use of NoteWorthy requires that I distribute .nwc files, in which kludges, workarounds, separate visual and sounding staves and the like are unacceptable.  My workaround is to print the music without using orchestral staves, print separate pages with orchestral braces of each required length on otherwise blank staves and combine them graphically using Windows Paint.  This is acceptable because I scan all the music I deal with anyway, and before I do the OMR step with Sharp Eye (or when I print music my club holds copyright to (or which is public domain)), I usually need to do considerable graphical restoration (like fixing loose leaf holes punched through clefs) of this same sort.

   Indeed, one of NoteWorthy's better attributes is its nearly complete bilingualism between keyboard and mouse, which is getting rarer every year.  The ability to select by clicking on as well as dragging over would be completely compatible with the current usage, and Lawrie's suggested keyboard synonym for a click on a chord note is, as far as I can see, perfect.  The need for such a facility is acute in my case because of the extensive editing I must to do in correcting NoteWorthy's atrocious enharmonic spelling, especially in the piano accompaniment.  I would also like to see the requirement that all selected notes have the same duration before the duration set button (or keystroke) is activated be dropped, as it adds nothing to either function or safety, and makes the correction of the tied figures MIDI input makes of triplets more difficult.

   Finally, I must insist that neither "unexpectedness" nor the programmer's intent has anything to do with the definition of the term "bug" as used in the software industry.  If the result is wrong, it's a bug, period.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #19 –
Quote
   Finally, I must insist that neither "unexpectedness" nor the programmer's intent has anything to do with the definition of the term "bug" as used in the software industry.  If the result is wrong, it's a bug, period.

"When your program contains a bug, it is of course because somewhere there is something which you believe to be true but actually is not true."
- Norman Matloff, Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/UnixAndC/CLanguage/Debug.html#tth_sEc1
----------------------------
"In computer technology, a bug is a coding error in a computer program."
- SearchSoftwareQuality.com Definitions, What is a bug?
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid92_gci211714,00.html
----------------------------
"A bug is unexpected and undesirable behaviour by a program."
- Ian Lance Taylor, Debugging
http://www.airs.com/ian/essays/ebug/debug.html


With all due respect, bidderxyzzy - just what software industry are we talking about?

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #20 –
Of course, the original "bug" was the moth that Grace Hopper removed from a relay in the Harvard Mark 1, and taped into the log book.  A little before my time, though if the "my first computer was smaller than yours" food-fight is still going on, I claim a IBM 650, 2000 10 digit signed decimal words of storage.  One that I worked on even had floating point and three index registers.  [Unless you count board-wiring on tabulators and 101 Statistical Sorters.]

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #21 –
I am an old dodderer of 84 years of age who has found NWC and NWC2 to be highly useful and interesting programs, which do most of what I want without difficulty.
I do wonder why others with greater aspirations do not purchase Sibelius or some other program which I am sure will meet all their requirements.  Incidentally, my car does not have climate control, which means that I have to fiddle with knobs to get an acceptable comfort level in the car ; of course  I could have purchased a Rolls-Royce .

Tony.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #22 –
   Hi, Tony.

   Congrats.

   You see, Bidderxyzzy?  Some of us are old enough to have been at Bletchley Park.  Of course, programming Colossus was rather ... how can I say ... different to the sort of stuff one does nowadays.

   MusicJohn, 15/Sep/07

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #23 –
G'day bidderxyzzy,
Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
   There is a good reason that I harp on the Orchestral Staff Attribute, and that is that it's use is required in nearly every score of any complexity at all, while NoteWorthy's behavior is utterly unacceptable for any purpose whatever.  It would also seem utterly trivial to fix.

I wonder if it is truly as trivial as you suggest?  What impact will such a change have on the rest of the code?  Just how difficult will it be to code around the dependancies?   - only Eric can truly tell.

Afraid I must disagree with you here...  NWC's behaviour is mostly just fine for my needs - far from "utterly unacceptable for any purpose whatever".


Quote
   My main use of NoteWorthy requires that I distribute .nwc files, in which kludges, workarounds, separate visual and sounding staves and the like are unacceptable.  My workaround is to print the music without using orchestral staves, print separate pages with orchestral braces of each required length on otherwise blank staves and combine them graphically using Windows Paint.  This is acceptable because I scan all the music I deal with anyway, and before I do the OMR step with Sharp Eye (or when I print music my club holds copyright to (or which is public domain)), I usually need to do considerable graphical restoration (like fixing loose leaf holes punched through clefs) of this same sort.

If it is the visual representation that is paramount then what's the problem with hidden staves that do the actual work for playback?

Quote
   Indeed, one of NoteWorthy's better attributes is its nearly complete bilingualism between keyboard and mouse, which is getting rarer every year.  The ability to select by clicking on as well as dragging over would be completely compatible with the current usage, and Lawrie's suggested keyboard synonym for a click on a chord note is, as far as I can see, perfect. 

I concur, and thankyou.

Quote
The need for such a facility is acute in my case because of the extensive editing I must to do in correcting NoteWorthy's atrocious enharmonic spelling, especially in the piano accompaniment. 

Hmm, I've read complaints about this before, but haven't really experienced it.  In fact, whenever the enharminic spelling has been a problem I simply make sure the key signature is correct and do a |Tools|Audit Enharmonic Spelling| - this usually fixes things quite well.  'Tis a good idea to Force Accidentals before and key sig change...


Quote
I would also like to see the requirement that all selected notes have the same duration before the duration set button (or keystroke) is activated be dropped, as it adds nothing to either function or safety, and makes the correction of the tied figures MIDI input makes of triplets more difficult.

I have found this to be a minor irritant too.

Quote
   Finally, I must insist that neither "unexpectedness" nor the programmer's intent has anything to do with the definition of the term "bug" as used in the software industry.  If the result is wrong, it's a bug, period.

Perhaps we need to examine in whose eyes the result is wrong...  Eric has written the code.  It is my understanding that the code does what he wrote it to do.  To me this is an expected result - whether I like the result or not is totally irrelevant.  Thus not a bug.  Simply a disagreement in design preferences between people. 

If he had written the program to behave as we would prefer but got this result instead then it would be a bug - and knowing Eric's responsiveness in the past, it would be quickly fixed.

While I'm almost certain I've seen it mentioned somewhere I can't remember, or don't know - amounts to the same thing - what reference(s) Eric has used in defining the design parameters.  Perhaps what we are seeing actually corresponds with said reference - I can't tell you for sure 'cos I ain't seen it!

============

You seem to use SharpeEye quite a lot - PLEASE, stop using MIDI as the intermediate step and export as mxml and use mxml2nwc to import - gets rid of the enharmonic spelling and triplet problems altogether.

Try it, it works!
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #24 –

I have been thinking of buying SharpEye myself.
But my wife complained already - who it going to walk this dog every day?

cheers,
Rob.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #25 –
            How utterly careless of me not to have emphasized even more that my differences with NoteWorthy are in the nature of a lover's quarrel.  Who else would enter the Augean Stables and attack the knot of seagull guano creating a hazard at the door, which the combined rivers Alpheus and Peneus could not wash away?  For another thing, who would buy a used car, however well restored cosmetically, offered with five unevenly bald tires?  Is this Eric person I keep hearing about trying to avoid having to pay income tax on his earnings from Noteworthy?

 

            About bugs.  The industry I refer to is the one in which I worked from 1965  to 1996.  I have never been in a real life situation where the programmer's intentions count for diddelysquat.  However intended a program behavior may have been, if it is unsatisfactory to the customer, and especially if it conflicts with a requirement beyond the control of the immediate customer, the program has a bug.  Surprise has nothing to do with it.  When, during one of the Mercury space flights, the flight computer became overloaded, it stopped displaying engineering data until the more essential flight control tasks were complete, behavior that was unplanned for, and in fact wildly unexpected, but certainly not a bug.

 

            And now for some social chat.

 

Cyril

 

            Hurrah!  At last someone who remembers farther back than I do.  I can only claim to have been in the same room as a Bendix G15, and that was when I interviewed for a summer job (there were no unpaid interns in those days).  I did some very minor rewiring of a 407 tabulating machine, but couldn't do very much as the machine was used as a punch card printer and had most of it's registers removed.

 

Tony

 

            I repeat again that I find NoteWorthy extremely useful 99 and 44/100 percent of the time.  I hit on it in January 2004 (Rev 1.75a) April 2000 (Rev 1.55b) after looking at only five other music editors and never looked any farther, except to briefly review Sibelius Scorch as used by another Glee Club in my city.  It's Sibelius Scorch is a diamond studded gold watch with rusty works.  (I try not to say anything I can't confirm, so I accepted the oldest version on my current computer as the start of my use of NoteWorthy, but I just found my distripution package, and so make the correction.  Also, I am not being critical of NoteWorthy as compared to other music software, but rather pointing out a nit which I, as a software manager would never have let any of my people get away with.)
 

Lawrie

 

            If you can't respond to the general tenor of my remarks, at least reply to full sentences.  I never said NoteWorthy as a whole is unacceptable, only it's way of handling the Orchestral Staff Property.

 

            You got me backwards.  It's the sound that's important, and for distribution to forty or more choristers of varying sophistication, anything tricky would only cause problems.

 

            In my experience, audit enharmonic spelling gives the same results as midi input conversion, as it should.  It's just that whoever wrote the code apparently wasn't a musician.  Enharmonic spelling is not totally straightforward and there are cases where a composer will shift the spelling of a note to indicate it's changed function in the harmony, but I am told by my conductor that NoteWorthy just plane gets many unambiguous cases wrong.

 

            Look at a couple of hundred scores and find one that does it NoteWorthy's way (an orchestral brace extending through the piano grand staff with a finial at the top but not the bottom).  If you do, I will show you an engraver who didn't know what he was doing (or a score printed from NoteWorthy).  In this case the only acceptable authority is actual practice.  Some random joker's signed statement doesn't hack it.  And I advise you to stop embarrassing yourself by trying to defend Eric, I'm sure he can do a better job himself, and when the discussion gets to the point where he chooses to do so, I'm sure he will.

 

Rob

 

            SharpEye is no dog.  Not only does it make very few mistakes on good copy, when it does go wrong it is usually consistent about it, which makes things really quick and easy to correct. 

 

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #26 –
G'day bidderxyzzy

Dammit - I promised myself I wasn't gonna get back into that bunfight - we shall simply have to agree to disagree.  But yer still wrong ;)

Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
<snip>

Lawrie
            If you can't respond to the general tenor of my remarks, at least reply to full sentences.  I never said NoteWorthy as a whole is unacceptable, only it's way of handling the Orchestral Staff Property.

My apologies - I was sure I had read what you wrote correctly:
Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
   There is a good reason that I harp on the Orchestral Staff Attribute, and that is that it's use is required in nearly every score of any complexity at all, while NoteWorthy's behavior is utterly unacceptable for any purpose whatever.  It would also seem utterly trivial to fix.


Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
            You got me backwards.  It's the sound that's important, and for distribution to forty or more choristers of varying sophistication, anything tricky would only cause problems.

Surely if the "tricky" bits are hidden, the sound is correct and the visual score is appropriate then there is no conflict - I'm very sorry - I just can't seem to grasp what the real problem is here.  I don't know if you aren't explaining it well or if I'm just plain being thick.


Quote
            In my experience, audit enharmonic spelling gives the same results as midi input conversion, as it should.  It's just that whoever wrote the code apparently wasn't a musician.  Enharmonic spelling is not totally straightforward and there are cases where a composer will shift the spelling of a note to indicate it's changed function in the harmony, but I am told by my conductor that NoteWorthy just plane gets many unambiguous cases wrong.

Audit enharmonic spelling isn't perfect - E.G. it can't take into account the odd chord spellings that can occur with minor keys etc..  Nevertheless, it ain't all bad and can seriously reduce the workload when making the necessary corrections on imported MIDIs - PROVIDED you use it correctly - Force accidentals, fix the key sig, Audit enharmonic spelling and finally audit accidentals.


Quote
            Look at a couple of hundred scores and find one that does it NoteWorthy's way (an orchestral brace extending through the piano grand staff with a finial at the top but not the bottom).  If you do, I will show you an engraver who didn't know what he was doing (or a score printed from NoteWorthy).  In this case the only acceptable authority is actual practice.  Some random joker's signed statement doesn't hack it.  And I advise you to stop embarrassing yourself by trying to defend Eric, I'm sure he can do a better job himself, and when the discussion gets to the point where he chooses to do so, I'm sure he will.

So place an orchestral staff under the lower grand and layer - voila, a finial...  See attachment.

No one has stated that NWC is perfect, it is definitely a WIP, but there are many effective workarounds that seem to be completely unacceptable to you and I truly don't understand why...  Or is it that you simply aren't aware of what the workarounds are?

Now I acknowledge that we should not be satisfied with mediocrity but if you expect to buy a Rolls Royce at a Trabant price then you will always be dissapointed.  N.B. This is not intended as an excuse for development to remain static.

==========

Importing MIDI - I'm gonna say this again 'cos you haven't commented on it so I'm not sure if you grasped it - If you're using SharpeEye then DON'T use MIDI as the export/import intermediary.  Use mxml.

In SharpeEye export to mxml, in NWC2 import with Nicholas Hatier's (sp?) wonderful MXML2NWC user tool that I know you've seen 'cos you've commented on it.  It DOES import multi staff scores...  AND there are no mispelled chords AND triplets import fine.  Your workload will significantly reduce from MIDI imports.

I'd give you some examples but my SharpeEye demo has expired and I haven't needed it enough to justify buying it.  If the need arises I most certainly will but it hasn't as yet.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #27 –
bidderxyzzy, I don't get it. Where does this attitude that you can't ever possibly be wrong come from?

I'm a retired reference librarian, so I know something about finding information; and when I looked up those three definitions of a bug, I wasn't even breathing hard. I could easily find you a hundred more. They would all say the same thing: a bug is a coding error, not a design error. It is something that makes the program do something the programmer doesn't want it to, not that the user doesn't want it to. The use of the word for a glitch in a mechanical or electrical system predates computers. Thomas Edison used it. That famous moth in the IBM in the 1940s was seized on gleefully by the programmers, not because they were looking for a new name for computer glitches, but because their bug was a real insect bug and it struck them as funny.

I could go on like this, but it would be pointless, because you would undoubtedly dismiss it all as wrong, no matter how impeccable the source. Why?

In the matter of the orchestral brackets, yes, they are "wrong" in NWC. I put "wrong" in quotes because the rules of score preparation are conventions, not laws. As long as the music is easily read by performers, and represents the composer's intentions accurately, it doesn't really matter where the brackets go. It would be better if NWC followed the convention. It's not the end of the world that it doesn't. Look at some of the scores from the 1950s and 1960s - the ones with bar lines between staves instead of in them, or with the music's contours represented by wavy lines instead of notes, or with staves that circle around a central point or fly off in several different directions. They don't follow convention either. I don't write music that looks like that, but that doesn't make me right and John Cage wrong. I would prefer standard orchestral brackets. I can live without them until Eric implements them, and so can the people who read my scores. Why are we spending so much time on this?

My academic training, back in the sixties, was in music history, theory, and composition. I have an MA in theory and composition, plus a couple of years. I once directed an early music group. That doesn't make me better than anybody else in this forum, but it does mean that I know a little bit about how to write a score, and what scores have looked like in other eras, and how the current conventions developed. Let's not argue about this, OK?

You strike me as an intelligent person with a lot to contribute. Please get that chip off your shoulder, lose your perfectionism, and get down here in the real old imperfect world with the rest of us. You might find you're having as much fun helping to mold this great little program as we are.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #28 –
And by the way, Lawrie, I really admire the even tone you've managed to keep through all of this. Wish I could do the same thing.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #29 –
Sharpeye is no dog. But a Sharpei is. It's a joke.
Boy, have you still a lot to learn. You lucky man.

cheers,
Rob.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #30 –
Quote
I would also like to see the requirement that all selected notes have the same duration before the duration set button (or keystroke) is activated be dropped, as it adds nothing to either function or safety, and makes the correction of the tied figures MIDI input makes of triplets more difficult.

Select the notes, then hit the plus key a few times.  When they all become whole notes, any that are dotted will lose their dots.  Now hit the minus key to make them the duration you want, you can dot them if you need to (not logical if you're working with triplets).  

I think it takes me about one and a quarter seconds to perform this onerous task. 

Of course, that's using the keyboard.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #31 –
Or, a little macro could be written to do that for you, and save half-a-second or so.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #32 –
G'day bidderxyzzy,

Quote from: Rob den Heijer –
Sharpeye is no dog. But a Sharpei is. It's a joke.

A word of warning :)

Rob is our resident punster - his language based jokes are very entertaining but it is wise to check for the "gag" before taking him too seriously.  If there isn't one, and it's usually easy to tell, then his comments are usually spot on.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #33 –
G'day bidderxyzzy,
in reading back I discovered I'd missed responding to this part:

Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
<snip>
In this case the only acceptable authority is actual practice.  Some random joker's signed statement doesn't hack it.  And I advise you to stop embarrassing yourself by trying to defend Eric, I'm sure he can do a better job himself, and when the discussion gets to the point where he chooses to do so, I'm sure he will.

a) Umm, to which "random joker" and what signed statement are you referring?  Please enlighten me as I'm somewhat befuddled.  <edit> If it is a reference to one of the many authoritive references works around like Alfred's "Essential Dictionary of Music Notation" then I don't really understand your position as all the ones I've read agree with you in essence.  I assume this is in response to the putative reference work that I suggested Eric worked from.  As I said I do not know its' name, therefore I don't know its' content so I cannot respond further.  I was simply pointing out that we don't know all the conditions that have influenced the design choices.

b) I wasn't aware that I was embarrasing of myself, nor do I think now that I have.  To make reference to a products designer when making a point doesn't strike me as "defending" him or her.

c) It is very unlikely that Eric will step into this conversation - he seems to have a policy of not doing so - probably very wise or he'd end up spending all his time arguing instead of coding - I prefer him to be coding.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #34 –
bidderxyzzy,


You only tried 5 alternative notation programs? Then you should not be ctiticising one of them . I tried 12 before choosing Noteworthy as by far the best of the bunch for all normal amateur musicians.  Ax for Sibelius, well it might be OK for professionals but I couldn't even get satrted in what I wanted to do.

Tony,  85 next November.. 

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #35 –
William,

A fuller quote from your source is:

Debugging means removing bugs from programs. A bug is unexpected and undesirable behaviour by a program.
 
Occasionally there is a formal specification that the program is required to follow, in which case a bug is a failure to follow the spec. More frequently the program specification is informal, in which case people may disagree as to whether a particular program behaviour is in fact a bug or not.

http://www.airs.com/ian/essays/debug/debug.html

Mr. Taylor is a GNU honcho, which is why he could say "occasionally".  Back when I was working in the field, a customer who would not accept having a formal spec would be avoided like the plague.  In the case of NoteWorthy, the spec is a little less than formal, but is contained in the thousands of scores one can find published by commercial printing houses employing professional engravers.  Sure there are unsettled fringes, but the specific point at question is not among them.

Also, your link was broken.  Ever think of using cut and paste to avoid typos?

"William Ashworth, I don't get it. Where does this attitude that you can't ever possibly be wrong come from?"


Lawrie,

You got the reference to the unknown authority you assume Eric to have worked from correctly.  If you are not embarrassed by throwing such a thing out in defense of someone who did not ask for your help, you should be.  I agree that Eric is unlikely to join the forum on this; he will most likely either continue to ignore the issue or fix it silently.

You apparently have never sent an .nwc file to a non-computer savvy singer.  All the things that are "hidden" in the printout just hang out in a different color.  It is the NoteWorthy file that is my product, and I must expect my customers to further edit it, so hidden staves are also not really hidden.  Trickery of any kind would be fatal to this enterprise.

Tony,

I consider myself very lucky to have hit on NoteWorthy so quickly.  And I am not criticizing it, but asking for an improvement to a "feature" which has been documented as improved between NW1 and NW2, but in fact has not been fixed.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #36 –
Quote from: bidderxyzzy –
Lawrie,
You got the reference to the unknown authority you assume Eric to have worked from correctly.  If you are not embarrassed by throwing such a thing out in defense of someone who did not ask for your help, you should be.  I agree that Eric is unlikely to join the forum on this; he will most likely either continue to ignore the issue or fix it silently.

I may not know the name of the reference document(s) but I do know it/they have been referred to.  I still don't understand your the tenor of your comments on this - I was simply pointing out that there is stuff we don't, and at this point, can't know.  Bluntly, this is effectively a "shrink wrap" product - not a commisioned one, so the designer, in this case Eric, defines the design parameters.  Not us.  However we do have the opportunity to suggest, recommend, ask, wish for and sometimes even beg for changes.

In the end it's his product and we'll get what he decides to give us.  If we don't like it there are alternatives.  At no time do I consider myself to have been defending anyone - merely pointing a few things out.

BTW, I am never embarrased to stand up for people who are unjustly treated - though I shamefacedly admit that I don't always do it.

Quote
You apparently have never sent an .nwc file to a non-computer savvy singer.  All the things that are "hidden" in the printout just hang out in a different color.  It is the NoteWorthy file that is my product, and I must expect my customers to further edit it, so hidden staves are also not really hidden.  Trickery of any kind would be fatal to this enterprise.

Waaiiiiittttt a minute - what are you talking about???????

A hidden staff is NOT visible in the editor.  A staff whose objects are set to Print-Never is BUT if you go to |Page|Setup|Contents (tab) and remove ticks from the staves you wish to hide they simply can't be seen in the editor until that status is changed.

No wonder you got me confused - you're mixing up "hidden" and "invisible"/Print-never.

Now, why do you want your singers to further edit?

Perhaps, rather than explain your current solution you could define the needs you're trying to address.

I.E.  Tell us what you want, not how to do it.  You should understand this approach - I'm sure you've faced it umpty times over the years in software development - the customer who tells you how to do it rather than what they want to achieve - they're next to impossible to work with sometimes.

<edit>  I notice you registered on the forum in August - I seem to recall you mentioning that you've used NWC for, was it 2 years?

Given the relatively short time you've been in the forum you can't possibly have learned all the standard techniques that many of us have used for years.  May I recommend that you take a little time to explore the possibilities and not assume you already know all there is to know?  You will, I'm sure, be pleasantly surprised at the creative genius of some of the users of this product.

E.G. Have you yet explored NWC2 "User Tools"?  Talk about labour saving!  Andrew Purdams "Global Modification" is amazingly powerful and flexible.  RickG has produced several neat tools in VB, Kjeld Hansen has produced a "Multi bar rest" tool that does exactly what I used to do by hand.  I've even submitted one myself for creating chords (it was more of a learning exercise than anything, though I find it useful).

On the Scripto there are many useful tools, hints, tidbits of information, fonts - the list goes on.  Broaden your horizons with this product - it is not as limited as you think.

I also note that you still haven't commented about either importing from SharpeEye via mxml or the orchestral finial example I posted.

May I hear your thoughts on these?
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #37 –
I didn't get the "Sharpei" gag at first either, because here we pronounce it "Shar-PAY."
A woman in my orchestra has one of these dogs - she has named it 449...

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #38 –
Two points.

First the simple one. If you want all the notes to be of the same duration then select them and press the appropriate key from 1 to (thru) 6.

Secondly the bug. This one's marginal but I'd say it is a bug. The user expectation of how a program should behave is as valid a criterion as the designer's intention. For instance if a notation program printed out XML rather than the score when the print button was hit then I don't think many people would baulk at this being described as a  'bug', even if the programmer had always intended this behaviour. It seems only to be a matter of degree.

Now say I select the top two staffs and make them orchestral. That's what I expect to see, two staffs linked by an orchestral bar and with top and bottom finials. But I don't. Apparently all the staffs are now orchestral (although the bar lines don't act accordingly).

So that's a bug. And does it stop being a bug because the designer chooses not to fix it? I think not.

Now how should it be fixed? The answer is staring us in the face. The grand staff feature can more or less be duplicated as it stands to produce the orchestral staff. All we need is a 'lower orchestral staff' option. And if we need both types then use layering or allow a staff to have two co-existing properties.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #39 –
I am wondering if it is worth bringing an issue to this forum.  If I'm polite, nothing will happen, and the issue ignored.  If I'm not, nothing will happen except that I'll be given a lot of silliness about not being polite. In all events, I'll be given a lot of smart-assed "erudition" but no answer, discussion of issues, or anything else helpful.  I have campaigned in the past for civility, too.  I will again now.  Much of what has gone on with this topic in response to the original post is no less impolite.  Making weak jokes and puns, going off on side issues and completely unrelated issues, lecturing people on being polite: these things are all just as impolite as the less-than-well-chosen language of the original poster.  Precious little has been discussed concerning the issue brought forward.  Yes, we should take Dave's advice and have that cup of tea before we write so as to calm down, but we also might have that cup of tea before we launch into the kinds of responses that we've seen here.  Frankly, most of the time of late this forum has degenerated into pun-making and wise-cracking by the usual lot, with little else of any value.  I am tired of the endless inside humour and erudition contests.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #40 –
Well, we'd need both an upper orchestral staff and a lower orchestral staff attribute, and the groups should be connected by a single line on the left rather than simply extending the heavy-thin double line pattern of the bracket across the break. But Peter has the right idea. The breaks in bar lines between staves within systems are already implemented - standard staves and upper/lower grand staves break them now, and these can be interpolated into a score, and layered if necessary, as has already been pointed out in this thread. Mostly what we need now are the finials.

However, my earlier point still stands: this is pretty trivial. No score of mine has ever been rejected by a performance group because the instrument groups weren't bracketed properly. I suppose it could happen, but the possibility seems remote. I'd like to see this fixed, but there are other things that affect the readability of scores more - properly drawn slurs come to mind - and if Eric chooses to fix these first, he has my blessing.

As to the bug/not bug argument, I give up. If you want to use the term in a different way than the vast majority of the world does, that is your right. The reason I have been harping on it so hard is that it makes communication difficult when we define terms in different ways. I once wrote, singlehandedly, a 300.000 word encyclopedia. It is now considered a standard reference work in its field, but that is beside the point. The point is that before writing each article I looked up multiple definitions of each term and then went with the consensus. Sometimes the consensus differed from the way I had always used a word (I had worked in the field for twenty years a the time), but when that happened I had to assume it was I that was out of step, not the majority. Otherwise the work would have been rejected for poor scholarship. Habit is not always a satisfactory guide.

Finally: there is much in Lawrie's last post that is very wise (as Lawrie's posts usually are). The point about hidden staves vs. the invisibility attribute is particularly well taken. If you haven't found the hidden staff function, which is pretty straightforward and obvious, then I have to wonder if you've really explored the program's capabilities adequately. Please do that before you complain about other features of the program. You may find, as Lawrie said, that the answers to your problem already exist.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #41 –
Quote
we'd need both an upper orchestral staff and a lower orchestral staff attribute

I've always thought that the upper grand staff was misleadingly named since you only need to specify the top staff(s) as grand (the intervening ones are neither upper nor lower) and then just the bottom one (you can't have more than one) as lower to define the end of the group. And on the same argument you don't really need an upper orchestral staff since we already have an ordinary one. But what the heck!

But I disagree vehemently that the shortcoming is trivial, and so do quite a few others.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #42 –

I will not be that vehement - but it is true: at times I cannot copy the picture that I see into Noteworthy. I can live with the shortcomings because I do not publish music, but the shortcomings are there. So are (some) workarounds, I know. I do not use them much. Rather, I will wait for Noteworthy to supply the non-workaround answer.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #43 –
G'day Peter,
Quote from: Peter Edwards –
<snip>
But I disagree vehemently that the shortcoming is trivial, and so do quite a few others.

One thing this discussion has certainly proven is that each of us have different needs and priorities for our notation product of choice.

I can see how getting this right is important for some.  Me?  I never use the orchestral staff at all.  NOT because it is "wrong" but because it is inappropriate for my needs.  My output is for single or 2 (for piano) staff parts - up to 18 of 'em at a time, though usualy only 2 or 3.

I don't create 2, 3 or 18 different files, I create one.  When I print a part I hide everything else so the last thing I want is orchestral bracket finials on my parts - they look silly on single staff parts.

However, I am fully aware that I represent only a small proportion of NWC users in this regard.

I agree that an upper and lower orchestral staff attribute would be an effective solution.  This way we could have multiple groupings of instruments properly delineated.  I still wouldn't be able to use it unless NWC automatically removed the finials and thicker starting barline when extracting single parts.

Now, some enlightenment please:
I can quite easily see the advantage of grouping for a conductors' score.  But who performs from a conductors score?  I couldn't, I complain if I get one page turn in a song let alone one every few bars!  I can see the advantage for choristers to have combined scores but surely only the vocal parts need be on their combined score - what need do they have of the piano part, or the solo whosiwhatsit part - surely a few cues is a better solution?  But what do I know - I'm not a chorister.

Speaking of cues, for my needs properly functioning cues and ossia would far outweigh correct orchestral brackets.  But again, these are only my needs.  Others will undoubtedly have different priorities.

Back to the enlightenment - aside from the conductor, who really needs it?  I'm not belittling this, I really want to know.  In any case, the conductors score is not trivial so it should undoubtedly be fixed for them.  But what priority should it be given?

As for the bug/not bug argument - I'm not getting back into that.  It is so obviously a matter of interpretation that we will never reach a concensus.  This is a bit sad really 'cos it highlights that communication can never be complete between us all.  Why? 'Cos if we cannot agree on a definition of terms we cannot communicate fully - there will always be misunderstanding - like the hidden versus print-never mixup between bidderxyzzy and me...

I say "to-MAH-toe", you say "to-MAY-ter" or however the phonetic representation should be...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #44 –
Quote from: Robin L. Øye –
I am wondering if it is worth bringing an issue to this forum.
<snip>

Robin, I apologise.  If I have ever responded to you inappropriately or offended you I'm very sorry.

I try to address the points and questions raised in every post I respond to, regardless of whether they are germain to the subject heading or not.

I also try to introduce somy degree of humour as it is so easy to offend when writing things - one can't see the writers' body language...

I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #45 –
To answer your question, Lawrie, just about any of us who regularly perform single parts from multi-voice scores find it helpful to have groups of parts set off by brackets. This includes choirs (especially those performing with piano and/or soloists), piano quintets, chamber groups with unusual instrument combinations (such as, say, two winds. three strings, and a couple of percussionists) - lots of possibilities there. Groupings make following your own part easier. And, of course - as you recognize - the conductor's need is not trivial....

But I do agree that ossia and cues are more important, as are (for me) several other things, including better slur drawing and a pause button. And you are certainly correct that all of us can never fully agree on one single priorities list for improvements to our favorite notation program.

Thanks again for your always clear, helpful, and friendly comments.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #46 –
G'day William,
Quote from: William Ashworth –
To answer your question, Lawrie, just about any of us who regularly perform single parts from multi-voice scores find it helpful to have groups of parts set off by brackets.

Thankyou, I can see how this helps.  But I guess the next obvious question is:  If one is preparing scores for multiple parts/instruments/voices why wouldn't one print the separate single parts?  To me this seems such a logical move.  Reduced page turns, easier to find your place, thinner portfolio...

Though I suppose for choirs it is easier to print all parts on a couple of staves and reduce your parts inventory - all singers have the same part so to speak.  At least a chorister dosen't have to let go of their instrument on order to turn a page.

Possible downside to single parts - harder to know how you fit in with the other parts...  still, when I'm performing I don't really have time to read other peoples parts in addition to my own...  In any case, cues can resolve this.

Is it a very common thing for you to see multi-voice scores from which you perform single parts? 

My own experience is quite the opposite - I've almost never had a multipart score to perform from.  The one book I have that is like this is not my favourite.  The extra page turns are a pain when you hold a trombone...  Fortunately we don't use works from it very often.  :)

Quote
Thanks again for your always clear, helpful, and friendly comments.

Thankyou <blush>
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #47 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
If one is preparing scores for multiple parts/instruments/voices why wouldn't one print the separate single parts?  To me this seems such a logical move. 

Well - speaking personally, If I am singng in a double choir - or even if I am singing in a piece with first and second bass (in my case), I will always want to see what the other choir / other bass line is doing or about to do. It helps! And then there are the conductors who say ....  at measure xx, will the first basses of choir one sing with choir 2  /  and quite a common one - will first basses back up the tenors at that point  (tenors seem to be hard to find)

and so on.

Rich.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #48 –
Quote
If one is preparing scores for multiple parts/instruments/voices why wouldn't one print the separate single parts?  To me this seems such a logical move.  Reduced page turns, easier to find your place, thinner portfolio...

Well....

A couple of years ago, I had a piece for soprano, flute, bassoon and vibraphone that was headed for performance by a local chamber group. I very carefully printed out all the parts individually and handed them to the instrumentalists, with a full score for the soprano. When I got to the final rehearsal, I found that the instrumentalists had all gotten together, pasted up their parts into a full score minus soprano, and made copies for each of them. (They could have just asked me or the soprano for a copy of the full score, of course, but that's not what happened.) Their explanation: cues weren't enough. They wanted to see each other's parts and see how the counterpoint fit together in order to perform the music properly, even if it meant they had to run the music across two stands each to avoid page turns in awkward places. You just never know.

Re: The Orchestral Staff Attribute Bug

Reply #49 –
G'day Rich and William,
thanks for the quick response!

Rich, I can see your point very clearly - thankyou.  Makes a lot of sense.

William, silly musicians - they should have talked to you :) 

Hmm, having never performed in a chamber group it is hard for me to identify with their needs.  However, I would have thought that for a performance they would have preferred the single parts.  For rehearsal I can absolutely understand but by the time a performance came along surely they would know the piece well enough that their single parts would suffice?

In my church band we play from 1, 2 or 3 parts depending.  Often we all work from the same lead sheet (which I will have reduced from 3, 4 or 5 pages to 2 or 3), when I can I create a 'bone part for myself and occasionally I create a flute part for my wife.

The singers either know the song or read from a words only display - most of 'em can't read music anyhow...

The guitar, bass and keyboard player all work from the lead sheet.

In the Big Band, it is quite different.  We all work from our own part and listen to everyone else - after a few times through we usually have a good idea who is supposed to be prominent at any given point and remember...

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks...
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.