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Topic: NWC is good. Will it become great? (Read 14003 times) previous topic - next topic

NWC is good. Will it become great?

Very many good new features in the NWC2 beta version! Especially the percussion bit has become much better.
 I have been using the 1.75 for some years for professional use. I think it is a good program, but I am missing a few functions. Probably more people are missing these. Here goes:

- A function for chord symbols that also can be transposed
- A one click option to print all the parts of a big score, with a pdf-option
- A dedicated option to create multiple bar-rests, and make them visible only in the parts
- comping slashes would be great!

I know some of these things can be solved using text-expressions and lyric-functions, and I also do that. But I find myself spending a lot of time on doing these things, and as I see the number two soon is coming up I thought I`d tell.

You are not far from perfect here! It would be fun to see NWC take over for sibelius and finale. These programs contain many more functions that one doesn`t need.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #1 –
Quote
A function for chord symbols that also can be transposed
That's Lawrie Pardy's area of expertise.  We'll just wait for him to post.

Quote
A one click option to print all the parts of a big score
Not quite one-click, but it can be done by going into Page Setup and selecting each group.  There will normally be only one anyway.

Quote
with a pdf-option
There are many topics on that, see:

Quote
A dedicated option to create multiple bar-rests
There is a user-tool for this, http://nwc-scriptorium.org/nwc2scripts_mbr.html
Quote
and make them visible only in the parts
I don't know whether the user-tool does that itself, but regardless, it would have to be set to "top staff only", but if the user-tool weren't like that, it could still easily be changed.

Quote
comping slashes would be great!
I haven't got a clue what a comping slash is.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #2 –
G'day kongsverre,
Quote from: kongsverre –
<snip>
- A function for chord symbols that also can be transposed
- A one click option to print all the parts of a big score, with a pdf-option
- A dedicated option to create multiple bar-rests, and make them visible only in the parts
- comping slashes would be great!

I see kahman has neatly dropped me in it for the first one... :)

As I'm sure you've probably discovered by now, NWC2 has a "User Tool" facility.  This is more useful than you might think.

E.G. for transposing of text chords (chord markings placed as text) there is a user tool created by Andrew Purdam that does this job very nicely.  It is included in the user tool starter kit available here:
http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/nwc2/usertools/
and is simply called "Transpose Chords".

The starter kit includes many other tools as well.  More information is available here:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/nwc2scripts.html
along with some very useful documentation here:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/ftp/nwc2scripts/generaldiscussion.pdf
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/ftp/nwc2scripts/invocationinstructions.pdf

There is another tool by Kjeld Hansen for multibar rests that is not in the kit but is available on the Scripto:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/nwc2scripts_mbr.html
It requires that you have the Boxmark2 font installed though it will also use the title fonts from any of my suites that are also available on the Scripto:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful.html#Fonts

It is easily modified to use the additional alternative multi bar rest characters that I have added to my suites.

To use it you simply place the required number of normal full measure rests to make the part match the rest of the score, run the tool and it will "hide" the right number of rests and bar lines and place a text entry for the multibar rest symbol.  Easy!

Also in my suites is a comping slash that looks better than the normal text slash you may be using at the moment.  The angle is slightly different and it is bolder.  I usually use a "copy and paste" method for adding these.  Having done it once it seems pointless to keep doing it manually...

As for the "one click" option for printing, I don't have an easy alternative...  However, when I print parts for the works I produce I don't think that this would work for me...  I have all kinds of staves that I overlay onto each part that NWC couldn't reasonably be expected to know about - it would be just easier for me to keep using it the way it works now.  IIRC David Palmquist, another contributor here, usually prints to PDF instead of paper and then reprints from the PDF's whenever he needs a new copy.  This is a great idea.

In order to print to PDF it is just as easy to install a PDF "printer".  I use PDFCreator, available from sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Quote
I know some of these things can be solved using text-expressions and lyric-functions, and I also do that. But I find myself spending a lot of time on doing these things, and as I see the number two soon is coming up I thought I`d tell.

The user tools and "copy and paste" definitely reduce the effort and time needed.

Quote
You are not far from perfect here! It would be fun to see NWC take over for sibelius and finale. These programs contain many more functions that one doesn`t need.

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

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #3 –
Quote
- A one click option to print all the parts of a big score, with a pdf-option

That would be nice, except sometimes I want to combine a couple of parts on one page.  There would have to be a few extra clicks.  The PDF for me is exactly as Lawrie describes.  Use PDFCreator to emulate a printer (it's actually my default).

Quote
- A one click option to print all the parts of a big score, with a pdf-option
- A dedicated option to create multiple bar-rests, and make them visible only in the parts
This is not necessarily easy, but it's simple.  Insert a new staff at the top of the score.  Set it to layer with next staff, and fill it with rests.  Make the rests and bar lines hidden where the next staff has music, but use visible whole rests and bar lines where the next staff has multibar rests.  In the first staff that has music, make the rests and bar lines in the multibar rest measures invisible, and insert Lawrie's multibar rest sign,* with its visibility set to top staff only, and with width preserved. 

Now when you view the score, the layered top staff will overlay the second one, each whole rest will be visible, and the multibar rest symbol will be hidden.  When you extract the instrumental part, you would only have that second staff visible. Since it is now the top row, the multibar rest will be displayed and printed.

I said this was simple but not necessarily easy.  What I meant is that you need to add new staffs between all the instrument parts, with each new staff identical to the top row.

Take a look at my example, attached.

*Lawrie's symbol:  You need his Swingdings font, from the Scriptorium http://nwc-scriptorium.org/.  In page setup/fonts, change userfont 3 to Swingdings, then enter this as text


 :3;

(for a 3 bar rest) set to Userfont3.  If you feel lazy, download my file Multibar_rests.nwc in the Helpful Files section of the Scriptorium and copy what you need from it.

   

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
As for the "one click" option for printing, I don't have an easy alternative...  However, when I print parts for the works I produce I don't think that this would work for me...  I have all kinds of staves that I overlay onto each part that NWC couldn't reasonably be expected to know about - it would be just easier for me to keep using it the way it works now.
Often a tempo track will be used, filled with hidden bars and rests, but containing visible tempo indications, rehearsal symbols, and other objects which need to be on every part.  Keep it on the bottom since other parts will be layered into it and the name of the part (rather than "Tempo") will appear on the top.  Check this user tip.
Since 1998

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #5 –
wow! everyone had such great replies to kongsverre's original post. i think kongsverre was saying it would be nice to have some of these things native in NWC so we don't have to spend so much time making tool or manual items happen and can spend more time writing music! just my take on it, fwiw.
AIM me at drolar1 (home) or drolar2 (work)

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #6 –
Quote
tool by Kjeld Hansen for multibar rests that is not in the kit but is available on the Scripto:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/nwc2scripts_mbr.html
It requires that you have the Boxmark2 font installed though it will also use the title fonts from any of my suites

Hauling myself into the 21st century, I've used this tool today, substituting Lawrie's MusikDingsSans font in position +5 instead of -1.  It gives a professional looking result.  Very nice indeed. Well done, Kjeld and Lawrie! 

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #7 –
A few things I would like to be able to do:
1) Edit a chord. After a chord has been entered, I would like to be able to change individual notes rather than have to rebuild the entire chord.
2) Beam everything together. If I have a measure where the soprano part sings 4 16th notes while the alto part sings 2 8th notes, if I try to beam (both the 16th notes and the 8th notes selected to beam), only the 16th notes are beamed. The 8th notes are not.
3) Not have to rely on hidden staffs for accurate sounding and display of drum parts (or, for that matter, for any part!). I am tired of writing 32nd notes for snare drum rolls. I am well aware that this may be a shortcoming of MIDI. Still, if one can add vibrato to a note, then one would think...well, that is the programmer in me.

NWC is good. But as I am constantly being reminded in the orchestra by those who use a different product (to remain nameless) it is cheap, and you get what you pay for.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #8 –
Hi Trombone3 -

Actually, you CAN edit individual notes in a chord - or at least remove individual notes and replace them with others. Place the cursor to the right of the chord, on the same staff line as the note you want to remove, and hit <ctrl><backspace>. The note will disappear. Add a replacement in the same manner as you would enter any other chord note.

Beaming 8ths in one voice and 16ths in another is simply a matter of using different layers for each voice. This isn't a kludge or a workaround, it's the method NWC provides (by design) for creating two or more independent voices on a single staff. Once you grasp this, you will also quickly grasp the huge array of possibilities this opens up, as opposed to trying to fit multiple voices onto one staff. Most of us who use the program regularly are extremely fond of layers. They provide the flexibility to solve numerous notation problems.

As for hidden staves....yes, it would be nice to have drum rolls, trills, mordents, arpeggios, glissandi, etc., as native features. I suspect, as you do, that a large part of the problem with providing these lies with the MIDI standard, not with NWC. In the meantime, I am very thankful for hidden playback staves. Like layers, they vastly increase the flexibility of the program. It's nice to be able to do anything I want to the notation of the visible staves, knowing that playback won't be affected. Opens up all sorts of possibilities.

But thanks for the input. Every once in a while it's nice to re-examine why I've chosen NWC as my primary notation program. Not exclusively for the cost saving (although that's certainly nice).

Cheers,

Bill

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #9 –
>why I've chosen NWC as my primary notation program

I remember very well why I choosed NWC: it's very user friendly, it's good and it's cheap but, above all, it had (has) a version running on Win 3.11!
I still have not completely retired my 486, but back then it was my "musical" computer of election because of the physical proximity to the keyboards.
NWC2 can't run on it anymore... sob, sob. :-)

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: William Ashworth –
yes, it would be nice to have drum rolls, trills, mordents, arpeggios, glissandi, etc., as native features. I suspect, as you do, that a large part of the problem with providing these lies with the MIDI standard, not with NWC.
MIDI is no bar to these. IMO, agreement among users as to how these things should sound is the problem. I would rather see the MPC object (greatly) expanded so that any MIDI event could be injected into playback.

Flurmy: Win95 will run fine on a 486. NoteWorthy runs quite well. I suspect that you could cram Win98 into a 486 as well.
Registered user since 1996

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Rick G. –
IMO, agreement among users as to how these things should sound is the problem.

I second this.

Quote
I would rather see the MPC object (greatly) expanded so that any MIDI event could be injected into playback.

And I fully agree with this too!
I'm just finding a way to put XG controls in a MIDI file generated by NWC.

Of course that's an item to be used by "experts", but it seems so easy to implement!

Quote
Flurmy: Win95 will run fine on a 486. NoteWorthy runs quite well. I suspect that you could cram Win98 into a 486 as well.

I never tried; perhaps you're right.
But I hate Win95 for it's too buggy and uncomfortable. Win98SE is far better.
Anyway now my "music" computer is a (wow!) pentium II running Win2000, so I can use NWC2.

Now the 486 is just for some low-level hardware-fiddling programs I made long ago.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Flurmy –
I second this.

And I fully agree with this too!
I'm just finding a way to put XG controls in a MIDI file generated by NWC.

Of course that's an item to be used by "experts", but it seems so easy to implement!

I never tried; perhaps you're right.
But I hate Win95 for it's too buggy and uncomfortable. Win98SE is far better.
Anyway now my "music" computer is a (wow!) pentium II running Win2000, so I can use NWC2.

Now the 486 is just for some low-level hardware-fiddling programs I made long ago.

Hmmm. I thought that the difference regarding how things should sound was addressed by sound fonts (at least partially). But any way to improve the output would certainly be beneficial. Having said that, though, I wouldnt want to make NWC2 so feature-heavy that it became a monster. A lot of the beauty of NWC2 is in its simplicity, which in itself allows more flexibility than other (more expensive) notation programs.

Flurmy: I started NWC on Win 95. I now use it on Win 2003 Server (2GB RAM, 700+ GB HDD), but my soundcard has finally seen its last days (the old SoundBlaster Pro). NWC works in Win98SE, but better in Win XP. I am still not convinced about Vista, tho

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #13 –
I think that
Quote
the difference regarding how things should sound
refers to things such as:

Should a grace note take time from the previous or the following note (depends on what centary the music is from)
Should a trill start on the written note or the one above (or below), and should the alternative note in the the trill be above or below the starting one.
Exactly what did the composer mean by the funny symbol over the note?  The meaning of "mordent", "turn", etc. has varied over time.
And a lot of other disagreements involving ornamentation.

Having the symbol available would be nice, but you would wind up having to have one or more options on almost all of them if NWC were to generate the sound.
 

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: William Ashworth –
Actually, you CAN edit individual notes in a chord - or at least remove individual notes and replace them with others. Place the cursor to the right of the chord, on the same staff line as the note you want to remove, and hit <ctrl><backspace>. The note will disappear. Add a replacement in the same manner as you would enter any other chord note.

Beaming 8ths in one voice and 16ths in another is simply a matter of using different layers for each voice. This isn't a kludge or a workaround, it's the method NWC provides (by design) for creating two or more independent voices on a single staff. Once you grasp this, you will also quickly grasp the huge array of possibilities this opens up, as opposed to trying to fit multiple voices onto one staff. Most of us who use the program regularly are extremely fond of layers. They provide the flexibility to solve numerous notation problems.

As for hidden staves....yes, it would be nice to have drum rolls, trills, mordents, arpeggios, glissandi, etc., as native features. I suspect, as you do, that a large part of the problem with providing these lies with the MIDI standard, not with NWC. In the meantime, I am very thankful for hidden playback staves. Like layers, they vastly increase the flexibility of the program. It's nice to be able to do anything I want to the notation of the visible staves, knowing that playback won't be affected. Opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Bill;
It isnt quite the same. I would expect to  be able to place the cursor to the left of a note in a chord, press shift, then click on sharp, natural, or flat to make the corresponding note in that chord sharp, natural, or flat. If that could not be done, then might a user tool do it? All I needed to do was resolve a chord by changing one note from sharp to natural. Deleting the note and re-creating it seems to be unnecessary work, especially since the note is already there.
When it comes to drum rolls, though, there is no excuse for NWC not being able to natively generate suitable notation to produce the desired effect, hiding such notation, and producing the proper note for a drumroll which I currently get off of another font. Maybe it is the computer programmer in me...I have worked on old NASA programs and currently report to federal and state agencies regarding acid rain.  But, in the end, we dont want a top-heavy piece of bloatware. Besides, the way that drums are represented in the default MIDI setup stinks (IMHO), as there is more emphasis on percussive effects than others, esp. on tympani.
In the end, tho, NWC is good. I suppose that further development will depend on the developers decision of how much of this stuff is actually needed vs how much is wishful thinking. I dont really need the ability to edit individual notes in a chord; it would, in my mind, separate good from great.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #15 –
Quote from: Trombone3 –
I would expect to  be able to place the cursor to the left of a note in a chord, press shift, then click on sharp, natural, or flat to make the corresponding note in that chord sharp, natural, or flat. If that could not be done, then might a user tool do it?
For a User Tool, you would have to select the chord and invoke the tool, which would prompt you for which note you wanted to change. IOW, if you wanted the third note from the bottom to be a sharp, you would enter "3s" in the dialog box. The problem is, this is more work than clicking on the sharp button, clicking to the right of the note, then pressing Ctrl+Bksp, Ctrl+Enter.

Where I think NoteWorthy could be more user friendly is: if you use Ctrl+Bksp to remove a note, it should automatically set the running duration to match the deleted note. Others may disagree, but I think that everyone should agree that if you are adding notes to a RestChord, the running duration should be ignored and the note should be added, rather than insisting that the running duration match the note duration of the RestChord.
Registered user since 1996

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #16 –
Trombone3, I have often wished for something similar to what you describe, but I think it would have to operate a little differently. I think what is needed is the ability to select individual notes in a chord. This would not only allow accidentals to be changed, but note positions as well (if you get sloppy and enter an A in a C chord, for instance, it might be nice to be able to select it and move it to G with <SHIFT><CTRL>). <ALT><SHIFT> plus the forward or backward arrow would be a logical keyboard approach to this.

However, I agree with Rick that removing and replacing a note is easy enough in NWC that a change such as I just outlined should be pretty low in priority.

Rick, I also agree with your suggestion that notes added to a restchord should automatically take the duration of notes already present in the chord. But your other suggestion - setting note duration to match a note removed by <CTRL><BKSP> - might cause me some problems, as I often use that method to change a note I have accidentally added at the wrong duration.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #17 –
Trombone3, you wrote:

Quote
Besides, the way that drums are represented in the default MIDI setup stinks (IMHO), as there is more emphasis on percussive effects than others, esp. on tympani.

Probably tympani is not in MIDI channel 10 because it is pitched percussion and so has a General MIDI patch of its own, #48.  Unpitched percussion are grouped together on MIDI channel 10 because they can each be called by a single keyboard key, having no need to reserve the entire keyboard for pitches.  Pitched percussion cannot be called by a single keyboard key since there would be no way left then to define their pitch.  Other pitched percussion are found in patches 113-119:

113.    Tinkle Bell
114.    Agogo
115.    Steel Drums
116.    Woodblock
117.    Taiko Drum
118.    Melodic Tom
119.    Synth Drum

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: William Ashworth –
Rick, I also agree with your suggestion that notes added to a restchord should automatically take the duration of notes already present in the chord.
Thanks. Generally, I dislike "nanny" software (software that does what it thinks you want to do, as opposed to doing what you are telling it to do), but in this case, it can't do what you are telling it to do. Doing something that can easily be undone seems preferable to doing nothing.

I also think that if the cursor is clearly away from the notes and on the rest side of the RestChord, Ctrl+Bksp should delete the rest.

With the cursor to the left right of a note/chord, Ctrl+Shft+Enter should create a RestChord. Bonus points if NWC2 would take the vertical cursor position into consideration when deciding whether to place the rest above or below the note. If this tack is taken, Ctrl+Shft+Bksp might be used to delete the Rest. Currently, these key combos don't do anything.

Quote from: William Ashworth –
But your other suggestion - setting note duration to match a note removed by <CTRL><BKSP> - might cause me some problems, as I often use that method to change a note I have accidentally added at the wrong duration.
I anticipated this. It is a question of what is more common, which can vary by user. I'm much more likely to want to change the pitch, notehead or tie than the duration.  Changing the duration of a member of a split chord is a subset of changing its voice assignment.

Currently, to change the voice assignment of a note in a split chord you can:
  • change duration to that of the other voice (if needed)
  • set the stem direction (if the durations are the same)
  • delete the chord member
  • re-insert the chord member
With my proposed change:
  • delete the chord member
  • change duration to that of the other voice (if needed)
  • set the stem direction (if the durations are the same)
  • re-insert the chord member
Registered user since 1996

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: William Ashworth –
Trombone3, I have often wished for something similar to what you describe, but I think it would have to operate a little differently. I think what is needed is the ability to select individual notes in a chord. This would not only allow accidentals to be changed, but note positions as well (if you get sloppy and enter an A in a C chord, for instance, it might be nice to be able to select it and move it to G with <SHIFT><CTRL>). <ALT><SHIFT> plus the forward or backward arrow would be a logical keyboard approach to this.
Bill;
From a programmers perspective, using keystrokes for commands is far more efficient. Other programs allow notes to be dragged and dropped, but this takes so much code that it is not worth it. I agree that it is a lower priority item.

Quote from: Milton –
Trombone3, you wrote:

Probably tympani is not in MIDI channel 10 because it is pitched percussion and so has a General MIDI patch of its own, #48. 

Yeah, that was a goof on my part. I still dont like Tympani; I was thinking more along the lines of drum rolls (both tympani and snare). There simply is no MIDI equivalent to a drum roll. Now, with tympani you can get away with a lot because it is pitched, and from what I have tried, slurring the multiple notes can achieve the desired effect. But not with snare...if you write a series of 32nd notes to get a roll, that is what you hear...32nd notes, not a roll. I am no fan of hidden music; it comes across like 'you want to play this, but you have to write it this way to sound like what you want to play'. Sometimes it is a good thing, though, because you can write exactly what you want to play when the notation is not specific and you have a particular interpretation of the notation in mind. But then it would make little sense to hide your interpretation...
Anyway, I have a lot to learn about MIDI, coming to the game late. Thanks for the lessons. NWC 2 is good software; I have seen much more than my share of 'great' software that was no more than bloatware.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: Trombone3 –
There simply is no MIDI equivalent to a drum roll.

That's not completely true.
In the XG drumset the note 29 (F0) is the snare roll.

Re: NWC is good. Will it become great?

Reply #21 –
Trombone3, I agree with you about the unnecessary code overhead of dragging and dropping notes. I wasn't advocating that, just an extension of our current ability to move notes via the keyboard. I apologize if what I said left the wrong impression.