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Topic: Another way to add lyrics to a song. (Read 59317 times) previous topic - next topic

Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Today I "invented" another way to add lyrics to a song.

In NWC we can add lyrics by "telling" how many lyric lines we want the song to have. In each tab you can enter text. There is, however, a drawback, since each syllable needs to be separated by a hyphen. Ty-ping such text is dif-fi-cult to do and prone for mis-takes.

In songbooks you allways find the lyric of the first verse underneath the notes, the verses 2 and further are printed below the song. This can be achieved in your own computer too.

First you need a programme which alows you to print to a PDF-file. I suggest PDF-creator, downloadable from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator

Second you need a programme called: PDF Xchange viewer. This can be downloaded for free from http://www.docu-track.com/ (O, do I like this free software). Save it on your computer, install it and even you can choose it as your preferred PDF-viewer instead of Adobe Reader.

Now comes the trick.


Create your song, with one verse. Save it as a NWC-file. Print it to PDF-creator. Open it with PDF-XChange Viewer. In PDF-XChange Viewer is an possibility to add text with a typewriter. With this typewriter you can add the rest of the verses. You can change the font according to your own wihishes, as well as the size. I find this programme monkey proof and it has a simple help file.

Then save this file.

I hope you're happy with this.

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #1 –
Sounds like a workable solution.  I'll be looking into it.  Thanks for the tip.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #2 –
I use lyrics for all my transcriptions of arias, songs etc re website    www.ciantar.org/nwcopera
Copy/paste from another source (websites, Word etc) is easy enough.
Furthermore, syllables are not always equal in every other line and need manipulation, so I don't think there's any real advantage in the method mentioned at least to my way of thinking, but congratulations in any case.
Albert Scerri

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #3 –
In addition to my mail I'd like to show an example. I don't know however, how to add a file to these messages.

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #5 –
I bought my version of NWC via the WWW. I need to fill in some numbers which I don't have. For example, I didn't recieve an invoice, neither did I recieve a CD. Somebody, help!

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #6 –
Eric usually responds quickly to problems mentioned in the forum, but if not, you can write to him directly at
support@noteworthysoftware.com

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #7 –
In addition to my earlier remarks. Since I now am able to post also attached documents I put some.

there are two examples, both are versions of the Dutch National Anthem. Yes, I'm Dutch, and they say: If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much.

Oké. You find atached an NWC file with four verses underneath the notes. This is to little, since the Dutch Anthem has 15 verses (in dutch). So that is were the second file is about. This is made by
- "printing" via PDF-creator
- editing in PDF Xchange viewer

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #8 –
With Windows XP, that works quite well. I'm fairly sure that it extracts what it needs from NWC2STDA.ttf. (The way Windows caches fonts, one can never be quite sure.) Unlike most EMF->PDF conversions, this one saves the lineto and Bézier curve data instead of converting it to a bitmap. I got a very clear printing with both Adobe Reader v8.1.5 and Foxit v2.2

On Windows 98, the song printed, but the attached verses did not. When I tried to view it with IrfanView (which uses GhostScript for rendering), the music sysbols from NWC2STDA.ttf came out as "the dreaded big rectangles." My Adobe Reader is v6.0.5.3990 (the last version that works with Win98), but my GhostScript version is from 2002. YMMV

You may want to see my attachment in <this topic> for another way to attach verses.

IMO, this Tip: Numbering Lyric Lines is superior to the method in your attachment.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #9 –
I agree, this is also a way to produce lyrics to a song. There is one major drawback: you have to create for each seperate line an individual textexpression. My method makes is possible to produce an entire textblock, collum wise.

I puzzles me that in Adobe the print is not readable. Perhaps it is because your Adobe version is not up to date?

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #10 –
Quote from: J.H. Sportel –
your Adobe version is not up to date?
Probably. I only mentioned it because it is the newest version I've found that works with Windows 98. It works with nearly all the pdf files I've tried, although it often displays a warning. I also have that version stripped down for fast loading. That may also be the problem, but I took a quick look at your file in both text and binary and it seemed to be fairly straightforward.

Over the years, many posters have written of EMF->PDF conversion and dropping EMF files into DTP programs. Yours is the first example that impresses me.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Another way to add lyrics to a song.

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Rick G. –
With Windows XP, that works quite well. I'm fairly sure that it extracts what it needs from NWC2STDA.ttf. (The way Windows caches fonts, one can never be quite sure.)

I stand to be corrected, but I'm pretty sure PDFCreator embeds fonts by default.  I've been using it for some time and have no complaints.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.