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Sectional staffs & printing

I've read the posts on partial staffs (https://forum.noteworthycomposer.com/?topic=6701.0;prev_next=prev#new).  As a choral arranger it's not what I was hoping to find.  When voices split midway through a piece (e.g. Tenor I & Tenor II), each voice gets its own staff until they merge into a single voice again.  This is standard form for choral sheet music, and a very common priactice in choral composing.

Chorale music publishers generally don't do their own layouts anymore - most require scores be sent camera-ready, so I hope this will be high on the priority list for the next Noteworthy upgrade.  It would also make it possible to transpose a portion of a staff instead of the whole thing - a very helpful editing tool for moving several measures of counterpoint from Alto to Bass to get the voicing right.

As a work around, someone suggested using multiple files, each with the necessary number of staffs.  It is possible to stitch these into one seamless document for printing?   Choristers get touchy when they see gaps in the sheet music, and start trying to add notes the composer didn't intend.

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #1 –
First of all, welcome to the NWC community!

I can help with the partial transposing part:  Create a new staff and copy what you need transposed to it.  While working with it, include the clef and key signature.  When finished you can copy it where it needs to go.

If the tenor part has been entered on a treble shifted staff and the basses sing the the same thing for a while, copy it to the bass line, select it, hold cntl/shift and press the up arrow 5 times.

As for making a clef staff disappear until it is needed (move from chorale to a fugue for example), that has been on the wish list for a long time.
Since 1998

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Warren Porter –
As for making a clef disappear until it is needed (move from chorale to a fugue for example), that has been on the wish list for a long time.

....and there's no easy kludge around it. The only thing you can do is to prepare the score in sections with different numbers of staves and then cut and paste the sections as graphics into another program (often the easiest is to print the individual sections to pdf and then combine the pdfs - but that isn't easy, either). This is probably the single biggest problem with NWC as a scoring program - not only for choral scores, but for places where the texture thins out in orchestral scores (think of the cadenza in the 5th Brandenburg, for example - why do we need all those empty staves for all those pages?), for ossia, for cues, for descants, and probably for a number of other things. Eric, I hope you're listening.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #3 –
Quote from: William Ashworth –
This is probably the single biggest problem with NWC as a scoring program
Perhaps. But solving it wouldn't bring NWC2 close to being a scoring program.

I suspect that any solution would involve substantial changes to the way staves are classified and defined. The current method is far too crude for orchestral work. It is barely adequate for ensemble work.

I'd rather see the effort used to allow some user control of slurs.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #4 –
I would like every object to have a "printing optional" attribute, perhaps on the visibility tab.  When "PO" is selected on print set-up, any system with all PO's would not print and would not take up verical space on the page.  Nothing but the soloist's cadenza would appear on the conductor's score or the soprano solo in the last stanza wouldn't appear until the last few pages.
Since 1998

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Warren Porter –
any system
I think you mean any staff within a system.

Quote from: Warren Porter –
I would like every object to have a "printing optional" attribute, perhaps on the visibility tab.
I think you just need an option on Page Setup to 'Skip staffs with no visible content', or perhaps, 'Skip staffs with no notes'.  If enabled, LilyPond will remove staffs with no notes, even if there are rests, rehearsal marks or other text. It works for me, I just need to be careful.

NWC2 would need to be intelligent enough not to eliminate a Grand Staff unless both upper and lower were empty.

Users would need to exercise some care with the top and bottom staffs as they set the space between systems. They probably shouldn't, but that's another subject ...
Registered user since 1996

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Rick G. –
I'd rather see the effort used to allow some user control of slurs.

Well, each of us has our own priorities. I'd like to see slurs improved, too, but I think suppressing printing of empty staves would be more broadly useful.

....and while we're on the subject of scores, we should also mention the need for better control over orchestral brackets, so we could begin and end them at staves we choose.

But in my opinion, NWC already works pretty well for scoring for ensembles. That's the main use I put it to. And I haven't had a performer complain yet.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #7 –
G'day Bill,
Quote from: William Ashworth –
But in my opinion, NWC already works pretty well for scoring for ensembles. That's the main use I put it to. And I haven't had a performer complain yet.

Yeah, I gotta agree - I most commonly score for a small ensemble and extract the parts - I never have need for a conductors copy as we don't have a conductor...

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

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #8 –
Of course you are both correct. What was I thinking? NWC2 does lovely scores. So long as you don't need to print them.
Registered user since 1996

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #9 –
William wrote
Quote
....and while we're on the subject of scores, we should also mention the need for better control over orchestral brackets, so we could begin and end them at staves we choose.

If you're just talking about where to begin and end the vertical bar lines that straddle two or more staffs, you just insert a staff below each staff where you want the bar lines to break. set the system style to Standard, and configure the staff above it to layer with next staff.

If you want to restore the lower curlicue you add one more staff at the bottom of the score, set to orchestral and cause it to be layered under the preceding one.

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #10 –
Actually, David, the problem isn't either the double line or the curlicue at the bottom of the system. It's putting lower (and associated upper) curlicues in the middle of the system. We can't do that. Proper score layout requires doing it for each instrumental choir (strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, voices)

Cheers,

Bill

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #11 –
G'day Rick,
Quote from: Rick G. –
Of course you are both correct. What was I thinking? NWC2 does lovely scores. So long as you don't need to print them.
I guess we have different requirements.  The scores I produce are not as beautiful as some of the stuff I've seen you do.  There is no question that you are able to make NWC2 jump through hoops most of the rest of us don't even dream about, and that takes real commitment to the ideal you are seeking.

Yet for all of that, I've seen commercial scores for Big Band that are not a patch on even my own comparatively feeble efforts in NWC, let alone what you have achieved.  The search for perfection is unending.

For my needs, NWC generally produces more than adequate scores.  This does not mean that I think we should be complacent.  On the contrary, the more improvements in layout and the control thereof the more I like it. 
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #12 –
This seems to relate to a need I have.  In Medieval and Renaissance music, sometimes sections of chant (sung in unison) alternate with sections of polyphony.  I was hoping to be able to product such music in NWC2, avoiding showing 4 or 5 parts singing a unison melody by duplicating that melody on 4 or 5 staves.  My impression from above is that that is not possible with NWC.  Is that correct?

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #13 –
That is (unfortunately) correct. Sorry.

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #14 –
Quote from: smoore33 –
This seems to relate to a need I have.  In Medieval and Renaissance music, sometimes sections of chant (sung in unison) alternate with sections of polyphony.  I was hoping to be able to product such music in NWC2, avoiding showing 4 or 5 parts singing a unison melody by duplicating that melody on 4 or 5 staves.  My impression from above is that that is not possible with NWC.  Is that correct?

It can be done by treating each section as a separate file, and adjusting vertical margins to print each section on the same page.
Carl Bangs
Fenwick Parva Press
Registered user since 1995

Re: Sectional staffs & printing

Reply #15 –
Quote from: rasmith –
When voices split midway through a piece (e.g. Tenor I & Tenor II), each voice gets its own staff until they merge into a single voice again.  This is standard form for choral sheet music
This has been addressed by the Boundary Change Command.
Registered user since 1996