Differing Time Signatures

1998-12-30 05:00 am

Maybe I'm just missing something silly but....

I've got a stave running on 6/8 and a counter melody running on 2/4. How do I get them to match? ANy suggestions?

Thanks!

Re: Differing Time Signatures

Reply #1 – 1998-12-30 05:00 am

NWC uses absolute times for note alignment, so the time signature is ignored for all but whole measure/bar rests. For this reason, you cannot get a 2/4 line and a 6/8 line to match up.

Re: Differing Time Signatures

Reply #2 – 1998-12-31 05:00 am

I tried to make notes match, and found 3 imperfect solutions:

1. either you decide to rewrite the 6/8 measures into 2/4, using triplets almost anywhere (even with unequal values such as in a "sicilienne"); this can lead to a hard-to-read score, but no other change is to be made;
2. either what you could do is to write your 2/4 with dotted notes to make them as long as needed. This works for 2 4th, or 2 8ths, but I couldn't found a solution for the pair "dotted 8th+16th".
3. or you write your 6/8 measures as normal, but add the "triplet" character to every compound time (3 8ths, 4th+8th, ...). The limit is that a dotted 4ths must rewritten as 4th+8th, and same for dotted 2ths... Moreover, small italic "3"s appear anywhere. You could make them disappear by changing the "Staff italic" font (either change the font size to 0 (2 will display in the size box later), or change the font to a font that displays nothing for the "3" char). You'll then have to remove (in .wmf format or whatever) the small [____ ____] that appear...

Oh, a 4th option comes to mind : make a wish (go to http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/composer/wishlist.htm ) to ask this.

Btw, I found that a triplet is unevenly printed (the 2nd note comes too soon) when the same beat is used by more than one note in another staff; should this be considered as a bug? (ask me to email an example if you want)

hope this helps, and happy nwc year to y'all

Marsu

Re: Differing Time Signatures

Reply #3 – 1999-01-01 05:00 am

Thanks for the "kill the 3's in the triplet" hint, Marsu! This will come in very handy for a classical score I'm working on where _everything_ is triplets. Usual practise is to only show the '3's for the first couple bars, then put a "simile" thereafter to keep the score less busy looking. For those first couple bars, the 3's could be printed as text in another font, with enough leading spaces so you don't kill the beams.

Fred