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Topic: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page (Read 7368 times) previous topic - next topic

My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page

As a long time user of NWC, I'm very happy with it - I use it to compose music (without a connected MIDI keyboard - I mostly think in musical notation), arrange for our choir and for crank organs, sketching snippets in forums, and rewrite clumsy parts for easier playing or singing.

Many features that others may need I am happy without: This keeps the tool small and efficient. And I'm not very concerned about the perfect beauty of the result - for example, I had no great complaints about those slurs which curve "in interesting ways".

But there are three things I'd dearly need, in descending order of importance:


1. Smaller scales - almost all instrument parts need either a few stretches or full staffs of cue notes. Currently, I use normal staffs with diamond note heads (which look a little bit like smaller note heads). But a vertical scaling is very much needed.

2. Finer-scaled "Extra Note Spacing" that takes tenths instead of only integral values; and negative values up to maybe minus 1. Sometimes, in a little more complex chords assembled on 2 layered staffs, just shifting over a note "a little bit" would make the chord really readable. And, sometimes, I'd like to push notes together a little bit, usually in a scale or a repetitive acc. pattern: This might save that unncessary fourth page where just 2 measures spill over, and still keep the score perfectly readable.

3. Printing fixed text on each page would also be great - for copyright purposes, but more for title and instrument remarks. I usually prepare all the different printouts (instruments, singers, conductor's score) by creating PDFs on my laptop during my (train) commute. Then I print all of the PDFs together - so inserting different paper is no option. But maybe I have to look into some batch tooling that adds footers into PDFs easily.


If I got these features (only two, maybe only the first), I'd happily pay for a new complete license - NWC has paid itself over so many times that I would not complain about another bunch of $ (or €) for that!

Harald M.

P.S. Off-topic, but not really - it shows again what can be done with NWC: For an example of a recent piece I wrote: http://www.hmmueller.de/MyMusic/20150522-p+2Fl.SlowAndFast.mp3 (generated with Reaper and 'Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra' Soundfonts), score at http://www.hmmueller.de/MyMusic/20150522-p+2Fl.SlowAndFast.pdf. A score with my current "cue notes" is at http://www.hmmueller.de/MyMusic/20150522-p+2Fl.SlowAndFast_FLOETEN2.pdf ...

Re: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page

Reply #1 –
Hello Harald,
Quote from: hmmueller –
... I'm not very concerned about the perfect beauty of the result - for example, I had no great complaints about those slurs which curve "in interesting ways".
If you haven't been part of the beta testing for 2.75, you'll be interested to know that there are several changes to the slurs, including a new "marker" that can be used to change the endpoint positions and shape.

Quote from: hmmueller –
But there are three things I'd dearly need, in descending order of importance:
...
2. Finer-scaled "Extra Note Spacing" that takes tenths instead of only integral values; and negative values up to maybe minus 1. Sometimes, in a little more complex chords assembled on 2 layered staffs, just shifting over a note "a little bit" would make the chord really readable. And, sometimes, I'd like to push notes together a little bit, usually in a scale or a repetitive acc. pattern: This might save that unncessary fourth page where just 2 measures spill over, and still keep the score perfectly readable.
I can't help with your first point (maybe someone else will have a suggestion on that.

But for your second point, one thing that many people (including myself originally) have missed is that the Spacer object can actually be used to reduce the space between notes. But to make this work, you must insert a small-width spacer on each staff where you want the space to be removed. I can post a sample if you want to see this in action.
Quote from: hmmueller –
3. Printing fixed text on each page would also be great - for copyright purposes, but more for title and instrument remarks. I usually prepare all the different printouts (instruments, singers, conductor's score) by creating PDFs on my laptop during my (train) commute. Then I print all of the PDFs together - so inserting different paper is no option. But maybe I have to look into some batch tooling that adds footers into PDFs easily.
One of the new features being introduced in version 2.75 is the idea of "user object" plugins. Without going into too much detail on it here, I have been working on a plugin that will allow repeating headers/footers, as well as more complex composer/lyricist information (e.g. multiple lines of text).

Thanks very much for posting examples of your work.

Mike

Re: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page

Reply #2 –
Thanks for your reply -

Re the slurs, good to hear this. I recently skimmed through Elaine Gould's "Behind Bars" - I'd by happy to try some of what is written there with slurs ... but of course I would never demand or even want that Noteworthy becomes a tool that can do "all that": Keeping it at a "perfect minimal feature set" is very crucial! I think I will somewhen document how composing - as opposed to writing a score - with NWC works, which depends on that property of NWC that it does not require me to think about formatting and "musical correctness" (e.g. correct number of quarters in a bar) - I can just "write along", in contrast to almost all other tools. The real efficient way of writing, using a few helper staffs, took me a few years to find that out (maybe I'm slow) ... but now I'm very very (very!) happy with it.

Re the smaller staffs - well, then I heartily hope that we can convince the NWC guys (and girls) to do this!

Re spacers - oh yes, I noticed this behavior already sometimes, but pushed it away as "somewhat weird". I'll try whether it is good enough for what I want.

Re "user plugin for repeated footers," I'll eagerly wait for your result!

Thank you very much!
Harald

Re: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page

Reply #3 –
This spacers idea works pretty well - so much so that I'd be inclined to write a short "tutorial" on its usage.
Question: Is there already one (I didn't find one), and where would I place it (in "Tips and Tricks"?)? How long could it be (I'd like to add about 8 graphics to show various effects).

H.M.

Re: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page

Reply #4 –
I have something that can add "default" spacers, then add or subtract from them as needed--this was written to help properly space out the last few lines. Try this earlier thread.
Since 1998

Re: My 3 wishes: 1) small staffs 2) fine-scale note-width 3) copyright on each page

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Warren Porter –
I have something that can add "default" spacers, then add or subtract from them as needed--this was written to help properly space out the last few lines. Try this earlier thread.
Hi Warren,

I read the linked topic, and from your description there, it sounds like you were using spacers to fix the note spacing on the measures in the final staff of a score. It reminded me of a problem I had experienced with NWC when I set the option to extend the final system, where just the last measure is extended, making the system look lopsided. Is this the issue you were correcting via spacers, or were you adding extra space when the final system was NOT extended?  I ask this because there is a fairly easy workaround that corrects the note spacing in the "extended final system" case, that I am almost certain you would have seen posted before. That fix is to add a system break at the end of the score. (Again, you probably knew this, but just in case you missed it...)

Mike