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John H
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« on: 2006-01-05 03:20 pm » |
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Hello, People.
Wish lists are presumably where programmers and the like get at least some of their ideas for changes/improvements in their software. Over time I have had a number of ideas for Noteworthy Composer (which I've now been using ever since Version 1.0-something-or-other, acquired nearly 10 years ago), and there are still a few outstanding, which I would like to offer you all for consideration. And may I ward off some criticism - of the "that's already been discussed" variety - by pleading a lack of time (and a 56k modem) to trawl through the features that others have previously talked about, and perhaps dealt with satisfactorily, and begging your forgiveness in advance!
What I would be really grateful for is if any of you who actually know about any of items - like, for example, where they may already have been discussed - could let me know (presumably by posting a reply here - though I might "leave" my E-mail address if that's considered OK).
Here we go:-
1) A proper printed manual. I'd be prepared to pay for one!
2) Combining two staves - that is, "copying" everything in one staff on top of the corresponding things on a second staff. I know, of course, that in 1.75 you can layer two staves on top of each other, to view and to print, but that's not quite the same as actually copying one onto the other.
And it would be nice to be able to Insert a new Staff with all the characteristics of an old one - rather like "Copying" the old staff in toto to form a new one.
3) Automatically joining two staves end to end - one from one File, say, and the second from the other - would be nice (though I appreciate that, with two Windows open, you can do this manually). The extreme of this would be to join two like Files together, one on the end of the other (so that two pieces of music can be keyed in quite separately, and then joined seamlessly to each other).
4) Having a really long note (a breve - a double whole note!).
5) Providing an automated facility for trills and rounds and mordents (you know; "tr~~" and "^^^^") and chord "rolls" (a vertical jagged line). This is perhaps Feature No: 509.24 (and the other day I came by chance upon a lot of chat about how to fudge this)?
And, while you're at it, providing a printable note symbol where the stem is crossed to indicate that the note is played as lots of rather smaller notes; violins do this all the time. And actually implementing that - so that, for instance, a minim with a double line cross is actually played as a sequence of eight semiquavers.
An alternative way of showing this for a "chord" of notes is to have the larger notes grouped and "beamed" with the lines corresponding to the smaller notes.
6) You now have keypresses for staccato (.) and tenuto (_) note styles, but what about that note length usually defined by the "'" (apostrophe) symbol?
7) You could perhaps usefully automate beaming as the notes are actually entered - toggling beaming on/off with, say, the square brackets symbol "[".
And though you now allow automated beaming for any unbeamed notes within a staff - from the Tools Menu; Alt-TA - nevertheless with some time signatures it doesn't seem to give the right effect. For example, in plain 4/4 time four quavers usually get beamed as two pairs rather than as a single quartet, and yet in scores they're usually written as all four beamed together.
8) It would be quite useful to be able to start Bar/Measure Numbers from a value less than zero - a negative value - so as to allow for lead-ins and the like to a piece of music the real beginning of which is at bar one (say).
It could also be useful to be able to choose to have the Bar Numbers shown (but not printed) on staves other than/in addition to the top staff, so that when entering a piece with too many staves to see all at once, the Bar Number would be visible even when looking at the bottom staff. Using Ctl-G is not the same!
9) When the Insertion Point cursor is not on some specific feature the Status bar could, with advantage, show the current dynamic and tempo values. And perhaps other "running" values?
10) 1.75 is quite good on triplets and the like - that is to say, it can recognize some other tuplets - groups of three (or six or nine or ... ) notes - and "convert" them appropriately. It would be nice, though, if it could mark a group of six with a six -6- (as a sextuplet) rather than with a three -3- . It would also be nice if it could recognize and deal with other numbers of notes ... fives and sevens, for example (lots of modern composers insist on using them; it's damned irritating!). And doublets, too (when, say, a pair of quavers is played as though it were really a pair of dotted quavers)!
11) Back with 1.55 grace notes were added, which is fine, but ... while so far as I can see the notes actually selected for the grace notes - quavers, semiquavers, whatever - may be shown in the printouts, they do not seem to affect the actual length of the grace notes as played. Wouldn't it be better if they did have an appropriate effect?
12) One possible form of Bar ending is a double bar line. 1.75 treats this as though it were actually a bar end, so that the next bar has the next bar number. However, many pieces use the double bar line to indicate the end of a section, and this may in fact not be at the end of a bar at all! So it would be nice if, when a double bar is inserted, you could choose whether it counts in the bar numbering or not.
13) When keying in music with associated lyrics it is not unusual to find a note held (tied) or slurred across a bar (measure) line. If this note is associated with a word (or part of a word) it would be nice to show that word extending across the bar line as well. At the moment the lyric editor does not allow this.
14) And finally - and this is my most wished-for feature - it would be truly wonderful if NWC could include a real time Mixer Board (as in Midisoft's Session/Studio) allowing real time adjustment of each channel's Midi effects like volume, chorus, pan, instrument, channel number. Considering that almost everything I do with NWC ends up with a Midi File which I then import into Session to allow me to make the final adjustments, being able to do this "natively", within NWC itself, would be heaven!
Regards,
John Hooper, 6/Jan/06
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