Ritards and Resumption of Play at Tempo
 

There is a problem in Notation Composer dealing with ritards and resumption of play. If your score includes one or more ritards and you start and stop the playing of the piece, play resumes at the lowest tempo setting of the ritard.

For example, in the Sentimental Journey Duet at:

http://www.notation.com/vb-forum/showthread.php?t=32208

If you open the song file and press the Space Bar to hear the piece played, the duet plays at the correct tempo. If you let it play all the way to the end, it ends properly and the ritard works as intended. However, if you try to start play anywhere other than the beginning of the piece, the tempo fails in measure 21. There are a number of different ways to see this problem -- this is just one example.

As an arranger, this is a major problem for me when I am notating the ritard, as I have to play the piece from the beginning to hear the effect of the ritard. This is very time-consuming and unproductive. I have developed a workaround to reduce the amount of time it takes to test the ritard.

I created a short test file (see Ritard Test.not below) that includes the area of the ritard and several measures in front of it, so when I play it, I can hear the established tempo before the ritard. Using this test file, I can try a number of variations on the ritard, and I only have to play four measures to hear the effect.

After I have finalized my ritard in my test file, I can change the ritard notation in the full piece to match the ritard notation in the test file.

Ralph Rayner

Re: Ritards and Resumption of Play at Tempo
 

Hi Ralph,

Nice suggestion (and apologies for the need for a workaround.)

To make things even easier after the test file is perfected, you can simply:

1. Click the Staff Select button to select the staff, then copy/paste the notation from the successful test file to the full song file.
2. In the test file, switch to "Graph Over Notes" and "Tempo", and do the same with the tempo. In Graph Over Notes, only the selected MIDI controller - in this case Tempo - will be copied and then pasted.

Thanks for the great tip!


ttfn,
Sherry

Re: Ritards and Resumption of Play at Tempo
 

Ralph,

Just needed to chime in with a "Thank you."

As you know, some of the stuff I put in Composer gets rather long -- this tempo "feature" drove me crazy. Never occurred to me to isolate a few bars before and after the tempo effect in a separate file.

Walt
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