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Old 09-06-2011, 02:08 PM
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Sherry C Sherry C is offline
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Location: Bad Axe, MI, USA (The Tip of the Thumb of Michigan)
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Default Additional or specialty Template files for Notation Musician and Notation Composer

Hi friends,

Occasionally I get asked at the helpdesk or privately about doing X, Y or Z type of music with Notation Composer. One such request has been doing "chant" style files, which don't have a meter, and generally don't have barlines within each system. You can generally work within these constraints in Composer, but there's been no template published for it - til now

I'd like to start this thread to post this particular template, but also to make an area available where folks can share templates that you may have come up with that make life a bit easier for you and might help someone else. Or if someone has a question about setting up a template, this would be a good place to post it.

Here is the template for "plainsong" or "chant" type songs. To have a "no rests" version, just click on any rests after you've finished entering the notes, and then click the "Hide rests" button in the Rests tool palette. I could have set this template file to automatically hide rests, but it seemed to me that knowing where the rests are initially would be beneficial in getting the most out of each measure (line) of music

Chant-1 measure per system 16_4 meter.not


Here are the instructions that I typically give anyone who is creating their own plainsong file in Notation Composer.
1. When you set up your song using Create New, set the meter at something high like 16/4, or whatever you think will comfortably fit the number of notes/syllables you'll want per line. This might take a bit of experimentation.

2. After you've set the song up, you can then double-click on the meter, and checkmark the "Hide" box to hide the meter.

3. Use Layout/Page Layout, and then click the "Specify number of bars per line" button (it has numbers on a page). Enter "1" in the box, and click Ok. This will give you only one measure per line, and thus no barlines in a system.

4. If you enter the notes for a particular measure and you have "room left over", you may not want those rests to show. Just click the rest (or click drag across a group to select them), and then click the "Hide rests" button in the Rests tool palette.
If you need to add more measures at any time, you can use the Measures/Add measures command.


Enjoy!
Sherry
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Last edited by Sherry C; 10-20-2011 at 10:55 PM. Reason: typo
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