Possibly to add lyrics not aligned to notes

I have problem with adding lyrics to rests in the melody staff; e.g. sung by backup singers or sung with bass rhythm. Is there any work around? I tried merging staffs, but it made a mess and made it worse for other area.

Howdy Lawrence,

To enter a lyric on an "empty space", first enter the note(s) where you want them, and then enter the lyric(s). After you've got the lyrics entered, you can delete the bogus notes and the lyrics will remain.

ttfn,
Sherry

p.s. If you've got multiple singing parts (eg. bass singing the bass rhythm) you can also add those lyrics separately to those staves and they'll line right up with their proper notes.

ttfn,
Sherry

Hi Sherry:

> To enter a lyric on an "empty space", first enter the note(s) where
> you want them, and then enter the lyric(s). After you've got the
> lyrics entered, you can delete the bogus notes and the lyrics will
> remain.

It won't allow me as I only have Musician and not Composer.

As for adding lyrics to other/multiple staffs, would this be a valid .kar format compatible with other karaoke/lyrics display hardware/software? I am trying to make it work with my Yamaha keyboard built-in screen display.

Howdy Lawrence,

Oops - sorry I forgot about that.

For display anywhere, especially if it's a small screen, it's probably better to keep the lyrics all on one staff. Unless you're using Musician live or on a projector ;)

Ok, to get all the lyrics (and those that aren't aligned on the melody notes) altogether on a single staff, you can do the following. Please note that when it comes to the merging of the staves, you'll have to be sure that none of the lyrics "overlap" (ie, fall on the same beat), or you'll lose some.

1. Open your file.
2. Use Staff/Clone staff to clone any staves you're going to use as "lyric guides". In other words, if you have a melody line you want to add lyrics to for melody notes and a bass line you want to add "oompah" lyrics or whatever for, clone these two staves. This is a safety precaution, so you don't lose your original staves in the editing process.
3. Add the lyrics that you want for each part (eg. the melody and the bass) to its respective cloned staff.
4. When you're done, use Staff/Merge staves, and merge these two "cloned with lyrics" staves together.
5. Now select that newly-merged staff that has the mumbo-jumbo of notes, and use "Region/Convert Region to selection of notes".
6. Press the "Delete" key to delete the notes from the staff.
7. Now use Staff/Merge staves again, and this time merge the "lyrics but no notes" staff with the original Melody staff.

That should do it. If it doesn't, let me know

ttfn,
Sherry

Thanks, Sherry. That's very clever. I'll give it a try.

Hi Sherry:

For most part, your instructions work well, except in one area:

Once the staffs were merged, all the "-" "\" and "/" were deleted from the lyrics! And a space was added to many words, and a carriage return was added in place of "/". So there is a lot of editing to do after merging.

I left a empty staff with just lyrics. And I am happy to report that they get displayed properly in my Yamaha DGX-630 keyboard when exported to "midi with lyrics" format (after conversion with MidiPlayer II, still my workaround pending a solution as discussed in another thread).

Hope that this can be fixed or improved in future versions.

Lawrence

Howdy Lawrence,

Thanks for letting me know about the characters that were deleted. Fixing this is now Task 2071. The workaround is to wait til you've merged the staves before adding the karaoke symbols.

I'm glad that the lyrics get displayed properly on your keyboard

ttfn,
Sherry