Score Editor: Adding Rehearsal Letters to your Score

[ski]

Although Logic doesn't provide a dedicated feature for adding rehearsal letters to a score, the following method can be used. it's really fairly painless! First, a summary of the steps needed to add rehearsal letters to your score:

 

1) create a new instrument or MIDI track (assigned to "no output" or an unused instrument)

2) pencil in a blank region and stretch it to span the length of your song

3) create a new Text Style for your rehearsal letters

4) create a new Score Style that utilizes one of the "No Clef" selections for the clef parameter and apply it to that region

5) enter all rehearsal letters (and only rehearsal letters) in that region

 

How It's Done

 

In the screenshot below, we see four windows, from top to bottom:

 

• a score editor window at the top showing a full conductor's score

 

• the Score Style editor showing details of my custom "Rehearsal" Score Style

 

• the Text Editor window showing my custom "Rehearsal" Text Style. Also shown is the font editor for the Rehearsal Text Style, accessed by 2clicking on the name of the font associated with the Style (in this case, "Helvetica").

 

Above the chimes part is a rehearsal letter ("A") displayed in a boxed, large font. It was placed on that staff by inserting a TEXT item there, typing "A", and then setting its text parameter to "Rehearsal". The settings needed to create that Text Style are shown in the font editor in the screenshot.

 

Because the custom Score Style's clef parameters is set to display "No Clef.1" we see only a single line staff without a clef instead of the usual 5-line staff with a clef. Eventually we'll make that line disappear by setting the clef to "No Clef. 0", but for now the single line serves as a guideline for positioning the letters into the score.

 

And rests won't appear in this staff because I've suppressed the display of rests in the Score Style editor as well (see screenshot).

 

http://www.score2picture.com/logicpix/reh.jpg

 

 

• As long as your Score Set includes your rehearsal letter track, it will appear in the score.

 

• When it's time to print your score, edit the "Rehearsal" Score Style by changing the clef to "No Clef.0" and the line will disappear (see screenshot below).

 

The resulting display of rehearsal letters will not be 100% perfect, but it's nothing that you can't take care of with a bottle of White Out. Oh god, here they come, the moans and groans of having to do manual labor... The "imperfections" that you lazy people will have to blot out are the rehearsal numbers and the tiny vertical lines that mark the beginning (and end) of each reherasal letter staff (see screenshot below).

 

By the way, the reason the vertical lines are so small is because I set the Score Style's size parameter to zero. In short, I recommend that you create a Rehearsal Score Style where your settings match exactly what you see in the screenshot above.

 

http://www.score2picture.com/logicpix/reh2.jpg

 

Parts Printout

• For parts, you have two options for including the rehearsal letters

 

1) create individual Score Styles for each part which include the actual part and the rehearsal letter track

 

= OR =

 

2) Open the Event List of the rehearsal letter track, select all, and CMD-C copy. Assuming you haven't entered anything else in that track other than rehearsal letter text, the clipboard will now contain the rehearsal letters. You can now click on the staff for any part and use "paste at original position" to apply a copy of the rehearsal letters to that part. Tweak their positions as needed.

Edited November 22, 2008 by ski

[Music Spirit]

..sKi - you are a scholar and a gentleman!!!! This is pure genius.. who would have thought of using the Score Editor in this way. Once you have a Score Template with your suggestions in, this would become very easy to use with familiarity.

 

And it would be relatively simple to add Markers with the each letter A B etc which correspond to the Rehearsal Letters so you could navigate quickly between letters

 

thanks for your trouble .. this is worth a barrel of guiness in december

 

m s

 

PS it is a shame that Bar number display is a global setting - it would be very useful to switch it off in individual parts ..I think it is global nature is conspiracy of the companies that manufacture 'whiteout' who would be out of business if they werent being used to clean up your Rehearsal Letters system

Edited November 22, 2008 by Music Spirit

[ski]

Thanks M S! Hope you find this useful. Yes, if you apply this to a scoring template, you'll only have to do the setup work once.

 

BTW, I've revised the above post to make a few points clearer. (Always tweaking, me...)

 

Re Guiness, I appreciate the offer very much! However, my December trip to the UK has been postponed... Because of a gig May I have a rain check?

[FlowerPower]

Thanks! Another option, also using a custom made Text Style (boxed). :

 

1) Insert text (A, B etc) etc. where you want it, in the upper track, and time shift the text by one tick (read on!).

Make sure they are placed at the same subposition eg 1 1 1 2, 17 1 1 2 etc.)

 

2) To adjust the horizontal position of the Rehearsal Marks, use "Select Equal Subpositions'. This means that if you select one Rehearsal Mark, they'll all become selected. Now use 'Align Object Positions Horizontally'.

 

3) Parts: Save a copy as "Song Title/Parts", select all the Rehearsal marks, make sure you have selected all the tracks that need rehearsal marks, and use 'Paste Multiple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hint 1: If you need to adjust the position of the rehearsal marks, use the Layout Tool.

 

Hint 2: Always place a space before and after the letter, this will make the boxes around the letters look less claustrophobic.

[Music Spirit]

yes sKi ..extremely useful - i am also a great tweaker.. I should have put my PS in this post for Logical reasons

 

... good for you getting a gig! - will miss your company though the offer here is *always* open

[Music Spirit]

FLower Power .. thanks for a couple of awesome suggestions.

 

• the idea of moving objects to a very tiny specific Subposition and then using "select equal subpositions' ( this could be useful for other editing & alignment uses

 

• the idea of putting a blank space before and after Rehearsal Letters so that the box doesnt look so amateurishly tight

 

brilliant!!! i love you guys..

[ski]

Ditto re kudos for FP's suggestions!

[FlowerPower]

Even if Apple won't introduce Rehearsal Marks as a new, full-fledged feature in the near future, simply adding a new object type called Rehearsal Marks (which would be another variation of a text object) would simplify the process, because the need for dealing with funny subpositions would go away.

 

The weak part with my idea is that you more or less need to remember to delete the saved copy (for parts), otherwise, you may end up making changes (whenever needed) in the 'Parts'-version and not in the main version.

 

Ideally, there should IMO be an option to let one of the Marker alternatives pop up in the score, possibly with (user defined) shorter names (a la Long Names and Short names for I/O labels.

 

This way, we could 'force' Logic to show the markers in Score.

 

With a dedicated object type for Rehearsal Marks, each staff could have a setting for "Show Rehearsal Marks" (Always|Never|Yes, but not in Full Score mode)... That would remove the need for saving a separate file for the parts.

Edited November 23, 2008 by FlowerPower

[FlowerPower]

The resulting display of rehearsal letters will not be 100% perfect, but it's nothing that you can't take care of with a bottle of White Out.

 

http://www.score2picture.com/logicpix/reh2.jpg

 

Couldn't the problem bar numbers appearing in more than one staff be solved by having bar numbers only in the upper/lower staff only, and place the upper staff much closer to the actual score? Not that I have tried it yet...

[ski]

FP, I wouldn't consider your scheme "weak". I think there are times when it's totally appropriate, if not downright essential, to have multiple copies of the same song file: one for production + conductor's score, another for parts. Case in point:

 

(I think we've discussed this before...)

 

Page settings (paper size) are saved with the Logic song, and those setting influence what you see on the monitor. In other words, if your page setup is 11x17 for purpose of printing out a conductor's score, you'd have to change the paper size to perpare parts in the same song. Seems easy enough to make that change, but I find that manouver a pain in the butt. I prefer to have a separate song already saved with my A3 paper size to prepare parts. That way when I load up the song, the notation display looks correct immediately.

 

Ideally, parts should be the last thing to be prepared and printed anyway. So the idea of preparing a separate parts song (with A3 paper size saved) shouldn't really happen until the score (production + conductor's score + 11x17 paper size saved) is finalized.

 

I also advocate making a copy of all tracks within the production song (assigned to dead or dead-end instruments) and preparing the score from those tracks/regions. This way you never have to compromise the appearance (or even the integrity) of the production tracks themselves.

[ski]

Couldn't the problem bar numbers appearing in more than one staff be solved by having bar numbers only in the upper/lower staff only, and place the upper staff much closer to the actual score? Not that I have tried it yet...

 

Sure, why not?

[FlowerPower]

Ideally, parts should be the last thing to be prepared and printed anyway.

Sure, but that's ideally only.

 

I tried your idea, and realized that I miss a way to turn off time signatures (per staff) - or at least only show them for the upper staff in a composition... plus a quick way to remove the bar lines that ties two staves together (wasn't it alt+click on the line itself line many years ago?).

[Music Spirit]

I had a go.....(sKi could you explain how to do a red circle)

 

• It is a pity you cannot have a "Layout" setting for individual Staff Styles - that way you could 'hide bar lines for individual parts and that would get rid of the tiny lines

 

• I used Flower Power's suggestion of a space before and after A and the box looks much better ( Also discovered that there is a Score Setting which can thicken or thin the box like all other lines - ledger bar etc)

 

• Also started using the vertical/horizontal scroll thingy on the LH side to position the Rehearsal Letter ( before I just used to drag it around with the mouse)

 

..learnt a lot from this gents, many thanks

 

http://i364.photobucket.com/albums/oo82/dogliege/Picture1.png

[Music Spirit]

Couldn't the problem bar numbers appearing in more than one staff be solved by having bar numbers only in the upper/lower staff only, and place the upper staff much closer to the actual score?

 

..could you elaborate FP? arent bar numbers a global thing and therefore we are stuck with them in the same place. I had a go at doing what you suggest by adapting a piano template for the Global Letters but bar numbers remain in the same place... and I couldnt get rid of them in the Rehearsal Letters Staff Style

 

M S

[ski]

Sure, but that's ideally only.

 

Yup. But really, uinless Logic incorporates a full-fledged score editor that, like Sibelius, will track changes and apply them to parts as well as score, I just don't think it's a good idea to try to get one Logic song to try to "do it all". And in complex productions you can easily risk breaking things when trying to make one song accommodate production, score, and parts. Something always seems to get messed up. And I honestly feel that sometimes the pursuit of trying to get Logic to do everything within a single song is more about toying around with the machine and hoping to achieve a sense of accomplishment with that as the end-goal rather than doing even less work in the long run to accomplish the same result. But of course, ymmv.

 

In any event, it's clear that there's no perfect method for trying to do it all within Logic; major changes to the structure of the program will be needed to be able to do it.

 

I tried your idea, and realized that I miss a way to turn off time signatures (per staff) - or at least only show them for the upper staff in a composition... plus a quick way to remove the bar lines that ties two staves together (wasn't it alt+click on the line itself line many years ago?).

 

That bar line isn't the kind that can be turned off as you suggested . And re time signature, no, there's no way to get rid of the one on the Rehearsal Letter staff. But as I said in my first post, there's always White Out (Tipp-Ex for those in the U of K). Sometimes low tech is the "best tech".

Edited November 23, 2008 by ski

[TC]

Thanks Ski for sharing. I tried this method some years ago, but I wasn't clever enough to reduce the staff size to 0. I'll give it a second try for sure.

 

1) Insert text (A, B etc) etc. where you want it, in the upper track, and time shift the text by one tick (read on!).

Make sure they are placed at the same subposition eg 1 1 1 2, 17 1 1 2 etc.)

 

Hey FlowerPower, I use a similar method! The difference is that I change the Rehearsal letters meta value to 61 in the event list (plain text has meta value = 60). Then I use select equal events.

[ski]

(sKi could you explain how to do a red circle)

 

Take screenshot, open in Preview. Save as .PDF and then you can use the annotation features (circle, or, text box) and add them to the PDF. Then I convert the PDF to a JPG again.

[FlowerPower]

Couldn't the problem bar numbers appearing in more than one staff be solved by having bar numbers only in the upper/lower staff only, and place the upper staff much closer to the actual score?

 

..could you elaborate FP? arent bar numbers a global thing and therefore we are stuck with them in the same place. I had a go at doing what you suggest by adapting a piano template for the Global Letters but bar numbers remain in the same place... and I couldnt get rid of them in the Rehearsal Letters Staff Style

 

M S

 

Bar numbers can either be shown for all tracks on a page, or only for the upper/lower track on a page. By choosing the latter, one could 'fake' a situation where it looks like the bar numbers that show up in the upper track (the rehearsal marks track a la Ski's suggestion) just are the bar numbers one would expect to see at the top of the page anyway, belonging to the 'real' (musical, 'non-RM') track.

 

I tried it myself (after having suggested it earlier in this thread), and am not convinced that this a convincing solution... I agree with Ski's suggestion that (the way things are now) it's a good idea to create a separate, new file for the final tweaking anyway - so for now, I prefer to avoid the solution with a dummy track.

 

The idea I mentioned, MusicSpirit, was mainly a way to try to get the upper, dummy Rehearsal Marks tracks so close to the real tracks that the bar numbers wouldn't appear as misplaced (those above track 1/R.M.), which would suggest (if this would work properly) that one could switch off displaying bar numbers for the other tracks (except the bottom track).

 

 

1) Insert text (A, B etc) etc. where you want it, in the upper track, and time shift the text by one tick (read on!).

Make sure they are placed at the same subposition eg 1 1 1 2, 17 1 1 2 etc.)

 

2) To adjust the horizontal position of the Rehearsal Marks, use "Select Equal Subpositions'. This means that if you select one Rehearsal Mark, they'll all become selected. Now use 'Align Object Positions Horizontally'.

 

Let me add one, little thing: if you don't have a lot of RMs, you could simply skip the part about time shifting the RMs and about 'Select Equal Subpositions', and select them manually instead.

 

The main thing is to use 'Paste Multiple' in a separate file only for parts (and to adjust the RMs horizontally with 'Align Object Positions Horizontally').

[TC]

I'm very happy that the Rehearsal letters came in to light, I always wanted to share the way I deal with it to see what others will think about it. The beginning it's very similar to Ski way. The rest is far complex but it gives me a clean result with no extra bars lines and preserving multi styles and multi score quantization for a single instrument.

 

http://img.skitch.com/20081123-q4m5571dq1i8rpbf1hif1dk35x.jpg

 

1) create a new instrument or MIDI track (assigned to "no output" or an unused instrument)

2) pencil in a blank region and stretch it to span the length of your song

3) create a new Text Style for your rehearsal letters

4) enter all rehearsal letters (and only rehearsal letters) in that region

 

5) Select all rehearsal letters and change their meta value from 60 to 61 in the event list. In that way you can select all rehearsal letters selecting one of then and then choosing Select Equal (Shift + E).

 

6) Split the region leaving each letter isolated from others and then Set Optimal Region Sizes

rounded by Bar (ctrl + B).

 

http://img.skitch.com/20081123-1yh6y4wm7r2s2ypphq1adfkr2p.jpg

 

7) Select all rehearsal letters regions and drag left end max. to the right. We do that to preserve the instrument original score style in the merge process (step 9)

 

http://img.skitch.com/20081123-1dihwfc87f9s2eaut48kb8ah6r.jpg

 

8) Paste at original position over your instruments:

 

http://img.skitch.com/20081123-bfrtfcf6ji8qx71j7kjic4qb1.jpg

 

9) Rubber band regions per bar and merge it. Be careful not to merge instruments neighbors regions.

 

http://img.skitch.com/20081123-6fm9bdpi8u22rwjb3dahq4m51.jpg

 

Now we have all instruments with Rehearsal Letters on the right place with an independent meta value preserving all multi styles and multi score quantization.

[FlowerPower]

Select all rehearsal letters and change their meta value from 60 to 61 in the event list. In that way you can select all rehearsal letters selecting one of then and then choosing Select Equal (Shift + E).

Thanks! I like this idea - it's better than my suggestion about subpositions.

 

What do you do when the director calls you and say that he wants a new version with some changes? Do you make separate project file for parts...?

 

I'm sure there's a benefit of pasting things the way you do (instead of 'pasting multiple' into all the tracks in the score window), but can't figure it out right now. Please enlighten me!

[TC]

What do you do when the director calls you and say that he wants a new version with some changes? Do you make separate project file for parts...?

 

I use separate files for parts and full score too, When I have to change something it's a PITA, I have to change it on both files.

 

I'm sure there's a benefit of pasting things the way you do (instead of 'pasting multiple' into all the tracks in the score window), but can't figure it out right now. Please enlighten me!

 

Pasting multiple works great if you have a single region per instruments. It doesn't work well however with multiple regions per instruments. I tried also Pasting multiple at original position but it also didn't work. It places a letter "A" at every new region beginning.

[FlowerPower]

And... what's your main reason for not having one region per track? I often end up with many regions per track at some point, but then I select all and use 'Merge Regions per Track'.

[TC]

And... what's your main reason for not having one region per track? I often end up with many regions per track at some point, but then I select all and use 'Merge Regions per Track'.

 

So you can have multiple styles and/or multiple quantizes. The following scores are only possible with multiple styles. In the Harp part there are some bars that rests were hidden. In the piano part it changes from a bass/treble system to a lead sheet single staff. There are many others applications.

[FlowerPower]

That makes sense... I assume that the problem with quantize could be solved if you Fix Quantize, and then merge the tracks (or maybe not, if we're talking about Display Quantize), but obviously there's a need for a fix in Logic that allows 'Paste Multiple' to work even if there are multiple regions in a track.

[Ashermusic]

That makes sense... I assume that the problem with quantize could be solved if you Fix Quantize, and then merge the tracks (or maybe not, if we're talking about Display Quantize), but obviously there's a need for a fix in Logic that allows 'Paste Multiple' to work even if there are multiple regions in a track.

 

There is another way involving creating multiple regions as a Score Set that I contributed to both Orren Merton's "Logic Pro 8 Power" and Logic Pro 7 Power."

 

Sorry I don't have time to type it now.,

[ski]

TC,

 

I've been trying out your method. It works very well, just as advertised!

 

I'm trying to understand one thing... why do you shorten the rehearsal letter regions? This is what I've come up with, let me know if I'm on the right track here...

 

I'll preface this by saying that I've always been mystified by how Logic determines which score style should be retained when you merge two regions with dissimilar score style settings. For example, you have two regions, one set to Bass and another set to Treble. When you merge them, it's anyone's guess as to which score style the resulting region would assume.

 

It would seem that, per your example, by moving the start point of your rehearsal letters to the right you are "masking" the score style associated with rehearsal letter region. So when you merge a (shortened) rehearsal letter region with a "music region", the score style of the music region is preserved (or gets priority).

 

Is this the case?

[TC]

TC,

 

I've been trying out your method. It works very well, just as advertised!

 

I'm trying to understand one thing... why do you shorten the rehearsal letter regions? This is what I've come up with, let me know if I'm on the right track here...

 

I'll preface this by saying that I've always been mystified by how Logic determines which score style should be retained when you merge two regions with dissimilar score style settings. For example, you have two regions, one set to Bass and another set to Treble. When you merge them, it's anyone's guess as to which score style the resulting region would assume.

 

It would seem that, per your example, by moving the start point of your rehearsal letters to the right you are "masking" the score style associated with rehearsal letter region. So when you merge a (shortened) rehearsal letter region with a "music region", the score style of the music region is preserved (or gets priority).

 

Is this the case?

 

Exactly. Thanks for explaining that in a very good English.

 

Fixing the apparently bug in "Pasting multiple at original position" as suggested by FlowerPower, would save us from steps 6,7,8, and 9.

[FlowerPower]

[

Fixing the apparently bug in "Pasting multiple at original position" as suggested by FlowerPower, would save us from steps 6,7,8, and 9.

 

Exactly. Which leaves us with these five steps:

 

1) create a new instrument or MIDI track (assigned to "no output" or an unused instrument)

This is one of two possible ways of doing RMs in Logic 8.02... I guess we agree in that ideally, this shouldn't be necessary (in a future version with a built-in Rehearsal Mark feature).

 

2) pencil in a blank region and stretch it to span the length of your song

Ditto.

 

3) create a new Text Style for your rehearsal letters

In the future, we'll hopefully see such a text style included with the factory set styles.

 

 

4) enter all rehearsal letters (and only rehearsal letters) in that region

If RMs would be implemented in the future, there are at least 2-3 options: Either enter RMs manually, have them linked up with existing markers in one way or the other, or have a separate, independent area (global track?) for Rehearsal Marks. Or - ideally, an option to choose between automatic/manual RMs.

 

5) Select all rehearsal letters and change their meta value from 60 to 61 in the event list. In that way you can select all rehearsal letters selecting one of then and then choosing Select Equal (Shift + E).

This could easily be improved on in the future, by hardwiring meta event 61 to Rehearsal Marks...

 

What other features/functions would you guys like to see in Logic, if a dedicated Rehearsal Mark feature were to be implemented?

 

From a user point of view, I guess most of us want it as simple as possible, which I guess would mean an option of either using already entered marker names or enter/choose something else, and a default that lets us print RMs for individual parts with no extra work needed to be done, and full score (conductor printout) with RMs only once (in the upper track. (I'll mention some other ideas later).

 

I assume Logic developers read discussions in internet forums, so why not, after these discussions about possible workarounds, try to figure out what the ideal implementation of Rehearsal Marks would look like?

[ski]

The idea of a factory preset for rehearsal letters is a good one, but I doubt there'd be a consensus as to what they should look like (aside from being boxed). If it's like the other preset text styles, sure, they can be changed to suit any user's preferences. But the only way to save those settings for future use would be to create a template song, and that's not always practical.

 

It would be much better to see a text style library feature implemented. As the name implies, this feature would let you save your custom text styles in a "text library file" that could be imported (either in whole or in part) into any new Logic song.

 

Here's how I see this implemented:

 

• individual text styles should be able to be saved in an editable text library (details below). There would be a "save selected" dialog where you could shift-select (or tick checkboxes) individual styles from an existing song to be saved in the library. Newly added styles would be stored sequentially from the first empty position in the library, eliminating any need to warn against overwriting styles of the same name.

 

• users should be able to save multiple library files under user-definable names (jazz charts, lead sheet, standard, etc.), and these files should be accessible so that style libraries can be exchanged between users

 

• styles in a library can be individually brought into a new song at any time, using a similar selection dialog (shift-select or checkboxes). These would be added sequentially at the end of the text styles list in an existing song, thereby eliminating the possibility of an existing text style being overwritten and unduly changing the display of text in the song

 

• styles stored in a library would be editable (create new style, delete existing style, edit existing style), and unlike the current Font pane, the display of the different styles should accurately reflect the size of the text

 

================================================

 

I think our discussion shouldn't be limited to just RM's: RM's are a kind of global marking as are tempo indications, so I'd like to suggest that if some kind of mechanism is put in place for RM's, then go all the way and include tempo markings. Another thing that's often important for film scoring are SMPTE markings. Sure, you can always copy/paste SMPTE numbers as text, but taking off on FP's idea of a Rehearsal Letter text item (similar to text, lyric, date, seq, etc.) would be SMPTE.

 

Regarding tempo markings, I think it's great that inserting tempo symbols automatically adopts the tempo of that point in the song. But I think the tempo values should be editable after their entered and never automatically revert or adopt the actual tempo of the song once the value is edited. Such a marking should then be displayed in red (but would, of course, print black on the page). Perhaps an OPT+2click on a tempo value could cause it to revert to the actual tempo of the song.

 

Personally I wouldn't necessarily want my RM's to be tied to markers.

 

Not to discount the idea of an RM text item at all, but if the best idea would seem to be (to the developers) manual entry of RM's on a separate staff, per my tutorial above, I'd suggest adding additional parameters to the text style editor that would allow users to suppress all barlines as well as time signatures. Personally I like using the No.Clef1 to provide a guideline on which to at least see the staff style itself for purposes of placing the RM's. Then with a single edit (changing it to No.Clef0), that line disappears and I'm in business. This method would let people enter RM's just once and then set up Score Styles which include that track for the purpose of printing out indivual parts.

 

Having said that... one perennial problem with tempo markings and RM's is placement on individual parts. Particularly for orchestral or band scores, these markings need to be moved around to prevent collisions with other score markings or notes. So really, when printing parts from a single song (and using the method of creating individual Score Styles per part, where each Style includes a specific instrument + the RM track), a single RM track might not do the job. It may well be necessary to make duplicates of the RM track, one per part, and then create the individual parts-oriented Score Styles using the instrument + a specific copy of the RM track. Short of copying the rehearsal letters into each part, this would be the only way to tweak the positions of the RM's.

 

And this is why it might be just as easy to make a copy of text-based RM's and copy them to individual tracks (per TC's method), adjusting their placement as needed on a per-part basis. This also eliminates the need to create custom Score Styles for each part that include both the instrument track and the RM track. But of course, this kind of thing would totally mess up the look of your conductor's score, as each part would now contain its own RM's.

 

In conclusion, I'd like there to continue to be a variety of methods for including RM's, and not have a dedicated feature for this. I'd much prefer to see the text library, RM text item, and additions to the score editor parameters rather than a "you can only do it this way now" type of RM implementation.

 

My 2-cents. OK, it was more like 99-cents, but who's counting LOL!

Edited November 25, 2008 by ski

[FlowerPower]

I agree in your idea about a global library- not only for text styles, but for other stuff as well (like eg. patch names for external MIDI gear).

 

Regarding RMs, I'm all for both a built in feature and full manual control (as always).

 

I don't think a built-in feature should be based on the workaround we use, but rather look at what the ideal solution would be for all those who don't know the workarounds. I don't think an average user don't want to deal with "No.Clef0)" etc...

 

As this thread shows, we all seem to be able to pick up ideas from others, and that's valid even for the most experienced users, since Logics is such a 'deep' program. IMO using Logic shouldn't need any level of "nerdiness" (?) or willingness to dive into forums to find smart solutions.

 

Let's say I've never used Logic before. I want to add rehearsal marks. Maybe I already have markers - and maybe not. What would I do if I don't have any markers?

 

I'd probably just want to add markers manually in the score itself, one by one, by typing "A", "B" etc, or by using other terms (numbers, or names). The problem arises when I want the same RMs on other tracks, or when I want to align or edit them. A solution is needed for situations where changes occur after the 'master' rehearsal marks on track one has been copied to other tracks.

 

1) IMO it should be possible to define a text as a Rehearsal Mark, just like we can define it as Lyrics or Chord, and just like we already can insert Date, Region- or Instrument name in the score.

 

2) If we define a piece of text as a RM, there could be an option (under Project Settings) to show the RMs in the Marker area (just like there should be a way to use an already existing marker set as RMs). THis way, having entered RMs for the whole piece would also optionally place a set of markers in the bar ruler - a nice surprise for all those who don't use markers yet.

 

3) There could even be a setting for Show Rehearsal Marks per... track (or Staff Style)?

 

4) There could be an option for Show RMs on all tracks/first track/first track in full score view but all tracks in single track view.

 

5) Users should be able to change the default settings for the RM style, or use other styles (which, like Ski suggests, should be loadable/savable from/to disk).

 

There could be a global track for RMs, but even if RMs in score would be derived from the Rehearsal Mark global track, they should be editable/movable. They should ideally freely editable (or could use abbreviations: Chorus 2 could become C2 when converted to a Rehearsal Mark etc). Using one of the 9 already existing marker alternatives would maybe be a better solution than to have an extra global track?

 

Logic already has a top margin in score, plus so called 'header space', and there could of course also have been a 'Rehearsal Mark Space', that somehow could have it's special functions (eg. that it the user could decide if this area would be shown for single parts in full score mode). Since Rehearsal Mark placement sometimes can be tricky - their positions may crash with notes, text, lyrics, chord symbol positions etc, a more or less fixed Rehearsal Mark Space may not be such a good idea.

 

 

If we would have control over font, look etc. for these RMs, just like we have with other types of text already, and a setting would let us decide that they should be shown only at the top of the page in full score mode, but over every single stave when looking at (and printing out) individual parts, we would have come a long way.

 

If a RM would look good in track one, but crash with some notes in track 7, we could have a problem with some of these solutions. This could be solved by a horizontal/vertical offset setting per track (controlled simply by moving the RM on the relevant track with the layout tool), as if we would have "RM aliases' on individual tracks.

 

A last solution would be a command that would copy 'aliases' of the master RM track to other tracks, combined with a way to decide that they could be hidden (without being deleted) individually, and a function that would let these 'slave RMs/aliases' would be deleted or moved if their 'master' was altered. They would still need to be visually movable on an individual track basis. Using aliases would imply that if I change the name of a RM in the master track, the name will automatically change in the lave tracks as well.

 

Whatever solution they implement (if they implement anything) a way not to have to alter/add/delete RMs for all the individual parts if changes are being made is essential, and again: these solutions would prohibit people to use other methods...