Score Editor: Adding Rehearsal Letters to your Score

[FlowerPower]

Here's what I believe would be the absolutely simplest, no-brainer-ish way to implement automatic Rehearsal Marks in Logic (a good, manual solution would of course be needed as well):

 

If the project already have markers: a menu option (in Score) which says "Insert Rehearsal Marks at Marker Positions" would be needed. The inserted RMs would automatically be called A, B, C etc. based on their time position (just like markers are automatically called Marker 1, Marker 2 etc based on their position.)

 

If the project doesn't have markers already:

The user could place a little icon inside the score, one by one - by using Drag & Drop - to whichever position he wants the RMs to appear at. Just like how inserting Song Name, Date etc, in Score works (the inserted data is defined automatically by Logic), these manually inserted RMs would also automatically be called A, B, C etc.

 

In Full Score mode, they would show up at the uppermost track.

In Single Track mode, they would show up above each track.

 

 

ETA: Maybe this last part of the discussion (how things could be done in the future, as opposed to how things can or cannot be done today), belong to another section of this forum?

[Music Spirit]

thanks TC for great illustrations and explanation... and to FP and sKi - all of this most fascinating and useful

 

best

 

m s

[Music Spirit]

TC,

 

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?

 

Indeed sKi - I have also found this to be the case merging regions. If you have a bunch of regions for a particular instrument with different Score Styles, and merge them, it seems that Logic gives priority to the first region from the Left of the Arrange page, tarring all regions to the right with the same brush ...

[ski]

Here's what I believe would be the absolutely simplest, no-brainer-ish way to implement automatic Rehearsal Marks in Logic (a good, manual solution would of course be needed as well):

 

If the project already have markers: a menu option (in Score) which says "Insert Rehearsal Marks at Marker Positions" would be needed. The inserted RMs would automatically be called A, B, C etc. based on their time position (just like markers are automatically called Marker 1, Marker 2 etc based on their position.)

 

If the project doesn't have markers already:

The user could place a little icon inside the score, one by one - by using Drag & Drop - to whichever position he wants the RMs to appear at. Just like how inserting Song Name, Date etc, in Score works (the inserted data is defined automatically by Logic), these manually inserted RMs would also automatically be called A, B, C etc.

 

In Full Score mode, they would show up at the uppermost track.

In Single Track mode, they would show up above each track.

 

Brilliant!

 

And if there were a preset RM text style item (or one specifically named "Rehearsal", say) could we say that those RM's would automatically adopt that text style?

 

One thing tho... markers are still buggy in Logic (at least on PPC). They will randomly disappear at times, just like they did in L7... So that would need to get fixed first so that markers didn't become a liability for this scheme you propose.

 

Also, I think it might be a good idea for this lil' algorithm to distinguish between scene markers and normal markers.

 

Actually, in light of your idea I think the notion of having multiple marker alternatives is crucial. That way you could create a marker alt. exculsively for the purpose of defining sections of songs related to score editor markup without having to sacrifice existing markers.

 

ETA: Maybe this last part of the discussion (how things could be done in the future, as opposed to how things can or cannot be done today), belong to another section of this forum?

 

Yes, this is one of those threads that morphed from a tutorial into a feature request brainstorming session. But it's all good. When it looks like we've consolidated our ideas, someone should write this up as a feature request and post it in the feature request section.

[FlowerPower]

Actually, in light of your idea I think the notion of having multiple marker alternatives is crucial.

Hi Ski,

we have 9 Marker alternatives already... do you mean RM alternatives?

[ski]

we have 9 Marker alternatives already...

 

We do? Could you please point me to them? I searched the manual and can find no mention of them. And I see nothing like that right within Logic.

[FlowerPower]

Here you go:

[ski]

!!!Thanks FP!!!

 

Funny that it doesn't appear directly in the marker list as it does in the Tempo and Signature lists.

[FlowerPower]

I just found out that Finale is capable of allowing independent placements of score symbols that are placed only in one staff, but shown on many.

 

If I understand this right, you can place eg. a sfz on the first track, and have it shown on several other tracks without copy-pasting the symbol over to these other tracks, You'll still be able to edit the graphical position of the symbol's appearance in the individual parts without affecting it's position on other tracks.

 

That's something that would be great to have in Logic, and such a feature would be brilliant for rehearsal letters as well. It would probably require a new hybrid between global and local text objects (text aliases?), and I don't have much details about how this is done in Sibelius or Finale, but Logic doesn't have anything like this - with one exception: Global Text:

 

Working With Global Text

Global text objects appear in all score sets of a project (score, parts, and so on),

although they are inserted just once.

Score sets determine which instrument tracks are included in the score display. Each

project can contain as many score sets as required. Full details on score sets can be

found in “Using Score Sets to Create Scores and Parts” on page 762.

The position of global text does not relate to bar positions (unlike regular text objects),

but is defined as a graphic position on the page. Given this behavior, global text can

only be inserted and seen in Page view. The most obvious example of a global text

object is a song name (in the page header).

To create global text:

 

An additional global text function that lets us insert global text that IS linked to a bar position, and which could be placed anywhere, not only in the margins or the header/footer would be brilliant. Today it's only possible to assign global text to four zones: Top, Header, Side, and Footer. A fifth option, 'Track' would do the trick - not only for RMs, but also for all other symbols, as long as assigning a symbol to a track would show it globally (on all other tracks) when these are in single view mode (as opposed to full score mode).[/i]

[Tayto]

Well seven long years have passed and still using v9.1.8 here, but to summarize and in case it's still relevant - for rehearsal/tempo/expression marks/directions that appear in score on the top stave only, yet must appear in all parts:

 

 

Easiest to just enter markings on top stave of score wysiwyg style, then save a new project version for parts only. The trick then is not to copy all score markings at once but to deal with them one at a time:

- copy a score marking (maybe after resizing it if required?) and then vertically rubber-band-select relevant bar in all except top stave while being careful not to select any neighbour regions

- use 'paste multiple at original position'. This method works fine even where parts contain multiple regions/staff styles

 

--------------OR more elaborate workaround requiring only one project file and Acrobat pro:

 

Ski's is the ONLY method not to preclude single project file approach but means that for parts-> must use score sets.

 

In screenshot (the original ones from this post don't show up so I've included this) notice distance of dummy score to markup; position markup below dummy stave so it looks to be just above first stave of score (n.b. Clear distance means that afterwards in Acrobat, will be easy to rectangle select dummy staff to hide).

 

- pdf print all score and parts into a folder

- in Acrobat 'combine files into a pdf' and in 'comment>drawing markups' use rectangle tool to cover initially just one unwanted score element. Then right click this to change colour to white, lock and set these choices as default. Clean up rest of score/parts: it's really very fast with all in the one document.

- Next (due to an undesirable behaviour in apple 'Preview' and other viewers which displays shadow under comments) save from acrobat as postscript file (with 'include comments'). Can then reopen this in Preview and re-save as pdf (and best to do this via print menu as this stops 'popup' behaviour or whatever they call it). Delete all the other pdfs. C'est fini.

 

But wait. Of course that was too easy so here's the rub:

Multi-measure rests (because dummy region is displayed along with individual parts) need to be merged for duration of piece whereupon you could manually enter say, user barlines where you want multi-rests to automatically break e.g. at rehearsal letters -> from logic manual: "The duration of the rest is automatically calculated with respect to the position of the next note, user rest, or global symbol (repeat signs, double bar lines, and so on)" =>it seems that a good practise (whatever your method for parts) would be to associate one of these with the likes of rehearsal letters i.e. every time you enter/move/delete a rehearsal mark, you would do the same for its associated global symbol. User barlines can be edited in signature list. I think a good method for adding multirests to parts is to select both staves and hold shift when entering and this is actually pretty fast to do with pencil tool once these global-symbol-multirest-auto-enders are set up. (TIP: Just discovered that if you use OpusChords font for multi rest number, it won't collide with the 'count multiple rests' generated bar numbers when using positive 'vertical position' score setting. And yet these counted-rest numbers are inexplicably linked with the bar number 'step' setting which must be set to 1 otherwise won't display on every multi-rest thus rendering the feature literally superfluous!).

Dummy part for full duration of piece means having to white-out for every system in score and every part! Still wouldn't take very long with rectangle tool in acrobat but will make scores (and esp. parts) look quite messy in logic. So one must decide whether this method is worth it just for the sake of only requiring a single project file for both score and parts?…but that's enough thrill seeking for one day.

dummy part staff style/scoreset settings

[angelonyc]

I might be missing the point here.. But you can cut any track into regions, and changing their score paramaters.. like more 4 bars of flute down an octave.. It will print a -8 at bottom, and notes will appear an octave lower.. You can take a regions, hide, rests, stems, any things your want.. You can do this to the original midi track.. so when you edit the score you edit the notes.. or make a dummy copy of track, that is used for score display only.. This way you can modify things to look best on score. and not mess up the original file..

 

The score editor is suprisingly deep, if you spend time studying it... poorest documented section of Logic.