Several settings in File|Set Preferences affect how
MIDI files are imported. You can import a file directly to tab, to
treble or bass only, or to treble/bass keyboard pairs, depending on the
pitch range of the notes (which you can also set).
1) Objects are entered just as before: namely, you click the mouse where
you want the object to start (or put the caret
there with the arrow keys); click on the button
for the kind of object you want (or use a shortcut key combination),
then click the mouse where you want the middle
and end of the object to appear. You will notice that arcs appear
much smoother and more accurately reflect
the shape you want (this is thanks to the fact I no longer am supporting
Win 3.1, so I'm able to use Win 95's far superior
curve drawing features).
Here's where things have gotten better:
2) If you want to modify the size, position, or shape of an object you've entered, click on it once. A dotted selection rectanglewill appear around the object with "handles" in each corner.
3) To move the object (after it is selected):
- Click the mouse in the middle and drag the
object to where you want
or - Use the keyboard arrow keys to move it U/D/L/R Arrow a
pixel at a time
4) To change the size:
- Drag any one of the dark square "handles"
or - Shift + U/D/L/R Arrow enlarges object in the arrow
direction
- Ctrl + U/D/L/R Arrow will shrink the
object
5) To change the shape of arcs and "V-lines" double click on object
For arcs: Two small "control points" will appear in small
squares.
Drag these around and change the shape as you wish
For V-Lines: One control point will appear at the midpoint
of
the line, drag it around to change the shape.
6) To delete an extended object click on it to select and hit
the delete (Del) key
New extended object features:
1) Copy/paste extended objects:
I know that it is often desirable to
make multiple copies of a certain arc shape, but before you always had
to redraw
the arc each time and it was difficult to get the
shape identical each time... Now you can select and extended
object (click on it once) and hit Edit|Copy (Ctrl+C),
move the caret to where you want the copy to start, and hit
Ctrl+V.
2) Staff text can now be up to 49 characters long (vs. 32) and you can
now set an optional font for any staff text.
In other words, staff text will be drawn in the
standard staff text font (set via File|Set Preferences|Staff Lines)
by default, but if you want a certain bit of text
to be in a different font hit the new "Font" button and select
the font for this new piece of text. The 2nd
font you choose will be the default font which shows up when you
hit the Font button again until you choose a new
one. This will be good for dynamics expressions such as mf, pf
which you may want to have larger and bolder than
normal staff text. You also have the option to make the
text background opaque or transparent.
3) Triplets/tuplets have several new options now:
a) Use File|Set Preferences|Staff Lines to set a
font for Triplets - it no longer has to share "Staff Text" font
b) When you enter a triplet a dialog will appear
allowing you to set the text ( "3" is the default, but you can make it
"6:9" or even "rake" if you wish -up to 15 characters). You will
also be able to chose "up pointing" or "down pointing".
4) Up and down arcs are now "tapered" in shape ie. thicker in the middle and narrow at the two ends. I think they look really good!
5) The vertical ends of phrase lines can now be adjusted in length.
Enter the phrase line, click on it once to select it, then hit Shift
+ U/D Arrow (or use the mouse) to stretch the selection box up or down.
This will lengthen the ends of the phrase lines, which will make them better
for use as repeat endings within staff lines (a opposed to using a Rhythm
line).
Nudging will only affect the last symbol entered
at a specific vertical position, so if you have to nudge several symbols
at the same vertical location you should enter the first symbol, adjust
its position, then enter the next and immediately nudge its position, etc.
1) Auto stem direction:
There are three options:
Inward (toward staff) -
good for entering single voice music such as violin solos and long note
runs. If you
are transcribing
from a manuscript and you notice most of the stems point inward, choose
this option.
(shortcut:
Alt+Shift+I)
Outward (stems point away
from staff) - good for entering music with two or more voices on a single
staff, the
low notes
point down and the high notes point up. If you are transcribing from
fingerstyle music with
bass note
stems pointing down, treble stems pointing up, choose this.
(shortcut: Alt+Shift+O)
None - the normal method:
t = 8th up, T = 8th down.
Don't
forget you can lock CAPSLOCK key to get all down stem notes (hit Shift
key to make an up stem note).
(shortcut:
Alt+Shift+K)
There are certain cases where Auto-stem direction doesn't
strictly follow these rules because MusEdit overrides them in cases where
it is trying to do what is most logical. For example, if you are
entering a note cluster with the first three notes above the middle B line
(so note stems point up in "Outward" mode) and the last note is below the
B line MusEdit will keep that stem pointing up to be consistent with the
other notes in the cluster. There are a couple of other cases
like this too. You should be able to toggle to "None" if you want
to override the auto-stem behavior when necessary.
2) Auto bar insertion:
Set a time signature (or 4/4 is assumed) and
enter a mixture of notes. Start with 4 quarters and a bar will appear;
do some quarters and 8th's; do syncopation such as q q
q 8threst(,) q <- notice that the bar chops the last q into two
8th's so it can put the bar in the middle.
Auto bar will not rearrange bars and notes
all over the place if you go to an early measure in your score and put
in an extra quarter note. But if you want (see File|Preferences)
you can get warnings: for example if you have a measure with, say, 4 quarters,
and you try to add another note -not just as a chord, but an extra note.
You'll get a warning. A slightly different warning occurs when you
try to add a note to a measure which is already screwed up, such as one
with just 5 16th notes.
3) Auto cluster joining.
With a 4/4 time signature enter
notes such as: 16th+16th+8th 8th+8th qrtr 8th+...
the clusters should join automatically. If the time signature denominator
is 4, 8, or 16 clusters will be joined into quarter note values;
if the denominator is 2 they will join into half note values.
Auto-cluster joining WILL get confused if you stick, say, a 32nd note in
the middle of a cluster with 8th notes, so there never is a clean quarter
note boundary. It won't crash, but it will just keep joining notes
until a clean boundary shows up again. If you make such weird clusters
it will be up to you to chop them in the right places. (tip: an easy way
to chop a cluster which is already joined is to insert a bar in the middle
of the cluster where you want to break it up, then backspace over the bar).
You can now use larger tab fonts too, since the lines are spaced further.
You can now set line lengths to 0 length. This means the staff will disappear. You can still enter symbols, but they will be floating in empty space. This is good for such things as putting up and down arrow symbols above chord diagrams by putting a zero length staff line above the chord diagrams and then entering the up/down arrow symbols as needed.
-the MIDI play dialog box can now stay open all the time, it doesn't
have to be exited after playing.
-Dialog has been made wider and narrower so that it won't cover any
of the score if it is placed along the upper edge of the MusEdit
window
-the regular MusEdit caret is now basically the same as the MIDI play
caret, ie. MIDI play will start wherever the regular editing caret happens
to be, and when MIDI play stops, the MIDI caret turns into the editing
caret. This makes it much easier to play from a certain spot in the
score
Auto-offseting of "crowded" objects
I now use the fact MusEdit can store "nudge" information
for symbols to let MusEdit be smarter about handling things like:
-close notes in chords
-close accidentals which formerly piled on top of each other
-parentheses around notes with accidentals
-parentheses around two digit tab fingering numbers
-glissandos, up/down arrows, tall parentheses around complicated chords
3) APPEARANCE IMPROVEMENT:
Tuning pitches at the beginning of a tab line with alternate tuning
should no longer clip each other off. In fact you can now
use a larger tab font on tab lines without the digits clipping each
other -they may overlap, but they won't "blank out" overlapping digits.
This should be true on printouts also.
4) APPEARANCE IMPROVEMENT:
Now there is a small space on BOTH sides of tab digits -it used
to be just on the right side (adjustable by "Tab Clipping" under Preferences).
It will be one pixel on the left is you use a small tab clip value; two
pixels on the left with large clip values.
5) APPEARANCE IMPROVEMENT:
Treble fingering numbers (and the circle around them for string
numbering) have been moved two pixels left so they don't
overlap note stems.
8) APPEARANCE IMPROVEMENT:
-"Dots" (for dotted notes) a bit smaller on printouts.
-diagonal glissandos (alternate symbols) a bit shorter
-circles around half notes, harmonic notes on tab lines look better
on printouts
-stems on tails on notes a bit thinner, and better alignment with vertical
stems on high magnification printouts
-extra piece of stem for down stem notes which made a "0" fingering
look like "|0" is gone now
9) APPEARANCE IMPROVEMENT:
Most writing, such at the "3" in triplet and all "staff text" now has
a "transparent" background so there isn't white space behind the text.
eg. putting staff text over staff lines will allow the staff lines to show
through behind the text now. This may be good or bad, but in general
I think it looks better.
10) SMARTER BEHAVIOR:
If you wanted a repeat phrase to repeat several times you had to insert
staff text such as "3 times" directly above the right
repeat, but this would look weird because most of the text ended up
being to the right of the repeat. Now you can put that text several
positions to the left of the right repeat and MusEdit will still know it's
supposed to be associated with the right repeat:
Old way:
New way:
3 times
3 times
[ |
]
[ |
]
2) 5,6,7 fret chords don't have giant extra space below the frets.
3) Better handling of 5 string chords in chord designer.
4) Triplets in an earlier beta (2.92 b1) would sometimes get confused
and cause MIDI play to suddenly race through the
remainder of a piece. This happened because triplets don't divide
into well rounded time intervals the way 1/4, 1/8, 1/16... notes do, and
MusEdit would get confused because of the small remaining time interval,
interpreting it as an extra 128th note... MusEdit now cleans up these dangling
remainders (hopefully) but if that fails MusEdit's safety valve -which
is to reset timing when it hits bars- is reactivated after being accidentally
turned off in the earlier beta version.
I've built in a better capacity to make MusEdit forward-compatible.
MusEdit has always been backward-compatible, meaning the new versions of MusEdit can open old version files; but OLD versions have had trouble opening files created with newer versions. I'm hoping I've fixed it so that you will be able to use this 3.07 version to open files created in the year 2001.
Updated Help file
Some details of banjo fingering have been fixed