The Ties Into Second Ending plugin

Transcription

1 The Ties Into Second Ending plugin Bob Zawalich August 16, 2018 This plugin simulates the appearance of ties into a second or later ending by using a variation of a technique used in the LV Fake plugin. It turns a note into a tuplet consisting of a very small note (64 th ) tied to a note that appears to have the duration of the original note. The first note and the triplet brackets are hidden, so it appears as if the visible note, which seems to have the same duration as the original note, is tied from nothing. The note that starts the tie is given the notehead style HeadlessStemlessSilent, which the plugin will derive from its associated data file if it is not defined in the score. How the tuplet is calculated I use a 64 th note as the hidden note because that creates a fairly minimal offset between it and the visible note. The original note is divided into the number of 64 th notes it contains. If that number is n, then the tuplet is created by entering a 64 th note and using a tuplet ratio of (n +1):n. In the example above, a half note contains th notes, so n is 32 and the tuplet ratio is 33:32. For a quarter note, the ratio will be 17:16; an 8 th note will be 9:8. These are kind of weird, but they will be invisible and will ultimately have no effect on appearance or playback. Adjusting Spacing of the resulting notes. The tied note that appears after the plugin is run is part of a pair of notes in a tuplet, the first of which is hidden. Though the first note is small (a 64 th note), the second note will still be shifted to the right. You will

2 very likely need to adjust the position of the 2 nd note so that the ties are the desired size and they align with the starting notes in other staves. If there is too much space on the left, or the ties are too short, try undoing, increasing the (negative) value in the Hidden note horizontal shift edit box and running the plugin again. This will move the invisible note to the left. The visible note will be selected when the plugin ends. Use Shift+Alt/Option+Left to move the note as far as you can to the left, which should align the note with other normal first notes in other staves in the system. If you find that the ties are too short after moving the note to the left, try undoing, then running the plugin again with a larger negative number in the Hidden note horizontal field. You can also change the tie length somewhat more awkwardly by selecting the handle at the right end of the tie (or even both handles of the tie) and using Shift+Alt/Option+Right/Left, or mouse dragging, to move the selected end(s) of the tie. Unfortunately, the manipulation of the tie described above cannot be done by a plugin, but the horizontal shift for the visible note, and the selection of the visible note were added to assist if this mechanism is chosen. Resetting Position or Note Spacing will undo all this, so be careful not to reset these bars.

3 The HeadlessStemlessSilent notehead style and the plugin data file This plugin needs to hide a note or chord that contains a tie without hiding the tie. Just using Hide will hide both the note and the tie, so the plugin uses a user-defined notehead style called HeadlessStemlessSilent, which was created by making a new notehead style based on the Headless style and turning off the Stems and Plays checkboxes. When the plugin is installed in Sibelius 7 or later, both the plugin and a data file called HiddenNoteheadStyles_v6.dat are copied into the same Plugins subfolder. (If you are installing in in Sibelius 6 you will need to copy both files from the zip file to the plugin subfolder). If HeadlessStemlessSilent is not defined in the current score, the plugin will open the data file and copy some notes from it into your score, which will define the Notehead Style. This will happen only the first time the plugin is run on a score. The data file is actually a Sibelius score in Sibelius 6 format. If you run the plugin and Sibelius asks you to save changes to the data file, just say Yes. This will save the data file in the current version, and it will not ask the question again. Side effects of opening the data file A plugin cannot create a notehead style, so it if it needs one it can import it in 2 ways. One is to import a House Style that contains the definition. The problem with importing a House Style is that even if you try to just import Noteheads you will also import Fonts and Symbols, and this can affect the appearance of your score. The other mechanism, which this plugin uses, is to open a score that contains notes that use the desired style, copy the notes, and paste then into the current score. Those notes can then be deleted, but the Notehead definition will remain. In Sibelius 7 or later, when a plugin opens and closes a score, some Ribbon entries can be temporarily disabled once the plugin ends. The easiest workaround for this is to open the File tab, and then return to your previous tab, which should now be active. Given the choices of having to stop the plugin and tell you to define a Notehead style, or to change the text in a score, or to have a screen flash when the data score is opened and have some disabled Ribbon fields, I chose

4 what I considered to be the least of the evils. If you define this Notehead style in your Manuscript Papers, you will never need to see the data file open, but I think using the data file is probably the simplest workaround.. Dotted notes and articulations Rhythm dots and articulations are not hidden if you hide the noteheads with special notehead styles. For articulations, you can either just turn off the articulations altogether, or turn them off on the hidden note and leave them on the visible note (which is what Ties Into Second Ending does), but it is probably best not to use them in this situation. The mechanism used by this plugin assures that the first note will be undotted, so hiding a dotted note is not an issue. Multiple Voices and multiple durations The plugin works fine if applied to a selection with multiple voices of different durations, since the first note is always the same size. Making hidden objects visible If you check the box when creating the ties notes, the tuplets will be visible and the hidden note will be give the Arrow down notehead style, to make it distinct from normal notes. This is to make it easier to tell what was happening. You can undo or delete the entry, or manually hide the notes and tuplets once you have done any manipulations.

5 Alternate Workaround to have ties in 2 nd endings Postlude What is in the data file This score is installed in the same folder as the plugin file. It can be opened as a score, independently of the plugin, to serve as a source of the Notehead styles. The plugin will open this score, copy notes it wants, close this file, and paste the notes into the current score. It then deletes those notes, which leaves the Notehead Style defined in the current score.

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