Tempo change in a bar

[monkeyben]

I am writing my first piece of music in Notion, please be gentle as I'm not all that experienced with musical notion

I want to make the first three quarter notes of one particular bar play a little faster than the set tempo. I've found I can't add a tempo change inside the middle of a bar, so is there any other notation I can use from the Notion Palette?

[Brian]

Hello,

This is Brian from NOTION Music. I think the best way to accomplish what you are doing is to use our NTempo feature. To do this, simply add an NTempo staff to your score in Score Setup and add quarter notes to the entire staff. You can then use the icon that looks like a microphone on the transport bar (bar that contains the play button) to record your NTempo performance. The NTempo feature will allow you to tap your own tempo on the middle row of keys on the keyboard. It is a great feature. You may want to go to the user guide and read up on it a bit. You can then hide the NTempo staff in Score Setup so that it is not shown on your score.

Another option would be to add an acellerando. To add an acellerando or retardando to your score, simply press the "r" key to arm your mouse pointer with the feature. The acellerando is a gradual ramp up to a new tempo so it is not exactly what you are looking for. Let me know if this helps.

Best,



Brian

[thorrild]

Hello Brian and monkeyben,

You can actually add a tempo indication at any point in a measure, as long as one of the staves has an entry at that point. For instance, if your top staff has a full rest and another staff has four quarters (or quarter rests!) in the measure in question, pressing Shift-[hyphen] (to get the metronome mark cursor) and clicking on one of the quarters in the staff containing them will place the tempo mark at that beat in the measure, instead of at the beginning of the measure.

Best,
Thorrild

[monkeyben]

Thanks for the info Brian. NTempo sounds like a nifty feature! I came up with a nice melody on a toy keyboard and wanted to get it written down before I forgot it, but I'll definitely read the manual and give NTempo a go!

And thank you Thorrild - your method worked great I was trying to copy and paste the tempo that Notion puts at the start of the song. That is fine for now and when I get more of the song written down I'll try NTempo.

[DaddyO]

One slick thing about N-Tempo that I only figure out recently is the ability to copy notes from one of your staffs and paste it onto the N-Tempo staff. It ignores pitch and picks up the note durations from what you copied.

So what I find myself doing is identify the staff with the best, cleanest representation of the melody, copy it, and paste it into the N-Tempo staff. Voila! You can insert a tempo change easily anywhere your melodic thread has a note.