Newbie Question

[Aarons]

Hello everyone!

I'm brand new to Notion and so far I'm not having too much difficulty. I've been inputting some old scores to try and get the feel of how everything works. Overall, I'm able to figure most of my questions out or find them on the forum. However, I can't for the life of me figure out how to increase the number of measures in my score . I started with a blank page and added the instruments that I needed. I've inputted 32 measures and it won't allow me to go any further. Am I missing something? I just want to keep writing and have it add measures or type in "X" number of measures. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[idiotSavant]

Took me a while to figure this one out as well. You use a tool called Add Barline in the Entry Palette, to add a single barline in a measure (you can also use [I] on the keyboard). This in effect splits one measure into two. It's not exactly intuitive but once you figure it out it works well.

[Aarons]

Thanks for the direction. I will give that a shot when i get home. Also, do you know how I would be able to combine multiple percussion parts into one staff? I have a piece that I'm working on for 2 percussion players and I have to make a new staff for each instrument. When I originally wrote the score I just used 2 percussion staffs and then updated for the appropriate instrument. Does Notion have the ability to do this or am I stuck with 20 different staffs? Thanks again.

[thorrild]

Since Notion is designed with the idea that each instrument needs its own staff (for playback reasons, I suppose), I'm afraid you're stuck with 20 individual staves for your piece. However, here are some not very helpful workarounds:

1. If you can deal with no more than 4 percussion instruments on one staff, you may have some luck assigning those 4 instrument sounds to 4 different layers. All four instruments will have to be the kind that you can notate comfortably on a five-line staff (if that's what you start out with). If you are really, REALLY lucky, your piece can be printed on 5 staves instead of 20. And if you lay out the score so that line breaks occur when the player switches instruments, you can further reduce the number of staves by hiding the resting staves (Tools menu).

2. Make a score of your piece specifically for printing. Enter all the music on 1 undefined staff and make it the way you want it to look on the page. It won't play back, at least not anything other than a piano sound, but it will work for a live player who needs good notation.

3. Use a third-party library that allows you to have several percussion instruments on 1 staff. There are unfortunate side effects to this: You have to find and buy the library you need, and you have to write a set of custom rules for that library — not an easy task!

Best wishes,
Thorrild

[pcartwright]

Create a basic staff ans use Shift + I to route the notation to the percussion staves. Repeat when a different instrument is needed. Hide the blank percussion staves and you're good to go.

[Surfwhammy]

On the Mac, you can do it with a Basic Staff and a set of Change Instrument instructions, as shown in the following video . . .

NOTION 4 Basic Staff ~ Change Instruments ~ Multiple Percussion Instruments -- QuickTime MOVIE -- MP4 (52.9MB, approximately 9 minutes and 29 seconds)

This also works with VSTi virtual instruments, but you need to use channels rather than instruments, although the concept is the same . . .

On the Mac, you only need one Basic Staff when you use bundled Notion Instruments, because NOTION 4 knows its instruments, but it is important to note that some of the instruments come from the various add-on Notion Expansion Sounds packs, so while an instrument might be listed, whether it is present on the computer depends on if it is a bundled NOTION 4 instrument or is one of the instruments in a Notion Expansion Sounds pack, as well as if you have purchased and installed the required Notion Expansion Sounds pack or individual instrument, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: There is a virtual festival of percussion instruments available as Notion Expansion Sounds to augment and enhance the already nice set of bundled NOTION 4 percussion instruments . . . ]

Mac Version: Notion Expansion Sounds (Notion Music)

Fabulous! :)