Problems with lyrics and spaces

[edbradburn]

Hi Folks,

I'm using Notion to enter a song right now and have hit a problem almost immediately.

It just so happens that I have a word on one note followed by another so that they run into each other.

Since Notion uses the space bar as an "action key" (jump to next syllable), I can't enter spaces to sort this out.

Anyone got any ideas?

Here's a snippet:



Surely Notion has foreseen this problem?

[pcartwright]

Maybe tweaking the size of the notation (full score options)... I'm not sure if that will help, but it's worth a shot.

[edbradburn]

Hi,

Yes, I tried tweaking the size a bit but this only moved the problem elsewhere.

Another thing is that the "-" technique also seems to be a bit hit-and-miss.

Here's another screenshot showing that problem:



I typed "Gib-" and then "son". Not sure why the spacing's shot here, since "ashore" (I typed: "a-" and "shore") works perfectly, as you can see.

To be honest, I find the lyric entry system both quick and intuitive, but the issues with spacing and hyphens makes it barely usable right now.

[kelldammit]

i'll confirm both issues. furthermore, entering lyrics in continuous page mode is a real mess as well.
the lyrics move down a line with each tab-press (to go to the next syllable). switching the view to something else, then back again corrects it, but once you start entering lyrics again, the same problem occurs. if you enter enough lyrics, the lyrics and entry box will shift below the viewable area, with no scrollbars available to allow you to see what you're entering.
new lyric entry boxes often show up at weird places on the page as well. all this only really seems to happen in continuous view, and i've officially submitted the bug report.

kell

[JKNorman]

Regarding some spacing issues, I've had best luck when I choose to have just four measures per system. (I tend to work in the pages-down view.)

The hyphen issue can be hit and miss, as described. Additionally, it can look all right in Notion, but can look different/wrong when printed to and viewed as PDFs.

New issue: when one word is sung across two notes, I'd like to be able to add an "underscore" line to the right of the word to indicate the word is to be sung for those two notes. (This is the traditional way I'm using to seeing this.) The problem is that if you add such a line in the same box as the word, the second note shifts to the right; if you don't add a period (which is not always appropriate to the lyric), the line goes well beyond where it should; and if you add the just the line (even with a period) into its own lyric box under the second note, there can be a gap that appears too long.

I've taken to splitting the one-syllable words (such as, "he - re." Messy, but the spacing works out and I think everything's still pretty clear,if unorthodox!)

On the plus side, en-ter-ing lyr-ics is typ-i-cal-ly qui-ck an-d ea-sy, wi-th ju-st a few mi-nor bu-m-m-m-ps.

[pcartwright]

New issue: when one word is sung across two notes, I'd like to be able to add an "underscore" line to the right of the word to indicate the word is to be sung for those two notes. (This is the traditional way I'm using to seeing this.) The problem is that if you add such a line in the same box as the word, the second note shifts to the right; if you don't add a period (which is not always appropriate to the lyric), the line goes well beyond where it should; and if you add the just the line (even with a period) into its own lyric box under the second note, there can be a gap that appears too long.

The manual indicates that an underscore should be added to the last word for each note you want the underscore to be used. So if you have four notes on the word "here," you would type "here___" (one underscore for each note [not counting the note that acutally has the lyric 'here'] - three underscores total).

Is this what you did? Is the problem you describe only for situations where you want to extend the word for an extra note?

[JKNorman]

Thanks for your reply. I hadn't tried that...till you suggested it. But the result in my song is "here_" (the underscore looks like a lowered hyphen" and the line doesn't extend under the subsequent note. So, thanks for the tip, but this still doesn't work for me. I tried something else, though, and I figure now that part of the problem is due to the fact that each of my one-word-over-two-notes is followed by a rest, which is ignored by the underscoring process. That is, the line continues to wherever the next note apppears, even if that's in the next bar! So, do you think this is something worthy of a bug report?!

(If I could change the melody -- which I can't -- by replacing the rest with a note not related to the one-word combo, the process would work fine if I actually type in TWO underscores for each note of the two-note combo, including the one with the actual word.)

(Also, if I were to change the second note -- from, say, a dotted quarter, to a quarter tied to an eighth -- and typed in the appropriate number of underscores, the problem still isn't solved. All I've done is mucked up the score )

Looks like I'm back to square one. Or, bar one, if you prefer

And yes, I've only encountered this problem in this situation.

[pcartwright]

This definitely warrants a bug report. You may also want to add this to the thread describing various Notion bugs (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1119).

[JKNorman]

I submitted this as a bug report tonight. I'll also mention it in the Notion 3 bug thread, as you suggest.

I should mention that tonight I discovered the program works as it should if you are entering an underscore to cover, say, two notes, followed by another note within the same measure. But if a rest is the last thing in a measure, the underscore (from the preceding notes) extends into the next bar. This will happen even if you're not entering a rest, but rather notes at the end of a bar; the underscore extension still goes into the next measure.

Thanks!

Jim