Fermata Over Barline

[kastra]

Hi All,

I bought a copy of Notion 3 just before Christmas and I'm currently copying a Brahms score to get the hang of the User Interface ( Notion's that is, not Brahms'!).

Is there any way I can insert a fermata over a barline or, if not, is there an acceptable alternative in Notion that would have the same effect?

Thanks in anticipation,

Keith

[fabiolcati]

Is there any way I can insert a fermata over a barline?

Hi Keith.
The answer is *yes*.
Just select fermata sign from palette and drag the cursor over the barline, than click to confirm.
Regards.

[kastra]

Hi Fabio and thanks for the reply.

I've tried the process you described, and several other variations. They all have the same result, in that the fermata appears either over the last note in the preceding bar or over the first note in the following bar.

Fwiw, I'm using version 3.1.281.0 of Notion on a Windows 7.

I'd appreciate any ideas on what's going on here.

Best regards,

Keith

[fabiolcati]

Oh s**t... I'm on Mac... and it works seamlessly...



Can anybody from planet Windows help us to have this Brahms properly scored ?

[Robins1]

Hi. Planet Windows here. The only way I could get it to work was to have notes either side of the barline and place the fermata almost between the barline and the note(s) to the right. It then clicked into place over the barline. It may be trial and error but it certainly doesn't work if you put the fermata straight on the barline.
Colin

[pcartwright]

I tried the process as described by fabio and it worked fine (Win7 64-bit). However, I'm not sure what the desired effect would be. Do you want there to be a pause in between the measures, do you want the note before the fermatta to be extended, etc?

[wcreed51]

He wants to notate as Brahms did…

It worked for me too. You have to be sure to center the little grey box over the barline, otherwise the placement is wrong

[kastra]

Hi Gents,

First of all, apologies for my "non-attendance" over the weekend due to other commitments ( okay, so they were only jam sessions - but live music is something of a priority!).

I'm pleased to be able to announce that, after considerable practice and your patient responses, I've managed to locate a fermata on several occasions (perhaps 10% of the time) by ensuring that the bar on either side was empty. I realised on reading pcartwright's and wcreed51's posts, however, that my original objective was somewhat forgotten when posing my initial question. Unable to place a fermata over a double repeat barline , I'd decided to simplify matters by trying it first over a single barline and my question arose from this. For reference, I am indeed trying to "notate as Brahms did" (or rather as Simrock, his publisher, did) and the score in question is for the "Haydn Variations". Most of the variations consist of two repeat sections and the fermata are placed to indicate a "stylistic pause for breath" before the beginning of the next variation - in that respect, they are pauses between measures.

To return to my progress in solving the present problem, I was at least successful also in placing a fermata over a repeat-start barline but came unstuck when putting a repeat-end barline in the preceding bar - as did the fermata, which was nudged to the left of the repeat-end. Try as I might, I could not get the fermata to stay on top of the barline! In the end, I gave up and decided to listen to the result to make sure that the pause wasn't where I wanted it to be anyway (i.e. that it wasn't just a graphics aberration), so I inserted a 2 beat pause in the fermata and played back the segment. I didn't actually hear the pause at all!

Taking it further, I decided to try the experiment on a violin test part I'd created to check out GPO4 playback. I inserted the fermata over a repeat bar set as before and added a further repeat passage on to the original part. Needless to say, I again failed to hear the pause, so I exported the test file to a MIDI file and viewed the results in Reaper's events editor. As expected, the events list looked like something that should have Bolognese sauce poured on it (Notion's "rules engine" , the reason for the original GPO test file) but it was when I looked down the events list for the end of the first repeat that I began to question my sanity ! To say that Notion's handling of repeats on MIDI export is "a little lacking" would indeed be the understatement of the year!

Since I need some confirmation that I'm not hallucinating, I've attached my test file herewith so that somebody else can kindly export it to a midi file as I did and compare the events list to the score. Please assist in confirming that I'm not prematurely senile! (If I'm not, then I'll submit a bug report, otherwise I guess I'll just have to resume the medication )

Thanks again in anticipation,

Keith

[pcartwright]

I don't recall seeing a fermata used for this purpose in a modern score, and since Notion's playback is based on modern notation, you might be better off notating is a little differently. Most scores that call for an unmeasured pause do so with a caesura (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesura) which is available in Notion and is located right next to the fermata. Give that a try and see if it does the job.