Writing without time signature and barlines

[mirko.ferremi]

Hi,

I am kind of newbie with Notion, I am trying to write a piece without a specific time signature, and because of that, without barlines, just a flow of notes without interruption...
I can't find a way in Notion 4, is it possible?
Thanks!

Mirko

System:
Notion 4.0.325 64bit on Mac OS X 10.8.4

[thorrild]

No it isn't.

Even though you can hide meters (time signatures) from view, you still have to set them up so that Notion "knows" how many beats are in the bar, both in order to align the music properly, and to play it back properly using the current tempo indication. Barlines cannot currently be hidden.

Best wishes,
Thorrild

[Surfwhammy]

Hi,

I am kind of newbie with Notion, I am trying to write a piece without a specific time signature, and because of that, without barlines, just a flow of notes without interruption...
I can't find a way in Notion 4, is it possible?
Thanks!

Mirko

System:
Notion 4.0.325 64bit on Mac OS X 10.8.4

I always like a FUN puzzle, so I did a bit of reading and experimenting, which led to discovering the solution!

(1) The first step involves putting yourself in a trance where you become one with the Mac and then start thinking like a software engineer, which works all the better when you are not wearing underpants, as is the case often here in the sound isolation studio . . .

(2) Then you look in the NOTION 4 Help Guide and do a search on "time signature", where after a bit of reading you find the paragraph which refers to using no time signature . . .

NO TiME SiGNATURE
Notion supports scores with no time signature. This can be a significant help for you to jot down ideas without having to stop to iron out meter counts, particularly if you will change meters often (you can concentrate on note/rest entry and take the time to add separate time signatures later).
Simply remove the existing time signature (click so it turns orange in color and press DELETE) and don’t replace it with an another signature. With this arrangement, since there is no meter to exceed, you can add notes and rests without having to be concerned about measure bars (notes and rests do not turn red at any point). Yet, Notion is still able to play back your entry.

(3) Next you follow the instructions but discover that it does not work when you are in Continuous View, so you do another experiment to determine the largest integer values you can input via the time signature dialog, which happens to be "64/64" (64 beats per measure with a 64th note getting 1 beat), which is useful to know but does not solve the puzzle, so you do a few more experiments . . .

(4) Then, since you learned from previous experiments that some things only work when you are not in Continuous View, you switch to Across Down View and then the instructions in the "no time signature" paragraph start making more sense, except that there are two ways to interpret the "delete" part, and naturally you try the wrong way first, which does not work, so you read the "no time signature" paragraph a few more times and realize that instead of clearing the little input box, you want to click on the time signature, which turns it orange, followed by pressing the "delete" key, which deletes the time signature, at which point you have a score with no time signature, which maps to making a bit of progress, except that there are 32 or so bar lines, which is annoying . . .

(5) After a bit of pondering, you remember that you can delete bar lines, so you do yet another experiment and delete all the bar lines in the score, which has only the NOTION 4 Bundled PIano, at which point there are no bar lines . . .

[NOTE: To delete a bar line, you select the bar line by clicking on it, which turns it orange. There is not much width to click, so I usually zoom-in a few times to make the staff and music notation larger. When the bar line is selected and turns orange, you can press the "delete" button on the Mac keyboard and the bar line is deleted . . . ]

(6) Finally, you switch to Continuous View and insert a bunch of quavers ("quarter notes", if you prefer, although I like quavers, since it reminds me of a pole dancer I dated for a while in the 1970s, except it was more like quivers than quavers, but I was young and had no sense). Add a bit of FabFilter Software Instruments Timeless 2 echoes, and there you are, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: The key aspect of this experiment was determining that there is no arbitrary number of beats where NOTION 4 automagically inserts bar lines, where the logic was that if there are more than 64 quavers and no bar lines appear automagically, then bar lines will not appear unless you decide to insert them yourself. If you have a high-speed broadband cable connection, the video is available in HD (720p) . . . ]

"Quivers and Quavers" (The Surf Whammys) -- YouTube music video

[NOTE: This is the corresponding NOTION 4 (64-bit) score, and if you do not have Timeless 2, you can download the evaluation version from the FabFilter Software Instruments website, but regardless you should be able to open the score . . . ]

"Quivers and Quavers" (The Surf Whammys) -- NOTION 4 Score

[NOTE: This is the link to the FabFilter Software Instruments website where you can download the evaluation copy of Timeless 2, which is full-featured and so forth, as well as being the most amazing echo plug-in on this planet. The marketing blurb currently promoted "sound mangling", but this is due to a lot of Electronic composers liking Timeless 2. It does magnetic tape emulations and will mangle sounds, but it does a lot of other stuff that maps to pristine echoes and so forth. In fact, it does so much stuff that I tend to think that nobody actually knows everything it does. As you can hear, I use it to add more fingers and notes to the otherwise simple music notation, where the general idea is that done correctly--which requires a lot of practicing with tape echo machines--you are "playing into the echo", where once you learn how to do this, you can compose for it . . . ]

Timeless 2 (FabFilter Software Instruments)

Fabulous!

P. S. There was a post script with an especially silly bit of nonsense, but I decided not to wander too far into my risque sense of humor, although the idea was that since it can be played with one finger, it probably can be played with something else, too . . .