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Mar 28th, 2024, 10:27pm 
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   Author  Topic: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  (Read 3174 times)
COMALite J
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Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« on: Jan 6th, 2003, 11:54am »
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*sigh* The YaBB strikes again! I typed up a nice long detailed description of all of the new features this song demonstrates, but when I went to Preview it, YaBB complained that it was too long, and when I clicked on the [Back] button, the entire Message Entry form was reset (blank)!  Arrrrrgh!!
 
Anyway, this was intended to be a sort of belated Christmas gift to the Virtual Singer group (and also to the Barbershop Forum on YahooGroups). I obtained permission from the writer / composer of this song to use it to demonstrate computer technology that could enhanced Barbershop.
 
Part of what took so long was that this uses features and bug fixes that only became available with the actual released HA 8.2. I was a beta-tester, but even the last beta lacked some of the fixes needed to do this in a more timely manner.
 
At least I got it (mostly) done in time for the day when most European countries do the actual gift-giving of the Christmas season: January 6, aka Epiphany, aka the 12th Day of Christmas, traditionally the day when the Wise Men came. After all, it was the gifts of the Magi to the infant Jesus which is the whole reason Christmas includes gift-giving in the first place!
 
Anyway, here it is: http://www.shreve.net/~joelrea/Just a Child at Christmas.mus
 
Over the next day or so, I will post additional messages here containing the info about this song that I had originally posted in the attempted long message that YaBB ate.    But, for now, I am way late for going to bed.
 
(Note: among many other things, the first half of this song demonstrates the use of Curves for manipulating expressiveness in Virtual Singer!)
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Robert_A.
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #1 on: Jan 7th, 2003, 10:38pm »
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Thanks for the post. Now, to listen carefully...
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Robert_A.
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #2 on: Jan 8th, 2003, 6:42am »
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... Having listened carefully:
 
(1) The word "year" did not sound correct to my American ear. It sounded better when switched to US English. Other than that, the only obvious difference was that the US terminal "r" was more emphatic than the GB, as expected.
 
(2) I see that you used the new 6.2/8.2 fragment notation to draw out the final "m" sound. At first, I thought it was an error, until I realized that perhaps Barbershop did it that way (I don't sing Barbershop).
 
(3) The file uses a "Maestro" font that I don't have. The file still plays, and looks OK. But I notice that the note heads use various shapes, in a way that does not seems to be systematic. Is this a peculiarity of Barbershop, or a result of the file transfer to a different system?
 
A fine song!
 
 
 
 
 
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COMALite J
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #3 on: Jan 19th, 2003, 4:07am »
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on Jan 8th, 2003, 6:42am, Robert_A. wrote:
... Having listened carefully:
 
(1) The word "year" did not sound correct to my American ear. It sounded better when switched to US English. Other than that, the only obvious difference was that the US terminal "r" was more emphatic than the GB, as expected.

 
The main problem I have with the US English pronunciation is that it always pronounces "-ing" as "-'in" or sometimes even "-'n". There are other problems as well. I used to have to do a lot of SAMPA before I switched to using the UK English language setting. Now the only times I need to use SAMPA or Fragments is for special effects and the occasional homonym, and even most of those can be handled with ordinary text inside [square brackets] to keep it from printing and/or override the default pronunciation of a syllable. For instance, "live" comes out pronunced as in, "Bill Rogers is a real, live Barbershop arranger." If I want it as in, "True Barbershoppers eat, drink, think, and live Barbershop," I need only put "live[liv]" for the lyric syllable, telling it to display and print "live" but sing "liv".
 
As for the "r" sound, well, our Chorus Director wants us to minimalize the "r" because, at a distance, it seems to become more pronounced. Since a large part of what I do is for training our Chorus singers, I do it his way, and the UK English has it built right in.  
 
on Jan 8th, 2003, 6:42am, Robert_A. wrote:
(2) I see that you used the new 6.2/8.2 fragment notation to draw out the final "m" sound. At first, I thought it was an error, until I realized that perhaps Barbershop did it that way (I don't sing Barbershop).

That was experimental. I tried to get rid of the glottal stop between syllables (causing it to sound like "time-mm"), but I couldn't do it even with Fragments. I later just made the second note of the apparently-"held" syllable as "[m]" which gave the same effect with much less lyrics text, and reduced the velocity of that second note to half which obscures the abrupt transition and also softens the "mmm" sound to be more like what a singer would actually be singing at that point.
 
(Continued in next post)
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COMALite J
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #4 on: Jan 19th, 2003, 4:08am »
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on Jan 8th, 2003, 6:42am, Robert_A. wrote:
(3) The file uses a "Maestro" font that I don't have. The file still plays, and looks OK. But I notice that the note heads use various shapes, in a way that does not seems to be systematic. Is this a peculiarity of Barbershop, or a result of the file transfer to a different system?

I just found out that Maestro comes with recent versions of Harmony, but not with Melody. I thought it came with both. Maestro looks better, frankly, and it's nowhere near as "shrunken" as SToccata. I have to set Stoccata to 48 points to make a sharp or flat big enough to put next to one of those tiny digits you see after many of the notes. Maestro only has to be set to 16 points to get the same apparent size!
 
But now that I know that not everyone has it, the next version I upload will have all such marks converted to SToccata (this is much harder and more time-consuming than it should be, thanks to a strange bug that has shown up in the Windows version of Harmony 8.2, that apparently affects systems with many fonts installed).
 
The shaped note heads are part of my proposed music notation enhancements for a capella singers. There are currently three shapes (I may add a fourth): traditional oval (meaning that this Singer has the Melody at this particular time, and thus should sing louder than the other Parts, and is allowed to have some light vibrato to distinguish the Melody from the harmony parts), wedge usually pointing down (meaning that this Singer at this particular time is singing BELOW the Melody, and thus should be singing somewhat softer than the Melody singer, and with less [preferrably no] vibrato), and arrowhead pointing up (meaning that this Singer at this particular time is singing ABOVE the Melody, and thus should be singing even softer than if it was Below the Melody, and likewise with no vibrato). The fourth that I may add would indicate the Bass note: the Bass can sing as loud as the Melody, but with no vibrato. I have Staff Rules that key off of these shapes and adjust the Velocities accordingly: the wedge reduces the velocity to 75% of the specified velocity, and the arrowhead reduces the velocity to 50% of the specified velocity.
 
These note shapes are especially helpful to a Barbershop Baritone, since the Baritone sings both below and above the Melody, almost 50/50, and since the Baritone is usually written on the Bass Clef staff while the Lead (the usual Melody part) is usually written on the Treble Clef (8vb), it's not so easy for even a sight reader to tell on-the-fly, from note positions alone, when the Baritone is above the Lead and when he's below the Lead.
 
Other aspects of my notation includes the little digits I referred to earlier, in conjunction with the Roman Numerals above the score. Most printed Barbershop music has no chord symbols at all, on the grounds that they aren't really useful for singers, since letters like "G" or "D7" could throw them off if they have a good sense of pitch but the song has been transposed. So I use Roman Numeral chords instead (see the Democratic Workshop for a Wish to implement these directly as an alternate notation for the Harmony Assistant Chord Grid, instead of as a Text Staff like I have them now), since they never need transposing.
 
The text symbols to the right of the note heads tells the singers what interval of the chord they are singing. This is important because Barbershop and other a capella is done in Just Intonation, where different notes have different tunings based on where they are in the chord, and also for balancing the pitches based on which note of the chord is being sung. I'm still experimenting with that latter, and only actually implemented it (along with a slight amount of rhythm-based velocity adjustment, and some Parameter Curves for expressiveness) in the first half of the song. But the precision tuning is done throughout the song. Notice how, when the final chord is sung in Virtual Singer, you hear a fifth note that's an octave above the Lead's note? That note doesn't exist in the song or in the .MUS file data anywhere! It's an effect caused by harmonic reinforcement that only happens when notes are tuned precisely to Just Intonation, and more with certain types of chords than others (this effect occurs subtly throughout the song, but is most apparent on that final chord). This is called the "ringing chord" effect, and the phantom note is called an "overtone." The presence of overtones (and undertones) constitutes "expanded sound," the ultimate goal of Barbershop.
 
on Jan 8th, 2003, 6:42am, Robert_A. wrote:
A fine song!

Don't tell me! Tell Mr. Rogers! His E-Mail address pops up when you load the file.  
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #5 on: Jan 20th, 2003, 5:34pm »
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Thanks for the response, COMAlite J.  
 
Although I have Harmony (most recent version, on Windows XP sp1), I didn't get the Maestro font. If it can be found elsewhere on the Myriad site, I'll find it. If not, perhaps Myriad can advise?
 
Or... maybe I did get Maestro, but inadvetently cleaned it out of my fonts folder? I try not to keep excess fonts.
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Olivier Guillion
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #6 on: Jan 20th, 2003, 5:37pm »
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Maestro font is not shipped with any of our product. I think it is a part of another music software from a third party.
What is included in Harmony Assistant is a way to use it in your score (the character and scale table), not the font itself.
 
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Olivier Guillion
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #7 on: Jan 21st, 2003, 2:03am »
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Ah, I see. I wonder how I got it then? It might've been installed when I tried out Finale Notepad, I suppose.
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #8 on: Jan 21st, 2003, 10:09pm »
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(1) Regarding American final "r" : On another forum thread, I wrote that (as an American) I prefer the British pronunciation of VS, with some modifications, instead of the American pronunciation. The reason is that "as sung" in church choir, the hard "r" is de-emphasized. There are also some other pronuncation changes. I have a T-shirt that says "No American Rs allowed." The logo is a big red R with a slash through it.
 
(2) Regarding Maestro font, and other fonts: It is too bad that Windows does not automatically keep track of whether of not a font is necessary for installed programs, unless the program uninstaller so directs. The fonts themselves are not always helpful, since they may show the designer or copyright holder, but not program dependency.
 
From posts I have seen elsewhere, I infer that although Finale Notepad is an OK program, it does not persuade users of alternatives (such as the Myriad products) to switch.
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #9 on: Jan 22nd, 2003, 5:18am »
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All I'll say about Finale Notepad is that it's free and worth every penny.  
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Re: Just in time for the 12th Day of Christmas!  
« Reply #10 on: Feb 21st, 2003, 4:13pm »
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Yikes!  I forgot to post a notice that, some time ago, I replaced the version of "Just a Child at Christmas.mus" on my FTP site with one that doesn't use the Maestro font.
 
If you've downloaded it in the past and had trouble viewing it, try this one.
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