NoteView™ is a view- and listen-only version of Nightingale®, the critically-acclaimed music notation and engraving software from Musicware. Nightingale offers publication-quality printed output, exceptional flexibility, and ease of use. It is also the only music-notation program available for any computer that can directly accept optically-scanned music.
The “Nightingale Suite” of state-of-the-art music tools includes:
• Nightingale® Desktop Music Engraving and Notation Software
• NoteScan™ Music Scanning Software, which allows printed scores to be scanned directly into Nightingale.
• NoteView™
• NG Illustrator Converter, which converts Nightingale scores to Adobe Illustrator form.
NoteView is free to individuals for personal use and redistribution, with the single requirement that the accompanying “Read Me“ and “NoteView 2.1 Help” files and “Playback Drivers” folder are distributed with the software at all times.
Commercial Use:
Companies (such as music publishers) who want to distribute NoteView on disk or in a commercial forum, and libraries who wish to make NoteView available to patrons, must license NoteView for a nominal fee. Please contact Musicware for more information.
A custom version of NoteView bearing the logo and/or advertisement of your organization is also available. This special version can display a second panel of information and graphics when NoteView is started; it will be created by Musicware with your approval. Again, please contact Musicware for details.
Though it can be used standalone, NoteView is intended primarily for use with a browser on the Internet’s World Wide Web. See the “NoteView and the Web” topic in NoteView Help for details on this. NoteView can open scores saved in Nightingale as well as scores converted from Nightingale form into its own NoteView file format (however, Nightingale cannot open or edit NoteView scores).
NoteView™ Software Gives Music Composers a Worldwide Market at Their Fingertips
REDMOND, Wash. -- August 1, 1995 -- The music publication revolution is here! Musicware, Inc., is proud to announce the release of NoteView™. This exciting new software program allows anyone using a Macintosh to view and hear any musical score created with Nightingale®, Musicware’s critically acclaimed notation software for Macintosh. Musical scores or excerpts, posted by owners of Nightingale, can be downloaded, read and played by anyone using NoteView. NoteView is available worldwide via Internet and other on-line services at no charge.
NoteView is the latest addition to the suite of integrated Nightingale products, which includes what many consider to be the best music scanning program on the market, NoteScan®. Musicware is the first company to offer to the public a means of true worldwide electronic sheet music previewing. Composers, arrangers and publishers now have a new sales tool, giving them the means to reach a worldwide market without paper, postage, or even phone!
Musicians who own Nightingale and wish to publish score examples on the Internet, or share their work on floppy disk can give away free copies of NoteView so that potential customers or friends can audition the scores. NoteView scores can only be read and listened to; they cannot be altered or printed. NoteView is also compatible with World Wide Web browser applications, so it can be used “on-line” to view scores without the need to actually download any of the scores to a user's terminal.
Examining a musical score with NoteView gives the user far more power than listening to a simple “sound file”; it also gives them far more power than looking at an image (say, in GIF or TIFF format) of a score. The user can select and audition individual measures or segments of the score, even isolate a specific voice, and play everything through his/her own MIDI system, or directly through the Macintosh's built-in audio system). They can also zoom in with magnified views of up to 600%, or zoom out to view all pages of the entire score at once with reduced magnifications down to 25%.
WHO WILL USE NOTEVIEW?
• Composers, Arrangers and Engravers - who wish to share examples of their work, risk free, before a worldwide market of interested musicians.
• Large or Small Publishers - who wish to increase distribution worldwide by posting their inventory, electronically, and with little cost, for all to see and hear.
• Sheet Music Suppliers - who, with permission from their publishers, wish to post excerpts from their entire stock onto the Internet/WWW, or onto disk. Files posted for NoteView access create an opportunity for “electronic shopping” by any musician who is a potential customer.
• Libraries - who, respecting all copyright laws, wish to place “read only” scores onto computer for electronic viewing and listening by library users at any computer terminal. Public domain scores that are becoming worn from heavy use can be scanned into Nightingale with NoteScan and posted electronically with NoteView.
• Teachers - who wish to give students musical examples and exercises for use in home study.
Important Note: All electronically posted and/or scanned use of copyrighted materials must conform to all established copyright laws and fair use conventions. The rights of publishers and copyright holders must be respected.
RULES FOR DISTRIBUTION AND LICENSING OF NOTEVIEW
Musicware allows individuals a free license for use and re-distribution of NoteView, with the single requirement that the accompanying “Read Me” and “NoteView Help” files and “Playback Driver” folder are distributed with the software at all times. Companies (such as a music publisher) distributing NoteView in a commercial forum, and libraries, must license the use of NoteView for a nominal fee. A specially created version of NoteView bearing the logo and advertisement of the licensing company or library is also available.
HOW TO OBTAIN NOTEVIEW
NoteView 1.0 was released in summer 1995. It is included free of charge with all copies of Nightingale. Updated versions of NoteView can be obtained directly from Musicware at 8654 154th Ave. NE, Redmond, WA 98052
Phone 206-881-9797 or 800-99-PIANO
Fax 206-881-9664
NoteView can be also be downloaded from any number of electronic bulletin board services, including the following:
- Musicware’s “home page” - via the World Wide Web at http://www.halcyon.com/musicware/
(You can also reach Musicware's site via anonymous FTP at: ftp.halcyon.com/local/musicware)
- CompuServe (send mail to 73122,3137 or go MUSICWARE)
- America Online (go to keyword: TAP)
- e-world (go to Music, Ask the Musical Doctor, Doctor's Reading Room, Computer Applications in Music)
- Pepper National Music Network (Internet connection, go to ftp ftp.jwpepper.com, or via WWW at http://www.jwpepper.com).
- NoteView is also available over the Internet from the Macintosh FTP sites at Sumex-AIM and the University of Michigan and their mirrors.
- The first music publisher to use NoteView online at its own Web site is Spindrift Music Company. Visit the Spindrift home page at URL http://www.tiac.net/users/spindrift
All trademarks are property of their respective holders. In particular, Musicware, NoteView, and NoteScan are trademarks of Musicware Inc. Nightingale is a registered trademark of Advanced Music Notation Systems, Inc.
Demonstration versions of all Musicware products are available.
(The following information is duplicated in NoteView's built-in Help.)
Viewing the NoteView Score
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NoteView can open scores saved in Nightingale as well as scores converted from Nightingale form into its own native file format; however, Nightingale cannot open NoteView scores.
To best view a score in NoteView, you may want immediately to click on the “zoom box” in the upper right-hand corner of the score window. This will enlarge the score window to fill up your computer’s screen.
NoteView scores can be displayed on your screen using numerous different magnifications ranging from 25% up to 600%. At any time you can click anywhere in the score and use the ‘Enlarge’ command (in the View menu) to zoom into the spot where you clicked. Command-key equivalents are listed under the View menu for each of the various magnifications. The ‘Reduce’ command will zoom out to smaller magnifications. As you zoom out, more music becomes visible on the screen. If the current magnification is anything other than 100%, is shown in the lower lefthand ‘activity box’ on your screen.
The ‘Go To’ command (in the View menu) allows you to specify a page, measure, or rehearsal marking to jump to.
The ‘Look at One Voice’ command lets you isolate a single voice on one staff, making all other parts in the score unavailable. Using this command followed by ‘Select All’ lets you select an individual voice for use with the ‘Play Selection’ command (in the Play menu).
MIDI Playback of NoteView Scores
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• MIDI Playback of NoteView Scores in General...
To play scores, NoteView normally uses a built-in MIDI driver which, by default, sends MIDI data through the modem port. If you prefer, you may switch NoteView to use the Apple MIDI Manager™ either permanently, or any time you start NoteView up for that run only: see instructions below. If you do use MIDI Manager, be sure that it and PatchBay are properly installed. Note: the Apple MIDI Driver is also required for normal use with MIDI Manager, but so-called “through-speaker playback” is a different situation (see the separate Help topic). We provide MIDI Manager and all the utilities, with complete instructions for installation, in the Playback Driver folder.
Which should you choose? If you want “through-speaker playback” (again, see the separate Help topic), you must use MIDI Manager. Also, NoteView’s built-in MIDI driver seems not to work well with the MIDI TimePiece II interface. Otherwise, we recommend built-in MIDI: it’s less complex and less hassle.
With the built-in MIDI driver, you can change the settings for the port and/or interface speed with the ‘MIDI Driver Setup’ command (in the Play menu). With MIDI Manager, you change port settings and interface speed via PatchBay instead. Notice that the choice of a port for NoteView is important since, when you use it, you may well have a port connected to the Internet via modem! This is somewhat more of a problem with MIDI Manager than with built-in MIDI because MIDI Manager wants to grab a port when you launch NoteView; built-in MIDI wants the port only when you tell it to play something.
Note: NoteView's built-in MIDI driver is compatible with the Opcode Studio 5 MIDI Interface, provided you do the following:
1. Go to NoteView's Play menu and select the MIDI Driver Setup command.
2. Choose the "Fast" setting, and then click on [OK].
3. In the Studio 5 controls, go to the Compatibility setup command and choose 1mhz.
Note: if you use MIDI Manager and change the port connections in PatchBay, then at the time you quit NoteView, you will be asked if you wish to save the “MIDI Port and Hookup configuration”. Clicking on [Save] tells NoteView to remember the latest settings for any future sessions in which MIDI Manager is used.
• Selecting a MIDI Driver
You can override NoteView’s default MIDI driver whenever you start NoteView. To do this:
1) Launch NoteView, and wait for the opening “splash” screen (a logo and general information about NoteView) to appear.
2) As you click on the [OK] button, press the Shift key and hold it down.
3) A small dialog appears; in it, indicate your choice for the MIDI driver.
To choose which MIDI driver NoteView uses by default, you must use a resource editor. We know of two: Resorcerer, from Mathemaesthetics, Inc. (PO Box 298, Boulder CO 80306; phone (303) 440-0707; FAX (303) 440-0504; resorcerer@aol.com); and ResEdit, from Apple Computer. We recommend Resorcerer: it’s easier to use and much better supported than ResEdit, as well as more powerful. However, it’s also much more expensive, and the change you need to make to select a MIDI driver is very simple.
Using your resource editor, open the file ‘NoteView Prefs’ in the Preferences folder inside your System folder. (NoteView creates this file the first time you run it; if it doesn’t exist, just start NoteView, then immediately quit.) Then open the ‘CNFG’ resource in that file. Look for an item with the label “0=if MIDI Manager available, use it...”. This item should initially have the value 102, which tells NoteView to always use its built-in MIDI driver. To use MIDI Manager instead, you can set the item to 0, as it says. You might prefer 101: this tells NoteView to use MIDI Manager if it’s available, but if not, to use its built-in driver.
• The ‘Play Entire’ command plays the whole score. Command-period stops playback; simply clicking the mouse stops playback and selects the notes that were last played (those selected notes can be played with Play Selection, or playback can be resumed with Continue Play).
• ‘Play Selection’ plays only the selected notes. Command-period and clicking function as with Play Entire.
• ‘Continue Play’ plays everything, whether selected or not, from the beginning of the selection (or the insertion point, if nothing was selected) to the end of the score. Command-period and clicking function as with Play Entire.
• The ‘MIDI Preferences’ command allows you, among other things, to:
- Choose whether or not to use the MIDI characteristics (the channel, patch, and balance velocity) assigned to each part by the person who created the score. If “Play from Parts’ settings in Master Page” is checked, each channel will be set to the appropriate patch number; then each part will be played on its specified channel, and the part’s balance velocity will be added to each note. If “Ignore Parts’ settings” is checked, no patch changes will be made, everything will be played on the basic channel, and the part balance velocities will be ignored.
- Tell NoteView whether to “turn pages” on the screen as it plays. Note that the emphasis in NoteView is on the notation, not the performance. Therefore, playback pauses at the top of each new page until it’s drawn, so you always see the notes as they’re played, even in the first measure of a page. On the other hand, turning pages is all this option does. NoteView doesn’t do anything else to keep the notes in view if only part of a page fits in the window, so plenty of music may still go by that you can't see! To avoid this problem, make the window larger, or reduce magnification to make the page smaller.
• You can use the ‘Instrument MIDI Settings’ command to change the MIDI characteristics (the channel, patch, and balance velocity) each part has. Click anywhere on a part to make it the part you are setting in the dialog. Unfortunately, since NoteView is intended simply for looking at existing scores, it can’t save files, so there’s no way to save these changes.
Through-Speaker Playback via QuickTime®
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NoteView users can hear music played on the Macintosh’s built-in audio system via QuickTime®: this is the so-called “through-speaker playback”. Doing this requires a software extension called MidiQT™, a free demo version of which is provided with NoteView. MidiQT connects to NoteView through the Apple MIDI Manager and its PatchBay control panel; these are also provided free of charge with NoteView. Complete instructions for the use of MidiQT are provided with that program in the Playback Drivers folder.
• How to Use MidiQT
For more complete instructions, see the “Read Me” file that came with NoteView.
1) Be sure that you have QuickTime 2.0 in your Extensions folder. You MUST use at least version 2.0 of QuickTime: earlier versions will not work.
2) Be sure that the Apple MIDI Manager and PatchBay™ are properly installed. NOTE: The specific file named “Apple MIDI Driver” is NOT required for through-speaker playback and, in fact, if it’s present, your ports may be left in an incorrect state after you quit NoteView. So it’s better to leave it out or, if it’s already present, remove it from your System Folder.
3) Drag the MidiQT Demo program onto the icon of the closed System Folder and restart your computer.
4) Launch NoteView and choose a NoteView score to view (or select [Cancel] to view no score at the moment).
5) Select PatchBay from the Apple menu. Icons for both QuickTime and NoteView will appear.
6) Draw a connection from the “output” triangle of NoteView to the “input” triangle of QuickTime.
7) Close PatchBay. Playback from NoteView will now be heard through the Mac’s audio system.
• How to Obtain QuickTime
If you do not have QuickTime 2.0, Musicware can provide it and QuickTime Musical Instruments along with NoteView free of charge to its customers. However, this is possible only when NoteView is distributed on disk: according to Apple’s regulations, Musicware may not distribute QuickTime over the Internet. NoteView users who do not already own QuickTime 2.0 can also download it for a small fee from the following addresses:
- CompuServe: Go: QT_MAC
- WWW: http://quicktime.apple.com (go to: Ordering Info/Get QuickTime Now!)
Changing the Page Layout on Your Screen
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NoteView can simultaneously display any number of pages in a score. It does this arranging the pages in rows and/or columns on the screen, as if they were layed out on a huge “desktop”. You can change the settings of a NoteView score to best use the screen size of your own computer.
You can specify the number of rows and columns with the Screen Page Layout command. Although the imaginary desktop is very large, it is not infinite. Screen Page Layout doesn't let you specify more than a certain number of rows and columns. The exact number depends on the size of the pages; for U.S. letter-size paper, for example, it's 86 across and 66 down.
Unfortunately, the number of pages that fit on the desktop goes way down if you enlarge the view of the score, and Screen Page Layout doesn't take this into account. As a result, it's possible for a NoteView score to exceed the capacity of the desktop; if so, an alert will appear warning you that neither the scrollbars nor the Go To commands will work properly, and telling you what to do to correct the situation. But this is not likely to happen unless you are viewing a scores with many pages in greatly-enlarged views. Even then, you can avoid the problem by choosing very conservative values for the numbers of pages across and down. Specifically, Nightingale’s highest magnification is 600 percent, or 6 times actual size. Therefore, to be completely safe, never use a number of pages across or down that’s more than 1/6 what Screen Page Layout will accept. For U.S. letter-size paper, that would be 14 across and 11 down.
Using NoteView with a Web Browser
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Though it can be used standalone, NoteView is intended primarily for use with a browser on the Internet’s World Wide Web. As of this writing, Netscape and NCSA Mosaic are probably the most popular Web browsers on the Macintosh. The Netscape instructions below apply to both Netscape 1.0 and 1.1; the Mosaic instructions apply to both Mosaic 1.0.3 and 2.0B12. Other browsers should require similar procedures.
NoteView files in online archives should always have names ending “.nvu”. This provides a means for a browser to find the program on your Macintosh and automatically open the scores as soon as you download them. In order to do this, you have to configure your browser to recognize the files and locate NoteView. IF YOU ARE USING NETSCAPE, follow these steps carefully:
• Choose ‘Preferences...’ from Netscape's Options menu. From the popup menu at the top of the dialog box, select “Helper Applications”. Click on the “New...” button.
• Type “application” into the field marked “Mime type:”. Hit the tab key once and type “x-noteview” into the field marked “Mime subtype:”. Click on OK or hit the return key, which will return you to the Netscape Preferences dialog box.
• You will see the new Helper Application listed as “Unknown”, with Action “Unknown” and no extensions listed. Next, click in the box to the right of “Extensions:” in the middle of the dialog box, and type “nvu”.
• To tell Netscape where to find NoteView, click on the button marked “Browse...”, and locate the copy of NoteView you have installed. When you have done so, click OK or hit the return key, which will return you to the Netscape Preferences dialog box.
• The popup menu to the right of “Browse...” automatically lists the Macintosh file-types that NoteView recognizes. Make sure that the file-type “SCOV” is showing; if not, select it from the popup menu. THIS IS VITAL: if you don’t select “SCOV”, NoteView will probably not be able to open your scores, and it may crash!
• Finally, click on the radio button “Launch Application”.
• If you are sure that you have followed these steps correctly, click on OK or hit the return key to return to Netscape. If you are not sure, click on Cancel and try again.
Next time you select a NoteView file from any web page which has been correctly set up, Netscape will automatically find NoteView and open the score for you.
IF YOU ARE USING NCSA MOSAIC INSTEAD OF NETSCAPE, the procedure is very similar. Like Netscape, Mosaic has a “Preferences...” command in its Options menu; in Mosaic that leads to a dialog with a button labelled “Helper Applications”. Click on that button. There's one tricky thing in the resulting dialog: you must add “application/x-noteview” to the Document Type->Application list (on the right) BEFORE adding “nvu” to the Extension->Document Type list (on the left)!
Selecting Music in the Score
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NoteView lets you make selections for use with the ‘Play Selection’ and ‘Continue Play’ commands, and for the ‘Instrument MIDI Settings’ command. Also see the “Viewing a Score” Help topic for information on how the ‘Look at One Voice’ command affects selecting.
• Select a single musical symbol by clicking on it. For notes, click on their noteheads, NOT their flags, stems, or accidentals. Select more than one symbol at a time by holding down the command key while clicking on each additional one. Clicking a second time on the same symbol (with the command key still down) will deselect it. As symbols are selected, NoteView highlights them.
• Everything in a section of one or more staves on a single system can be selected by pressing the mouse button at one end of the section you want, then dragging horizontally across the section and vertically across the staves you want. To add anything in other systems, you must use the command key, as described above. Or, select everything from the current selection or “insertion point” (see below) to a given point by shift-clicking. For example, to select the entire piano part in an ensemble that includes piano, click at the beginning of the score on the piano’s top staff, then shift-click at the end of the score on the piano’s bottom staff.
• You can click on an empty space in the score to place an “insertion point.”
• For the ‘Instrument MIDI Settings’ command, click anywhere on a part to make it the part you are setting in the dialog.
Increasing the Speed of Screen Redrawing
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You can do several things to insure that NoteView draws and redraws the screen as quickly as possible.
• Most important by far: if your Macintosh supports it, set your screen to black and white instead of color or gray-scale. This can make an ENORMOUS difference in any program, not just Nightingale. The reason is simple: when drawing the screen in color, the computer has to move lots more information around (in 256 colors, eight times as much as in black-and-white!), and that takes time. To set the screen to black and white, use the ‘Control Panels’ command in the Apple menu, then choose Monitors. Note 1: some newer Macs—PowerMacs in particular—don’t support black and white with all video cards; with these models, choose the smallest number of colors available. But this has much less effect on speed on PowerMacs, anyway. Note 2: If you run other programs that need color and you want to change this setting frequently, several pieces of shareware and freeware—for example, DepthGauge/DepthMenu—make it much easier to do so.
• You can interrupt redrawing at any time by pressing command-period.
• For menu commands that will drastically change what's in view, use command-key equivalents instead of using the mouse on the menu. Most people find it's faster to do this anyway, but there's a special benefit to it in NoteView: commands that will greatly affect what's in view interrupt redrawing. This is especially useful when changing from, say, 50 percent to 150 percent magnification (or vice-versa): if you hit command-] to ‘Enlarge’, then immediately hit command-] twice again, you don't have to wait for Nightingale to draw the score in 75 and 100 percent along the way. Besides ‘Enlarge’ and ‘Reduce’, this feature applies to the ‘New’, ‘Open’, ‘Look at One Voice’, ‘Go To’, and ‘Close Window’ commands.
Troubleshooting
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There’s not too much that can go wrong with NoteView, but here are a couple of possible problems.
• “When browsing a Web site, I click on a NoteView score, but my browser doesn’t launch NoteView and open it; instead, it tries to display it as text [or does something else]”.
First, check that you’ve configured your Web browser to recognize NoteView files and to locate the copy of NoteView you have installed. For instructions, see the “NoteView and the Web” topic.
Second, check that the score’s “link” (more-or-less, its filename) ends with the characters “.nvu”. If not, contact the owner of the Web page and ask them to change it.
If neither of these is the problem, most likely the server that hosts the Web page you’re looking at has not been set up with the proper information about NoteView. To check this, contact the owner of the Web page, and ask them if they’re certain the server has been set up with NoteView’s MIME type, subtype, and extension.
Finally, this could mean that your Web browser is confused because it’s saved (in its cache) information about the score that is not correct. To clear the cache in Netscape, for example, choose ‘Preferences...’ from the Options menu. From the popup menu at the top of the dialog box, select “Cache and Network”. Then just click on the “Clear Disk Cache Now” button.
• “After running NoteView with MidiQT, my communications software always thinks the modem and/or printer ports are busy, and I can’t free them up.”
One way to free the serial ports is to select PatchBay, double-click on the Apple MIDI Driver icon, and uncheck “Port Enabled”. Another way requires that you have a serial-port printer driver in your Extensions folder (e.g., ImageWriter): open Chooser (in the Apple menu), select the ImageWriter, and then click back and forth from the Modem to the Printer port.
