Listen to the music

Do you need advice on playing the music on this site? Here are some recommendations.

NoteWorthy Composer files

NoteWorthy browser plug-in (recommended for Firefox users)

The plug-in is free of charge and works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer (up to version 6.0 but not later versions - Microsoft withdrew support). It allows files to be viewed and played directly in the browser window; it allows play to begin anywhere, which makes it easy to play a difficult phrase of music over and over again.

NoteWorthy 2 Viewer and NoteWorthy Player

These are players for NoteWorthy Composer files. They are free of charge but have limited functionality, the basic controls being 'start from the beginning' and 'stop', but they play and display the music accurately. NoteWorthy Player will also play MIDI files, albeit with their inherent shortcomings.

NoteWorthy Composer (demo version)

This allows much more control, e.g. to play a difficult phrase repeatedly, in fact it has all the features of the full version but if you edit a file that was created with a registered version (e.g. mine) you cannot save it; also, a printed copy of the score has a prominent label declaring that it is produced by the demo version. It is free of charge; strictly, you should use it for no more than 30 days.

NoteWorthy Composer

This is similar to the demo version without the restrictions. The current version, NoteWorthy Composer 2, costs $49.

These applications can be downloaded from the NoteWorthy Composer website.

How to slow the music

... to practise that tricky passage: just insert an extra tempo command. Make it obvious, so that you can easily find and delete it later.

How to highlight your part

You will also need to give some thought to what will actually make the sound. Playing all the parts together is straightforward but if you wish to highlight one part some options (of varying degrees of complexity!) are described below. For other suggestions, try John Hooper's website.

• Use a separate MIDI instrument for the highlighted part
  
  Using the Microsoft 'MIDI Mapper' application (under Windows 95), one part can be directed to the MIDI output (and hence to the external instrument) while the rest are played on the sound card. (Until recently I had not had any success with this under Windows XP. However, thanks to the NoteWorthy Composer Forum I do now have a solution.)
  
  
• Mute the unwanted parts
  
  NoteWorthy Composer has a facility to mute selected parts, though if you just want to hear one part, use the Staff Play facility (Shift-F5). Alternatively, rather than losing them altogether, the volume may be reduced on the unwanted parts; NoteWorthy Composer can also do this - but there is a better way!
  
  
• Use the stereo capability of the sound card
  
  NoteWorthy Composer has a facility to adjust the pan setting of each part, i.e. whether it appears through the left speaker, the right, or somewhere in between. It is a fairly simple, if tedious, job to set the required part to the left and each other part to the right. However, this can produce some strange effects; if the highlighted part has a unique note, i.e. one which is not being played by any other part, then all is well but if one of the other parts has the same note then you will hear the note coming from a mid-position. (This is probably due to a strict phase relationship between notes generated from the same source; the phenomenon does not occur with separate instruments.)

Brian Maskell