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It’s all speculation but I do think that Encore “6” is not going to be as related to Encore 5 as it is to Overture. And so most things that Encore did probably will be different in Encore “6”. But who knows. I’m with you, though on that being one repetitive thing that happens.
I don’t know if this would help – but my old template I only had measures on the first page. I noticed I was always having add measures due to compressed rests and such – even for one pagers. So now my template has maybe 4 pages of empty measures. I wonder if you could setup a template where you have multiple pages out the gate and have pre-adjusted pages 2+ top line to meet what you want to see. So at least you would probably have to do less fiddling. It’s easier for me to delete all measures to the end then it is to add measures or fiddle — so maybe this is a way around the issue in some cases. Saving a template is pretty easy. Take a score and copy it to the template directory. Start it out however you want. I’ve got different templates for different bands with the band name at the bottom (“Prepared for such and such”), my name in top right (“Copied By Me”) – [Title] at the top – and on the left the instrument score for that band. I set other defaults that I think carry through from the template too. Saves me a lot of time.
My workaround for that gotcha is to ] or [ (add more measures to the current line) until the compressed rest that’s under the area I’m trying to edit gets under another area. You can also add measures to kick the compressed measures away but I never really do that. I usually can handle everything by shrinking and growing the number of measures in the current “system”. Maybe even pull in the compressed measures into the current system. Or reduce the number of measures to push it away. Then edit what I need and readjust the number of measures per system back.
At some point I think I did the expand rests trick but I haven’t done that in a while favoring this way.
This doesn’t really just knock it out of the park – but maybe gives you a different workaround to try that may be marginally better.
Speaking of extracting parts. I usually score up say a horn section on one score and I’ll put some horn as voice 1, another as voice 2. And then I try to get these to their own separate parts — I struggle and wish I’d done it another way. Every time. I never learn. I think what I’m supposed to do is put all the instruments on a different staff. But I wish there was a way I could put it all on one staff (because it’s easier for me to see the harmony that way) and have things get extracted into individual parts.
I got less than 24 hours as a call to sub and wanted to rescore some charts so I did 5 or so overnight. 2-3pagers a piece. Any other software would have taken much longer to score up I’m sure. Including the new version of Encore yet to be released if it was magically here. As much as I would love to see a new Encore version – the old version with warts and all will probably be better. So it gives me some comfort that the new version isn’t available yet since it saves me from the disappointment of spending money on the new version that I become frustrated with. I do hope it works out better than that, though (I probably have another 2+ years to face that dilemma).
Regarding the dreaded lockup by holding down the mouse too long (Windows) …
I mentioned it in another thread that I would “jiggle the handle” to get it back. I no longer dread this like I did before. Before I would screen capture my work that happened to be left on the screen if I was lucky then kill Encore and rescore what I took a picture of. Now, I’m able to recover without having to go through that.
So, from oops … “not responding” blue circle, hourglass, or something is locking me out of Encore:
1) I right-click on the taskbar encore icon. That brings up a menu. For me it shows “Encore-5.0.4.795.175” as the first line, “Pin to taskbar” as the second, and “Close window” as the third
2) Click on “Encore-5.0.4.795.175” from this popup menu
3) Notice that Encore gets “unstuck”. The palette menus that disappeared come back and there’s some kind of weird error on the screen. A red “X” with “could not be loaded in because the specified file cannot be found.”
4) You can “X” out this error or press OK.
5) Your cursor will become a tick-tock metronome shape.
6) Now click on the bottom of the encore window. The very bottom which is below the right hand scroll bar down arrow. You don’t have to click on the right side – just that this is part of the very outer frame. Your cursor should change to a normal pointer.
7) There’s probably a strange black highlight as residue. Go to “view” and “refresh score” to get everything back to normal.Optional: step 6 instead of clicking at the bottom you can instead click in the empty “gray” area that’s not your score IF you have this. This would be within the window and to the side of a score you’re editing. If the score fills up the entire window and there’s no gray background area – then just click the bottom of the window.
That was easy …
Not getting into the rinse-and-repeat of long-in-the-toothy-ness.
For me any line above a compressed rest cannot be selected and therefore cannot be modified so I usually have to push around the compressed rest so it isn’t below the line I’m trying to edit. Uncompressing the rests, editing, then recompressing is an option too but I find using ] and [ to change the # of measures in the current line is easier and faster (which can “push” the compressed rest away). In order to prevent this from happening at all I would probably not use compressed rest as suggested but begin creating compressed rest after everything else is done and start at the top (not at the end).
There may be some other bug influencing the opposite suggestion – I can’t think of what that would be though.
I can’t speak for the release date other than to agree that the target is grossly missed without any information as to when the real release is destined for. You could say 2035 and not be wrong or it could announce in a month. I wouldn’t get too invested in solving this riddle for personal health reasons. For me, if I’m still able to benefit from Encore — I’ll be happy to check it out when it does finally get released.
1) Must use a piano staff
2) Select Voice 1 (or any numbered Voice – defaults to “Voice -” which won’t work)
3) Place notes in treble clef then bass clef (or vice versa). The notes will be barred across the staff.… or at least if changes are made – still retain the core ease-of-use that made Encore a go-to for quick sketches and even full score for many.
If I alt-tab away from Encore then right click on encore’s icon in the taskbar to re-open it – I’ll usually get a popup window complaining about some missing file and eventually I can get control back.
Right – this is Windows. I purchased Encore 5 when I was exclusively using Windows and since then although I’ve switched to Mac – the OS I am using (Big Sur) doesn’t support Encore-Mac (32b app not compatible). Therefore, I still use the Windows version under a VM. Sometimes I get bit by the bug when dragging a note up or down with the mouse. I usually highlight and nudge up/down or use note transposition. But often I want to just drag the note up and if I take too long to decide where to land it – poof. “Back in the day” I had no idea how to recover from this so I would lose work. Now days I can usually “jiggle the handle” and get control back to save my work by clicking various things in the right order.
That said – it was meant to be an example of the kind of thing that I don’t want from Encore. Even though I want the general workflow to be very similar (because I think Encore was a good balance of power and speed to get a score completed) — I don’t want a carbon copy pulling in “the bad stuff”.
Other examples of bad stuff:
1) If system under the current system has a compressed rest – then the ability to select items in the previous system (previous to the compressed rest) is gone. Instead even though you’re clicking on the system above the compressed rest – the cursor only will go to the compressed rest system below where the mouse is. The workaround for this is to “]” or “[” (adjust measures per system) so the compressed rest is not directly under the current measure. Then adjust it back.
2) A variant of the above – if I have a coda phrase above a compressed measure then I often cannot select the coda phrase to move the position.
3) Super tiny coda sign – workaround is to use the “symbols” coda sign
4) I have to select the exact right amount of measures to create a compressed rest. I wish the the compressed rest menu would let you freely key in the number of measures to create so I just select one measure (or none), select compressed rests, then type in how many I want.
(and so on)
… but more things I do like (extremely truncated/incomplete list):
1) “Hotkeys”. I’d prefer for the learning curve not to be too steep by being totally different. Or, alternatively, the facility to freely assign keys (with and without modifiers ctrl, alt/option, command) so I can switch the hotkeys to a Encore 5-ish set.
a) Hotkeys for measures per system “[” “]” in Encore currently
b) Hotkey for creating compressed rest. (Ctrl-Alt-R currently)
c) Hotkey for adjusting measure widths (Ctrl-J currently)
d) Hotkey for selecting barline type (Ctrl-Alt-B currently)
e) Hotkeys for note lengths (currently 1=whole, 2=half, 3=quarter, 4=8th, 5=16th, … and so on.)
f) Hotkey for dot toggle (currently “d”) – double dot as shift+d
g) Hotkey for rest or note selection (currently “r”)
h) Hotkeys for moving selected notes(s) up/down – (currently Ctrl-Plus to move up by semitone, Ctrl-Equal(non shifted plus) to move down by semitone, Ctrl-Shift-Plus move up by octave, Ctrl-Shift-Equal to move down by an octave)
i) Hotkeys for nudging selected items (currently Ctrl-[ and Ctrl-] for left/right nudge – including notes, Ctrl-Shift-[ and Ctrl-Shift-] for up/down – not including notes)
j) Hotkey for tie (currently Ctrl-T, adding shift for opposite direction of tie) this hotkey will untie if pressing Ctrl-T when selected notes are already tied.
k) Hotkey for slur (currently Ctrl-L, adding shift for slur mark on opposite side of note – top vs bottom. Wish the hotkey worked like tie where pressing Ctrl-L on a slurred note would remove the slur.)
l) Auto guess/beam toggle, auto note spacing toggle feature and hotkey (Ctrl-Shift-G and Ctrl-Shift-A respectively). I use this feature often if I want to change something in the middle of a notey measure without disturbing the surrounding notes.Those are most of the hotkeys I use.
2) Ability to create custom templates that are available when creating a new score. Including settings like instrument transposition (if I write a trumpet piece – I call up a Bb template so I can score in the transposed key and still hear reference notes of the correct concert pitch), number of measures (I usually create a template with lots of extra measures – pages worth – so I can create compressed rests and not run out of measures. It’s easier to delete to the end then add measures and fix the problems that occur when there aren’t enough measures to have the desired number of systems per page. I also have handwritten score in some templates and not-handwritten for others. I place a custom footer in each template “Prepared for ….” where I have a different band template and the band name goes in the footer, etc. All of this saves a lot of setup time because selecting the right template is much easier than patching settings from a “wrong” starting point.
3) Current options for key signature where I can move notes into the new key (up or down) or leave the notes alone and not move – just set the key to something else.
…
Thanks for the opportunity to voice suggestions.
