Invisible note-head theory

• Sep 21, 2011 - 01:42

So, I was just wondering what the theory is behind invisible note-head notation. I'm reading a rhythm part for piano, bass, elec. guitar, and drums. In it has a bunch of notes with invisible note-heads. Obviously, the stems and flags are visible. What does this notation mean?


Comments

In reply to by Sean Oliveras

the answer is no. What I do is notate the whole part (I always select the middle line)

I don't remove note heads, After selecting the part that is rhythm instead of directed notes, I go to the "notehead pallette" and double click the oblong notehead. That changes all the noteheads to a indefinite pitch and represents the rhythm I want played there.

Just to mention in case anyone isn't aware - in conjunction with the 1.1 release, I provided a "slash notation" plugin (available in the plugin repository you can access via the menu at right of this page) than can automatically turn a notated passage into conventional rhythmic notation. That is, all notes are moved to the middle line, all noteheads are replaced with slashes, and playback of the notes is disabled (velocity set to 0). There is also an option to do this as what I call "accent" notation, which is the same but the notes are placed above the staff and made small. The assumption is this would be used in a multiple voice context to show accompaniment rhythm along with the melody.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

That works beautifully! I'm astounded and grateful that such a good piece of software is available free on the net.
One more question - is it possible to add lyrics when using the slashes (just 4 in a bar instead of the rhythmic-type), i.e. without having to link a syllable/word to a note?

In reply to by teabags

I can think of two ways to do this. One would be to enter melody notes in another voice and make them invisible ((at least, I think that would work). The other would be to just attach your words to the slashes themselves (they are ordinary motes, really), perhaps using ctrl-space to let you enter multiple words per slash if necessary. I think I would prefer the hidden notes in another voice, though.

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