• 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, and it’s probably not usable at all with the Opcode Studio 5 interface, so you may have no choice but to use Apple MIDI Manager. 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: 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 change 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.
