cluster of notes

[ronpietrantoni]

I suppose your settings did not change themselves, secretly, in the meantime?
You never know with Windows..

Indeed. <wry g> I've discovered that my little trick is not permanent - every time you close Music Time (and, I assume, Encore), the settings revert to their default. So, for the moment, you have to reset the affinity every time you open the program.

I sure hope some skillful Windows geek at GVox dedicates his/her full attention to this show stopper soon!

I've done a little research: there's apparently a way to make the affinity change permanent involving typing in command prompts directly - which scares the beejebus out of me, so I've enlisted the help of our IT guy at church. Unfortunately, he's only part-time and often has bigger fish to fry than a problem for which I already have work-arounds. Once we've tried it, I'll let you all know the results.

[Meryl]

Hi Eveline. No - settings were the same. I have since tried changing the CPU to 0 rather than 2 which I had been using but it makes no difference. I don't get the note cluster all the time and I can key in quite a lot for a while. Often the cluster happens after I've been typing in ok for a page or 2 and then stop to look at the music and as I restart the note cluster happens. I have to quit Encore and go back in but then I have to go through the whole Task Manager, set affinity, set priority thing each time which is a real nuisance!

Meryl

[acote]

If you don't want to have to set the affinity each time you use Encore, you should have a look at this page:

http://www.techenclave.com/guides-and-tutorials/cpu-affinity-made-easy-67317.html

[jinglebelle17]

Still getting the glob cluster of notes too. Darn. Gvox, please pick up this ball!

[ronpietrantoni]

I hate to hand in my 'genius' card, but maybe we don't have the same problem. I had gotten to where I could reproduce the cluster at will, so I assumed that I knew what was the trouble. (no clue what was causing it, as I'm not a computer geek) Anytime I played my MIDI keyboard while MTD (sorry, I don't actually have Encore; YMMV) was open but not in step-entry mode, the first time I tried to play a note after re-entering step mode, it would happen - and the size of the cluster was directly proportional to how much I played out of step mode. It was as if something in the software was saving up all the notes I was playing while I was trying to figure out a bit of whatever piece I was transcribing and then spit them all out at once as soon as I re-activated step-time. I have no idea if this was actually occurring, but it describes the behavior perfectly.

After discovering the affinity thing at home in Windows 7, I wondered if the same solution might solve my cluster problem at work with XP (I never had a cluster problem with W7 as my problem there was that I couldn't get any notes to show at all!), as it also was a dual-core processor. Sure enough, when I reset the Priority and Affinity, I could go in and out of step-enter with no clusters. Later on, when I tried again, the clusters came back - but that's when I discovered that XP wouldn't remember the P/A settings. As long as I remembered to reset those each time I open MTD, things seem fine.

I'll have a real acid test later today, when I'll be writing out a horn arrangement - I'll keep everyone posted.

[Meryl]

I used the link http://www.techenclave.com/guides-and-t ... 67317.html posted by acote. I had to make a small change which was to include the "Title" parameter in the start command as it seemed to need it (Windows 7).

In brief what I did was to create a shortcut on the desktop to Encore.exe, edited its properties and changed the target field to

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C start "Encore 5" /AFFINITY 1 /HIGH "C:\Program Files\GVOX\Encore 5\Encore.exe"

Then I pinned the shortcut to the start menu so I can click on this there to start Encore with the Affinity and Priority set.

These settings solved the problem of Encore giving up after 5 notes or so being input but has created the cluster of notes problem instead . At least this means I don't have to keep changing the Affinity and Priority every time I have to quit out of Encore when I get the cluster of notes and it doesn't respond which is now happening at times.

Meryl

[ronpietrantoni]

That's exactly what I did, only I needed to rename MusicTime Deluxe to something without a space in it for it to work (obviously, Encore doesn't have that trouble). I haven't tried actually transcribing a song; I usually do that at work. However, I assumed that I would still have the ability to when I upgraded to Windows 7 at home and I did not until a few days ago, when I discovered the affinity trick. For all I know, I'll get note clusters, too - but I've had that at work for so long now (and discovered last night that it's still a problem in XP, even after changing the affinity and priority) that I'm just happy I got my MIDI keyboard to work in MTD at all - I'm used to the cluster problem and am now just stupid careful every time I need to step enter anything. I have found that, if I catch it the first time and hit 'undo', that I can work steadily for quite a while - as long as I don't leave step-enter mode and hit notes on the keyboard. I can enter a few measures of notes, leave and add lyrics and come back to do more melody with no problem - but if I stop and plunk a few notes out to make sure I have them right, I get a cluster the very next step-entered note. I might need to enter eight eighth notes in a row, but I'll only enter one, hit undo and then go about my merry way.

It sucks, but it sucks less than buying and learning new software. <wry g>

[Tony]

I just got Encore 5.02 this week, and noticed this cluster problem immediately. I use Encore on an XP computer with no option to set "affinity". There does however seem to be a way for me to avoid the clusters. They always appear when leaving cursor mode and starting step entry. I found that before leaving cursor mode, playing any note on my keyboard will keep the clusters from appearing when step entry is chosen right after playing the note.

[jinglebelle17]

Thanks so much. I will give this a try. The alternative it tearing out all my hair. Thank you for this idea and your response. Much appreciate it.
Jeanni

[ronpietrantoni]

Tony, I don't follow you - doing what you describe is exactly how I get note clusters! If I'm in cursor mode, as long as I don't hit the MIDI keyboard, I can go back and forth to step mode just fine.

[Tony]

Ron, it looks like our computer setups work differently. While in step-entry mode, I frequently make mistakes, and have to enter cursor mode to to reposition the cursor. I get the clusters when resuming step entry, and then playing my midi keyboard. That is, unless I first play a note while still in cursor mode. Then it seems that I can resume step-entry with no problem.

Go figure. At least I hope the Encore program developers are. I am pretty much ignoring Encore 5 and using 4.5 until they send me a fixed copy.

[ronpietrantoni]

Ron, it looks like our computer setups work differently. While in step-entry mode, I frequently make mistakes, and have to enter cursor mode to to reposition the cursor. I get the clusters when resuming step entry, and then playing my midi keyboard. That is, unless I first play a note while still in cursor mode. Then it seems that I can resume step-entry with no problem.

Go figure. At least I hope the Encore program developers are. I am pretty much ignoring Encore 5 and using 4.5 until they send me a fixed copy.

Yeah, I feel you. I got MusicTime Deluxe 4.0 in hopes it would solve some MIDI issues my new (at the time) XP box was having with my old Roland A-37 controller. I decided moving forward was best, so I simply started developing work-arounds for all the annoyances.

Our setups apparently aren't that different, after all! After reading your post, I had to transcribe three songs for work, needing melody and harmony parts, so I tried your suggesion: whenever I was about to step-enter notes again, regardless of what I was doing before, I would play one single note on my current controller (M-Audio Keystation 88) just before clicking the note value, and almost every time that prevented the clusters! I had a cluster show up once, in four hours of work - which was probably a mental error. I couldn't remember what I was doing just before it and it never happened again.

You now retain the genius card, sir! <bg>

[jinglebelle17]

Another problem: Step entry stops working in the middle of a song. Thanks to Tony and Ron's genius I can mostly avoid glob clusters of notes (by hitting a note on the music keyboard before choosing note value, which is annoying but now almost natural BUT, after a while, say 30+ measures of step entry, it stops working. Meaning, the note value shows up, but when I hit the keyboard nothing is entered. As the option at that point is to click a line or space on the staff for each note (grrr) I end up closing the program and restarting. Which seems to fix the problem, but this is just wrong. Ideas and suggestions are appreciated!
Thank you, Jeanni

[Hotch]

This problem was fixed in version 5.0.3, build 703. If you are still having difficulties, please let us know by filing a support ticket, http://www.gvox.com/contact_gvox

[klogue]

I've got 5.0.3 Build 746, and I have both of these problems--step Entry note clusters and step entry failing after some use. I haven't been able to get any of the workarounds mentioned above to work reliably. The only fix for step entry ceasing to function is to restart Encore.