Prospect Sierra -- Elementary Orchestra

2002-2003 Season

Last updated: -[Sun Feb 29 12:44:24 2004 by smh]-

This web page is for the members of Prospect Sierra Tapscott Orchestra (with an occasional piece for the Avis orchestra). Some of our orchestra pieces can be downloaded or viewed here. It can help you rehearse parts at home. You may also be able to download and print a lost part.

There are three kinds of file here.

• midi files can be played directly by your web browser, or you can download the midi files and play them any time on your own computer. MIDI files let you hear the music, but you won't see the score.
• NWC files. If you are using a PC (not a Mac) you can use a `viewer' for the score editing program we use to prepare many of the pieces we play in orchestra: Noteworthy Composer. (Unfortunately, Noteworthy isn't available for the Macintosh.) Using the Noteworthy Player you can not only hear the music, you can see the score as the music plays. (String bowing marks won't appear correctly and will show up as letters `d' and `u' -- they require installing an extra font and that's a lot of bother.)
• mp3 files. midi files are very small and the instrument sounds are synthesized by the `sound card' in your computer. Different computers have different midi players with different quality, and some of them might not even have all the instrument sounds needed, or may play some instruments badly. If the midi file for any piece doesn't play well on your computer, you can download a mp3 file containing the sounds as synthesized on Steve's computer. This will sound more-or-less as the score was intended, but mp3 files are much larger than midi files and will take a lot longer to download unless you have a fast network connection.

To use Noteworthy you will need to set it up on your PC. If you are a student, get a parent to help you.  If you are a parent, get your kid to help you. You'll need to visit the Noteworth Composer Browser Plug-In page to install the free Noteworthy player. (If you try to view these files without first installing the plug-in, then your browser might take you to a place that will offer to install the player for you, but it's simpler just to install the plug-in first.) Even if you installed the Noteworthy Player last year you should install the new version this year. Some new features have been added to Noteworthy and the old player won't play the new scores.

If you run a Mac or something else, or if the plug-in won't work on your machine, then you won't be able to view or print Noteworthy files. But you will still be able to download and play the midi or mp3 files. Most computers handle midi and mp3 without any extra setup.

If your PC browser won't launch the Noteworthy files automatically, or seems confused about what to do with them, then you can also download a Noteworthy file to your PC and use the Noteworthy Player also available at noteworthysoftware.com. It is similar to the browser plug-in but operates as a separate program. After you install the Noteworthy Player, you can use it to open Noteworthy score files that you download and save on your machine. You can also save midi and mp3 files on your computer so you can use them without being connected to the internet.

Browsers differ a little in how you tell them to save a file to your local machine, but typically you hold the Shift key while clicking on the link, or else click the right (instead of the left) mouse button on the link and chose "Save Link As" from the pop-up menu.

If you have problems with any of this, please send email to Steve Haflich.

The web page from our 2002-2003 season can be found here.

The web page from our 2001-2002 season can be found here.