Glissando
The glissando feature needs the following revisions:
1. Each of the seven notes in a glissando scale should be able to be set independently as flat, natural, or sharp. Currently, any glissando is essentially limited to whatever the key is - which is fine for a default setting. But a harp can play many more unusual scales than those now available with the Noteflight glissando feature. In fact, this is the defining feature of the harp that sets it apart from ANY other instrument.
2. A glissando can start at any point in a measure, but it should also be able to end at any point in any subsequent measure. Currently, a glissando can only end within the measure in which it begins, or on the first beat of the next measure. (Maybe it would help if a glissando could ignore or override rests?)
3. A glissando should be able to cross between bass clef and treble clef.
There are many other glissando nuances on harp, but these revisions would go a long way toward approximating a harp's abilities.
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Glissando on a piano or a fretted instrumented instrument is a very effect from glissando on an unfretted string instrument or a slide trombone. The direction "gliss." to a violinist means portamento, sliding continuously through microtones. It does NOT mean move up or down by semitone. The changes smarkclardy recommends are okay as far as they go, but they pretty much miss the point. What Noteflight URGENTLY needs is glissando that produces a PORTAMENTO effect. Without that the glissando is fairly useless anyway. If all you really want is a chromatic scale passage, you can always write in the notes one by one.
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The glissando improvements outlined above are still urgently needed and quite to the point for an instrument whose defining characteristic IS the glissando, moving up or down one note (i.e., string) at a time. Jake Barnes' has made some important suggestions about portamento for violinists, but his comments are irrelevant in this post about Noteflight features that harpists need.
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The glissando feature is obviously not intended merely to apply to the harp, a fairly obscure and relatively rarely employed instrument, but to all instruments, and your original comment did not specify that you were talking merely about the harp: it was titled “Glissando”. The most salient and glaring problem with Noteflight’s glissando feature is that cannot produce a portamento effect, and portamento is how most instruments, not just the violin, interpret the notated diagonal line. These include, but are not limited to, the human voice, the viola, the cello, the double bass, the trombone, the clarinet, the saxophone, the electric guitar, and the unfretted bass guitar. Moreover, if all you want is a rapid chromatic or diatonic scale, you can simply write in the individual notes. No, your complaints are quite obviously fairly minor and trivial compared to the Noteflight’s complete inability to produce any kind of true slide or pitch inflection.
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I'm not your opponent here, and it's just silly to assess the relative merits or rarity of harp vs strings. Our mutual problem is the inability to express normal musical ideas in Noteflight. The current incarnation of glissando is a reasonable start for many instruments, but remains inadequate for harp as I've discussed above. As you've pointed out, the complete absence of a portamento feature is a glaring omission for many other instruments that screams for correction. As a matter of practical implementation, however, coding for a continuous glide from one note to another would be an entirely different matter from sequencing the intervening series of discreet notes. The latter is not a subset of the former, except in an abstract sense. I notice that you've made your plea for "Portamento" under that heading in this Feedback forum. Hopefully, the Noteflight Powers-That-Be will heed your call and implement this sorely needed glide feature. I also hope that they'll improve the existing glissando feature. Neither goal is trivial, nor are our goals mutually exclusive. Both need to be implemented.
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