At 1:02 AM 09/18/03, Noel Stoutenburg wrote: >Well, there are times when one wants syllables assigned to more than one note. >I sometimes use this when I do hymns which have a descant sung only to the last >stanza. In this case, I assign the topmost staff to the descant, the middle >staff to the soprano / alto, and the bottom staff to the tenor bass. If the >descant scans substantially the same as the last stanza, then I will assign the >same set of lyrics to both the top and middle staves.
I understand that there are cases where it's more convenient to assign the same lyric to more than one place, but in my experience it's a better general practice not to. If the file is never going to be revisited, then it doesn't matter, but if there's a chance you'll open the file again a year later and make some modifications, then you could be asking for trouble. For me, the small amount of extra work the first time is worth it to avoid headaches on the revisions. Suppose you need to make a change to just one part. If you know that part is the only one using that text, you can alter it safely. If you don't know it, then you've got to double-check the whole piece to make sure you didn't simultaneously change a lyric elsewhere. >: specify how you want the lyrics sorted, what behaviour you would like for >orphans (I do not want all orphans moved; I purposely create them for the >purpose of setting place markers in the lyrics block: [...] That's a good point. There definitely needs to be an option that leaves unassigned syllables in place, for people like you who use them as markers. (There might even be an option that knows to leave them in place but only if they are enclosed in some special sort of brackets.) >No, you're not the only one. But I found a really good solution to the problem >a while ago which doesn't involve Finale. When confronted with this problem, >I've taken to switching to fonts from suppliers other than Microsoft and Finale >for lyrics and certain text blocks. One thing that neither MS (and I >understand this to be true for MAC, too) nor Finale make available for lyrics >is a "condensed font". If we use Times as an example, Times condensed is a >font which is as tall, and where the characters have the same width of stroke, >but where the characters are narrower. There are a number of collections >available which contain condensed fonts. [...] Well, for me this isn't a good solution. Some condensed fonts are attractive, but the bottom line is that if you're solving the fit problem by making the text smaller you aren't maximizing readability. Condensing the music is certainly an improvement over reducing it altogether, but you're still reducing it in one dimension. In my work, I care a lot about readability -- not just the basic level whereby someone looking at the music can make sense of it, but the extra effort that reduces the level of subconscious effort spent on deciphering the music, so as to get a better performance from a musician who is sight-reading, paying attention to other things while singing, only glancing at the music briefly in order to keep better eye contact with the audience, etc. I do a lot of commercial singing in the field, gigs where you throw it together in a hurry and bear adverse conditions with a smile, and I know that although a decent musician can read anything, you'll get a better performance if less of that musician's effort is diverted toward reading the music on the page. I've also worked with amateur choruses, and it's a similar idea; the better the readability of the page, the more you can get the choristers' eyes out of the book and looking at the conductor. With regard to spacing lyrics, there's two major issues: type size and music spacing. As a general rule, the bigger the lyric on the page, the easier it is to read. (Obviously there is a limit to that, but it's somewhere above 12pt which means as a practical matter it's not a limit you're ever going to reach.) At the same time, the more evenly and tightly spaced the music is, the more readable it is. Ideally, you'd want to space the music exactly as you would if there were no words at all. Now, as anyone who has ever set vocal music knows, these two goals are in direct conflict with one another: If you make the lyrics big then it knocks the music spacing out of whack or just makes it too loose. But if you space the music nicely then either you have lyrics running into each other or you have to make them smaller. Reconciling the conflicting goals is what engraving vocal music is all about, and we all have our techniques[*]. But to get back to the point, I was talking about a situation where you've got the music snugly spaced so that two syllables abut against each other. Your suggested solution entailed reducing the lyric in such a way so that the syllables stay far enough apart that the problem isn't encountered. I would submit that any general style that results in lyrics which routinely leaves plenty of room between lyric syllables is either making the music too loose or the lyrics too small. If that space is available and you're not making use of it, then you're not doing the best job you can for your singer. >By the way, this is how some engravers and typesetters solved the problems; in >some cases, typing most of the lyric in a normal width, and using condensed >versions of the same font only when abosultely needed. I did commercial typesetting for years, in the days before DTP. Resorting to condensed type to make something fit was considered tacky -- something you'd expect from a discount print shop making business cards or junky newspaper ads, but not from a respectable publisher. When one resorted to a trick like that to make something fit where it doesn't want to, the preferred solution was to use what was then called "character compensation" and is essentially equivalent to what is now called "tracking". Finale offers tracking for text blocks, but (in FinMac 2k2) it is unavailable in lyrics. I would very much like to see tracking enabled for lyrics. I might occasionally use it to help out a tight fit, but more important I'd like to use it for spot kerning of bad character pairs. * Without going into all the details, my typical procedure goes something like this: I knock the lyric size up a point or two then run automatic spacing with lyrics turned on. This gives me a rough idea of how much space I'll need for each measure. Then I work out my overall layout based on that, keeping an eye on potentially troublesome bars, and when I've got it where I want it I lock down all the systems. (If it's a complicated layout, I'll do a printout at this point, so I can skim through it to make sure the layout is going to work.) Once the layout is set, I put the lyrics back to their regular size, and I redo automatic spacing with lyrics turned off. This essentially spaces every bar as if the lyrics weren't there, which I like, but spreading the bars out enough so that I've got enough room in every system to make the lyrics fit. Finally, I go through the piece bar by bar, nudging syllables, and making little alterations to measure widths and beat charts as needed. I know this seems onerous, but I've found that I like to go through the piece nudging syllables anyway. Mathematical centering just doesn't do it for me. Aside from the basic necessary routine nudges (eg, for punctuation marks), I've found that the eye is does not object to a small amount of off-centering and it's worth exploiting that to improve things like evenness of music spacing or evenness of spacing between syllables. Also, for some long or imbalanced syllables, the eye actually prefers a "centering" which better reflects the pronunciation. I wouldn't go so far as to center every syllable by its vowel, as some old style books recommend, but there is a need to compromise in that direction. The ultimate criterion is what feels most easy on the eye, not what is mathematically centered. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
