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.
and although I do it, and admit to doing it, I advise against doing it. Definitely a legitimate use of the line, "do as I say, not as I do," IMO.
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.I've developed a different guard against these types of problems: documentation. For some time I have not started a new file that I have not documented, either in the comment section of the File info box, or some portion of the lyrics block, or an unassigned text block, or in a separate document, the important things about a file. Created a custom shape to use; make a note of it. Staff reduction sizes, write it down; mutiple note assignment of syllables, document it. Fonts used for text blocks, lyrics, note elements, clefs, whatever, make an entry in the log. Before I revisit a file for which there is log information, I study the information, to see if there is anything that will affect, or be affected by any of the things I propose to do in the revisitation. Further, each day's work goes into a separate file. In the case of the quartet piece I'm currently working on, yesterday, I worked on a file named "qtt_0010"; when I pull up that file today to start working on it, the first thing I'll do is to save the file as "qtt_0011", the second thing I'll do is to pull up the properties box for file "qtt_0010", and change the attribute to "read only".
I do have some of my own files, and I do ocasionally get files from others, which do not have documentation. I have developed a protocol for dealing with these, too. First, never work from the original copy of the file. Change the attribute of the original to "read-only", then the original, and save it with a new name. Then, I study the file. What is in the lyrics block; the text block; the instrument list; the file-info pages; the expression libraries; the articulation libraries; the smart shape libraries. What fonts are used? Any staff styles defined? Everything that looks important in these reviews will be noted in the log file for future reference.
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.May be, but I have seen more than one example of music choral music and hymnals from "respectable" publishers, in which one discovers upon examination, that the lyrics are set in condensed or (much more rarely) extended typefaces. Presser did it; Novello did it; Appleton did it. I've seen the samples for myself.
Perhaps I should say that I don't necessarily mean to suggest mean that this should be the first remedy we try; only that it is a solution that may be useful on some occasions.
ns
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
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