Thanks for posting your procedure -- I don't have too much experience with vocal music, so I'm still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. As I turns out, I guess I must be doing at least something right, because my procedure is pretty much the same as your first four steps. However, once I've done that, I have previously been reluctant to move syllables around too much -- maybe a couple of nudges here or there (especially on hyphenated syllables), but I mostly try to resolve problems by making the whole measure wider, or sometimes widening the problematic half of the measure with TGTools -- or, of course messing with the beat chart. I was sort of surprised to find that it's kosher to make major adjustments in syllable positioning. Do you have a maximum threshold for how far you can get away with moving syllables?
Not mathematically, no. Basically, my rule is that I won't push it any farther than what looks good. More precisely, I'm trying to achieve maximum readability, and even spacing of the notes themselves (ie, how they'd appear if no lyrics were involved) is an important consideration to the extent that it can be achieved with the lyrics still fitting well. I've seen plenty of published songs -- always newer stuff -- which are obviously spaced with the lyrics checked under music spacing options and frankly I think they look like shit.
Now that you mention it, I don't really make "major adjustments" in syllable positioning. If a bar needs more than a minor adjustment, I'll revisit the spacing of the notes instead, whether it's adding to the measure width, tweaking the beat chart, respacing it with lyrics turned on again, or whatever. I also frequently make small adjustments to the beat chart to get something to look good.
Even so, I'll also do a lot of *minor* nudging syllables. I think of two or three nudges at 200% to be perfectly reasonable on almost any syllable if there's good reason for it. If I've got a fairly tight measure where proper spacing of the notes (ie, with lyrics ignored in the spacing) leaves the lyrics crowded but not actually running into each other, I will push them around a nudge or two this way or that to get a more even balance of the syllables. My feeling is that slight advantage to the eye of better spacing between syllables more than makes up for the even slighter disadvantage of slight offcentering from the note. The other main reason to nudge is when a hyphenated word is too close for a hyphen but too far to be flush. Then you've got to push it either in or out. If it's way off, it'll have to be addressed in the beat chart, but
Context matters a lot. I don't actually center syllables to the vowel, as some older styles recommend, but I'm definitely more liberal about nudging a syllable in the direction of centering the vowel. What sort of note is above the syllable makes a big difference in how the eye reacts to offcentering. For example, a syllable under a downstem eighth note which finishes a beam is generally going to appear too far to the right, because the beam going left and not right creates an optical illusion. For a short syllable in such a situation I'll sometimes nudge it a touch to the left just for that, and in any crowded measure, such a syllable can bear being pushed left more than would a syllable under other conditions. The same is true to a lesser extent under any unbeamed downstem note.
I know that some styles ask for syllables to be left-aligned on a note which starts a tie or melisma. I don't follow that style; I center all such syllables. Nevertheless, I'm more wedded to the illusion of centering than to mathematical centering, and for that reason I'll often nudge such syllables a bit to the left, particularly if it's a long syllable or the measure is crowded. (This is what I had in mind in responding to Don's query, since he described such a measure.) I'll typically nudge such a syllable rightward about four arrows at 200%. For a similar reason, the first syllable of a system sometimes respond well to a slight rightward nudge.
I always left-nudge any syllable that ends in a punctuation mark, a little more so if it's a period or comma, and a little less for something taller, and a lot more for a dash or ellipsis. I think most engravers do this, though we might vary on the exact amount. (This, at least, is something which seems like it could be automated with little difficulty.)
There's probably other things I'm not thinking of right now. My only real rule is to make it look good, and any patterns I cite are descriptive not prescriptive. I've been doing piano-vocal music for many years, so it's sort of instinctive for me. Part of my routine to go through and entire song and touch up all the lyrics. Although there are definitely patterns, everything is pretty much an eyeball judgment. For instance, if two syllables are just a touch too close, do I nudge a syllable or tweak the beat chart? I don't know, I guess I just decide instinctively based on how it looks to me.
In many songs very little adjustment needs to be done -- pretty much just the punctuation ones. In other songs there's a lot. How much lyric tweaking is necessary is largely a function of two things: (1) the tightness of the layout, and (2) the texture of the accompaniment. If you've got running 16th notes in the piano and a slow sweeping melody, then the lyrics have plenty of room. If you've got a fast, text-heavy and/or syncopated melody over a simple accompaniment, then the lyrics are going to need a lot of tweaking. It's definitely one of the things on my mental checklist if I'm quoting a price for a single song.
If you're a perfectionist like me, you'll also make additional spacing adjustments to certain bars on a case-by-case basis -- especially if nearby bars have wide variations in note/lyric density.
Can you give an example of what you're talking about here?
I think we've already covered it. If one bar comes out particularly tight and the others on the system aren't, then you'll want to add to the width of that measure but not the others. Or if one note has a particularly fat syllable that's crashing into things but the rest of the bar is fine, then you need to adjust the spacing to accommodate that one syllable and leave the rest alone. Or more generally, even if there's no serious spacing problem per se, it's still nice to have a fairly uniform lyric density across a system, so if one bar has fatter words than the others I'll usually widen that bar a little. That sort of thing.
mdl
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