On Jul 29, 2007, at 7:52 AM, shirling & neueweise wrote:
hi, i don't work with voice very much, wonder if anyone can let me know what the standard formats for SATB+piano might be. and what percentage reduction do you usually use? are there usually separate piano and choir scores? if i use the format i was planning (9.5x12.5) i can get 2 systems per page.
I usually go by guess and by gosh for staff sizes and spacing (I can hear you cringing from over here!) but two systems on that size paper seems very large for choral parts. The largest choral parts I have ever seen are 8.5 x 11, and the music is usually smaller than on an orchestral part, since the chorus are holding the music a foot and a half from their faces and the paper can't be so big as to be unwieldy. Two systems of SATB+piano sounds very reasonable for folio- sized music.
Piano (even a piano reduction, in the case of orchestra works) on the same part as the chorus is normal. They are not usually separated, as the chorus gets important cues from the piano part and the pianist is usually a répétiteur who needs to know exactly what the chorus is singing.
what font size (fixed?) do you use for the lyrics?
Big controversy here. Bigger fonts, which everyone cries for (especially post 40-years-of-age eyes) cause spacing problems. Smaller fonts cause rehearsal problems and large sections of singers singing "Fnuh, fnuh, fnay, fnuh" because they can't see the words.
I vaccillate between 12 and 14 points at 75-80% reduction (don't know what that is fixed size, maybe 10 and 12?) and sometimes 13, depending on how dense it is and if I have to gain a bit of space to fit an extra measure in some systems or can relax a bit. Obviously I keep the same size for the whole work.
any suggestions for examples i can look at online would be appreciated.
I'll forward a commercial sheet to you offlist, which should give you an idea.
Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
