At 3:28 PM -0700 11/4/11, Dean M. Estabrook wrote: >As I'm sure you have all encountered, I'm redoing parts for a rather >long Wind Ensemble transcription, which, ergo, has parts lasting up >to 6 or 7 pages (presently printed on both sides back to back). A >group managed to read it reasonably well a few nights ago, but most >of the page turns occur with no breaks at all between measures. What >is the best solution for this problem (if, in fact, there is one)?
Put more rests in the parts!!!! Seriously. But I ran into a similar problem with a Christmas Singalong Medley I wrote for our community string orchestra. 4-page parts, and nobody EVER has rests! Of course for strings, we are supposed to share stands and one stand partner always has responsibility for page turns, but in a community group not everyone has had that training, and too many want to use individual stands. For wind ensemble using one player on each part there's no such provision and you can't count on having stand partners, so yes, it's a problem. The easiest solution is one used by the commercial music and recording industry for decades. Don't print as booklets. Print one side only, and tape the double pages together in an accordion-fold configuration. (If you print double pages, the tape has to go on the back.) That way a page can be turned whenever the player has a hand free, without hiding the page that's still being played. Back in the '60s I had to get used to the smell of ammonia on new prints from Ozalid blueprint machines, but they certainly did the job, and every professional music copying/printing shop turned them out all day long. Similarly, individual pages printed one side only can be lifted and moved over during very brief rests, or during times when one hand is free. That's handy and sometimes necessary in early music, when everyone is reading off score rather than individual parts. How can you tell whether one hand will be free? Aye, that's the rub. You have to be able to play each instrument yourself, know what the fingerings are, and understand what's possible and what isn't. You can't just guess (although I suppose you could ask players). And even then, you may need to put only a few staves on a page and have an early page turn when it's possible, not when you run out of space at the bottom of a page. That's standard in well-laid-out Broadway show books. Just do NOT assume that you have to fill each page; you don't! John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
