If you will permit a somewhat differing opinion, I think there are places where cautionaries are necessary, even when there isn't a key change, and I have figured out after many years that NON-parenthesised ones actually are easier to read.
I know that parentheses make logical sense, that a parenthesised accidental is kind of like saying, "I KNOW you know this, but here's a reminder" to differentiate it from one that is absolutely necessary. But from a distance, parentheses around an accidental makes all three (sharp, flat, and natural) into the same outline, so you have to read more closely to see which accidental it actually is. Already, sharps and naturals are easy to confuse with each other; the parentheses make it worse. I keep getting caught by these on the gigs I do where the Finale user is less than professional. And Sibelius seems to have this redundant accidental default that puts in accidentals on the SECOND of two tied notes! Christopher On Sun Nov 10, at SundayNov 10 12:39 PM, Craig Parmerlee wrote: > > > For those of us with imperfect eyesight, we cannot always see the > accidental clearly. If I can see that there is an accidental, then I > can make a quick judgment about whether it is most likely a flat, sharp, > or natural and be right almost all the time. People who add unnecessary > accidental markings without parenthesizing them should be shot, IMHO. > And people who pencil in unnecessary accidentals BESIDE notes in the > music should also be shot. If one needs a reminder about a note, write > the accidental ABOVE the note, with a parenthesis and there will never > be any confusion. IMHO, the only time an accidental should be penciled > BESIDE a note is when correcting a misprint. _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
