Hi Simon, > I want to say that I do think the custodes need to look more different from > ordinary note heads, and the tiny parentheses look too thin.
Agreed. > How about hollow diamond note heads (most likely "noteheads.s0diamond")? I > feel like that could be fairly intuitive as a note that isn’t supposed to be > sung itself. As choral singer and choir conductor, every single example I’ve ever come across “in the wild” is a stemless quarter-note head, parenthesized >95% of the time. And — not surprisingly (to me, at least) — Gould’s example (Behind Bars, “Enharmonic spelling”, p. 437) gives exactly this notation. > how about a single left square bracket before the custos? This could quite > clearly signify that the note actually belongs to the following line, and I > could even imagine that working with the custos having the full rhythmic > value of the following note. The bracket could be made to either span the > whole staff or only the note head. If, and only if, the note is at the end of the system — which is, in my experience, the minority of the time! — a square bracket *might* help, but only as a **replacement for** (and not **addition to**) parentheses. However, that would potentially introduce two different notations (one mid-system, one at the end), which would almost certainly be confusing; as well, square brackets have become somewhat of the de facto “editorial marking” indicator (cf. Barenreiter critical editions), so using them for these “hint notes” would surely introduce more ambiguity/confusion. I’m definitely on Team Parenthesized-Cue-Note. :) Hope that helps! Kieren. __________________________________________________ My work day may look different than your work day. Please do not feel obligated to read or respond to this email outside of your normal working hours.
