shirling & neueweise wrote:
hi owain, dennis explained most of it already. if you want it to cover the existing time sigs (there seems to be no other way to do this at present), you'll need to create (in the shape expression designer) a white filled box with no border, barely wider than the existing numbers, and overlay the number(s) for the time sig. then add 5 horizontal lines for the staff lines (takes some fiddling to get the placement right) - make sure they are the same thickness as your document staff lines and just longer than the width of the blank square. once perfectly aligned, make a copy and remove outer lines accordingly for use on percussion staves. use staff lists to assign the expression(s). don't forget to change the cautionary time sigs at the end of a system preceding the /10 or /12 etc. time sigs.
the placement of the top left of the time signature at the 0/0 point in the shape designer will help later for controlling placement of the expression: set it to 0 vertical / 0 horizontal, measure-attached, and move horizontally as needed.
last step, prepare yourself for a wave of commentary explaining how there is no reason in hell some dilettante composer who obviously knows nothing about notation traditions has the right to force the musician to learn to play what amounts to truncated triplet/quintuplet groups, blah blah blah, how you can't SERIOUSLY expect anyone to understand such abstract intellectualizations, blah blah blah, how you clearly haven't understood that notation should define the music and not the inverse, blah blah blah...
but since we've been through all that before on this list, you might be lucky enough to avoid it this time around 8^)
fight the fight! jef
I really don't care what composers want to write - if it makes sense to them, let them write it. If it makes sense to others, it'll get played, and if it doesn't, it won't get played.
BUT, I would love to see a feature added to Finale's time signature tool, whereby we can DEFINE the Use Different Time Signature For Display. It would have the ability to use any numbers (the digits 0 to 9 in any combinations which fit the traditional number-over-number) or note type. I don't think it should be so hard for them to implement, since they provide us with the capability of using any time signature for display, even one that has no bearing on the actual music. So placing graphic time signatures is already in place, it would merely require them to allow us to assign what elements go where in the display.
It would certainly make it easy to do what Owain is asking about, and for professional engraving purposes it would make life a lot easier in dealing with modern notation.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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