On Sep 24, 2006, at 11:12 AM, Robert Patterson wrote:
I would argue that Finale (and possibly Sib) are already nearly
capable of it. The one remaining shortcoming is long slurs.
I would say spacing is a big issue, too, especially with lyrics, ties
and accidentals. Although in my work I seldom need anything more than
the default spacing (with occasional tweaks), I know that better
spacing than Finale provides is essential to professional work. Close
spacing, particularly, reveals all kinds of problems in Finale's
output. My solution for a long time has simply been to take more
space, running into extra pages at times. Paper is cheap, my time
isn't, especially if I am not copying for publication (where huge
runs cause paper to start getting MORE expensive compared with my time!)
However, with Finale (and probably also Sib) it still requires
human expertise to know how to space the staves and plan the
spacing and page breaks.
Yes, that is for sure. I am sure I have quoted a copyist friend of
mine here before, but the quote bears repetition: "Now that any idiot
can push a button on a computer, he frequently does."
Someone lamented that new music has not received such care. Like it
or not, new music simply does not sell enough copies to justify
that kind of investment. But new music presents another challenge
as well. Many new notations have never (or rarely) been hand-
engraved. There are no established standards for how to engrave
them: not even house standards.
Kurt Stone offers excellent notation suggestions for new music.
Choosing one at random, we can dicuss the circles for notating
location on a drum head (p. 222ff). An engraver would want to know
how wide (in spaces) should the circle be? What width line should
the circle have? How big should the "x" be? What width line should
the dotted arrows have? etc., etc. Since no house has a tradition
for engraving these symbols, there are no ready answers to these
questions beyond individual taste: a notoriously fickle standard.
We (Bill Duncan, Chuck Israels, Darcy Argue, and myself, among
others) ran into that exact problem last year while trying to give
useful feedback to Bill Duncan who was creating an articulations font
for general use. Jazz articulations have only really existed in nib-
pen copying — there are no real engraved standards for them. Trying
to come up with versions of scoops, falls, turns, flips, etc., that
match Engraver font was an unbelievable challenge for Bill to start
with, then he got contradictory comments from us users about how we
expect them to look. Default placements were another point where none
of us agreed exactly (how close to the note head for certain
markings, what to do with a fall following a dotted note, scoops on
notes with alterations, etc.)
Christopher
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