On Oct 15, 2006, at 4:21 AM, dc wrote:
Doing mostly vocal music myself, I think this is indeed one aspect of
Finale that could be vastly improved if anyone cared about it...
TGTools already has some helpful plug-ins for lyrics. Perhaps we could
talk Tobias into adding to them.
I also did mostly vocal music.
I'm a few years behind the curve now, so if anything has changed in the
program, feel free to enlighten me. I remember trying the TG's lyric
tools and concluding that, although they did make things better, they
didn't make them enough better that I wasn't going to a full round of
tweaking on my own anyway. That being the case, running TG Tools was
just an extra step that didn't save me any time.
More to the point, I felt that some of the TG algorithms were solving
problems in ways that were perhaps the easiest to program but not the
best. For example, the one that left aligns syllables on beat one.
The problem here is that if the syllable text is longer than the space
allotted to the note, Finale will push the note to the right, creating
an ugly extra space between the note and the barline. TG's solution is
to left align the lyric to the note. Yes, that makes the ugly space go
away, but I don't really want the lyric left-aligned either. In most
cases, what I want is to leave the lyric centered, but let it hang
under the barline to the left. In other words, have it be spaced
without Finale thinking of the lyric having an x-coordinate that
overlaps with the barline as a collision.
This is really just a specific case of the largest problem with lyric
spacing in Finale: ie, what Finale thinks of as a collision. I don't
remember the details, but I know that Finale will often add space
around a note with a long lyric syllable, even if there's plenty of
room for the lyric, just because the lyric would underhang the next
note, an accidental, a lyric on a different verse line, etc. Any time
the spacing algorithm is considering the lyric as a limiting factor for
horizontal space, it needs to examine whether the lyric is really
colliding with another lyric at the same level or just overlapping with
something else in the measure at a different vertical position.
But I think that's probably one of the harder things to make an
algorithm for, in terms of creating a plug-in.
Some other lyric spacing issues. Just tossing ideas out here for
anyone who might want to consider plug-in development, or is just
curious what sorts of things we nitpicky vocal music engravers like to
tweak:
- I routinely nudged to the right any syllable ending with a comma or
period. This falls under the rubric of mathematical centering vs
visual centering. Understandably, Finale's basic algorithm is to
figure the width of the text and center it exactly. But to the eye, the
text's center of gravity is with the letters, not the punctuation mark,
so the lyric looks lopsided to the left. To my eye, the period or
comma does carry some weight, so I wouldn't center the letters alone,
either, but it's closer to that than it is to the default.
Similar issues with other punctuation, like an apostrophe or quote
mark. Even a full-size character like a question mark I find still
looks better with a slight adjustment. I'm not sure of the reason --
it must have something to do with the mark's cognitive function and not
just its size -- but to me it looks better with a subtle adjustment.
And if a syllable has a dash to the right, that shouldn't be calculated
in the centering at all.
(All of this is an issue in non-music publishing, by the way. High-end
publishing/design is aware of the difference between mathematical
centering and visual centering; it's one of the indicators that betrays
sloppy work.)
This ought to be pretty easy to program. I imagine a table for any
possible character that may appear in the leftmost or rightmost
position of a lyric, with an offset amount for pushing that lyric left
or right. The programmer would have default values matching his own
aesthetic, but the user could go in and edit them if he disagrees. The
plug-in simply runs through all the lyrics, check for the indicated
character, and nudges the syllable accordingly.
- Another visual-centering issue I routinely adjusted was a short
syllable on a downstem note. It's been a while, so I don't remember the
details, but as I recall, when the syllable was close to the stem, it
was disturbing to the eye to see it sit to the right of that stem
because it was centered under the notehead.
- And wasn't there an issue with whole notes? A whole note head is
wider than a half or quarter, but the lyric aligned the same. Thus it
looked off-center (to the left or right? I don't remember which). This
was especially noticeable if the syllable was short.
- Probably the most time-consuming tweaks I had to deal with is
treating the hyphens in a crowded line. I have several objection to
Finale's use of hyphens. For one thing, they aren't quite centered.
With plenty of space you'd never notice, but when you have a tight one
where the hyphen just barely fits, you see that it sits just a tiny bit
closer to the letter on the right. There's also the matter of visual
centering: in a tight fit, the context of what letter happens to sit to
the left and right of the hyphen will affect what appears to be
centered. You ought to be able to grab the hyphen and nudge it around,
but you can't. Lyric hyphens are one of the few elements that can't be
nudged. You can nudge the letters, but not the hyphen. Occasionally
I've resorted to deleting the lyric hyphen and inserting a separate one
as an expression instead, but usually I just live with it.
But that's pretty esoteric. The more basic problem is that Finale isn't
smart about what to do when the combination is so tight that the hyphen
goes away. As you slowly tighten up the space between hyphenated
syllables, the first thing that will happen is that the hyphen gets so
cramped that it collides with the letters (which is unacceptable). When
you get close enough, Finale will conclude that there is no room for
the hyphen so it disappears, but there's still a half space between the
syllables which the reader doesn't know how to parse: is it two
separate words or one? (which is also unacceptable).
For good engraving (my opinion, of course), there are only two
acceptable options. Either there's enough space for the hyphen to fit
comfortably between the syllables, or else the two lyric syllables need
to be completely flush so that they appear just as they would if the
whole word were set solid. Since it's generally a good thing to have
music spacing be as unaffected by lyric spacing as feasible, the flush
solution is usually the better one, even if it means knocking one or
both of the syllables slightly off-center. Alas, pushing the syllables
together so that they print flush is tedious work. Also, the eye seems
to be unusually sensitive to this, so that if the spacing is even a
little bit off it's distracting. A plug-in that somehow automated this
would be a big help.
There's more, but I've written plenty for now. One last question: I'm
curious if anyone else out there has any opinion on the idea of
aligning a lyric syllable so that it's centered on the vowel. One of
the books I read once upon a time said this is good practice, though it
doesn't seem to be commonly followed (not even before engraving became
computerized). I certainly don't do it as a general rule (which would
be impractical anyway), but I have found that in a tight passage where
syllables are being nudged to and fro, it does read better when I nudge
in the direction of vowel-centering.
mdl
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