On Oct 16, 2006, at 9:30 AM, John Howell wrote:
I'm used to reading orchestral music printed from 19th century plates, where it is quite common to have as many as 12 bars or even more to a line, and the parts are perfectly readable even by string players sitting 2 on a stand. (But of course they are laid out line by line (or page by page) to assure that readability.) On the other hand, I'm always appalled by how wide the spacing is in standard piano or piano-vocal editions, making many more page turns than might strictly be necessary. But that's what pianists are used to. I suspect that they are equally appalled at my piano parts, which tend to be much more compressed because of my slight obsession with good page turns.
Not sure what you mean by "standard piano-vocal". In my opinion the bulk of piano-vocal music printed in the past 20 years or so is unattractively loose. Lots and lots of exceptions, of course, but the overall trend, I think, is toward a looser fit than was standard in the pre-computer days. Personally, I don't like it.
It's not hard to guess why. The software doesn't figure spacing very well, so the cost-effective way to (partly) avoid the problem is to just set everything looser.
The problem seems to be worse with contemporary pop music, where presumably less budget priority is given to engraving quality than in other fields.
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