On Apr 28, 2007, at 5:33 AM, shirling & neueweise wrote:
it's not silly at all, mark seemed fairly clearly to be referring
to note-specific expressions; although i could be wrong... and of
course tempi and other score-related expressions should be measure
attached.
Actually, no. I've always done all my expressions as measure-
attached. It sounds like the consensus here is that auto-positioning
and metatools are only going to be useful to me if I switch to note-
attached. So now I'm looking at an even bigger change of habits than
I thought. Given that I'm really not at all unhappy with how I do my
expressions now, I'm starting to doubt whether it will be much
benefit to me.
Two of the things that you (Jef) have stressed as time-savers don't
really apply to me.
I never extract parts. Most of my work is piano-vocal. Occasionally
I may do a piece that adds one or two other instruments to that. On
the rare occasions I've needed to extract a solo part -- which I've
done maybe about 10 times in my entire career -- I just make a copy
of the full score file and delete the other parts. Of course I can
see how that would be terribly inconvenient if one were to do a lot
of extraction, or if one were to make changes to the score after the
part is extracted, but since neither of those is the case for me it's
not an issue.
You also mention transposing. I do fairly often make transpositions
of songs, but my standard habit is to add the expressions after I've
transposed the music, not before.
[Jef again, in another post]
this brings up another point: if you are using only measure-
attached expressions, there is absolutely no way to get the kind of
precision you claim to be a freak about on the horizontal axis,
since this is proportional (in relation to beats) and except in
cases where expressions are placed at specific beat values (i.e. at
0 EVPUs and NOT offset by 5 EVPUs or whatever from the beat, eg.
1.5, 3.666) the positioning in relation to the music changes with
the music spacing (different spacing; more or less measures per
system), while note-attached horizontal positioning will always be
in absolute relation to the note it is attached to.
That's not true. When you enter the H position for an expression
assignment you get the choice of absolute units or proportions of the
beat. (If the value is negative, absolute is the only choice.) For a
horizontal position within the measure, I typically do want to
express is in beat-relative terms, so I'm happy with that. If I
could have my way, I'd prefer to be able to enter H position there as
a sum of beat value and absolute value, so that I could use either
component or a combination of both. It sounds like you're saying I
can have that, but only if I assign one to the expression itself and
the other to the assignment.
There are a few situations where I want something just a tiny bit
left of a beat, in which case you're right, I can't get a consistent
fix on it if it isn't on beat one. I've always done those by placing
on the beat and then nudging with the arrow. I guess I've gotten used
to it since it hasn't greatly bothered me, but now that you mention
it, I would prefer if I could define those exactly.
Even more significant is I'll occasionally have an expression where I
really want to define the horizontal position off the barline, rather
than starting from beat 1 and have to account for the variable
distance between beat 1 and the barline due to accidental, second on
a downstem, etc. (It would be really nice if they'd define beat zero
as the barline rather than equivalent to beat one.) In those cases
I've had to resort to dragging. I see that now I can assign the
barline as the alignment point. Even if I don't change my standard
habits over all, that's one situation where I'll use the new feature.
(I don't think I mentioned: I only upgraded to 2k4 a few months ago,
and I did very little engraving at all for about two years prior to
that. My life had taken me in a different direction for a while, and
it's only this year that I'm getting back into engraving.)
I'm basically going to be doing math in my head each time, like,
"Let's see, I want this at -66, but my default position is defined
as -42, so I need to type in -24." I'm starting to doubt that
this is really going to save me time.
yes but once set up properly you won't need to adjust anything in
the majority of cases; you are already doing math in fact every
single time you apply an expression, and **way** more math than you
really need to with auto-positioning.
It may have been math once upon a time, but now it's second nature.
When I decide to position an expression at, say, V=-54, it's not
because I've counting out the points, it's because I've been placing
expressions for ages and I just know what -54 looks like. (That's
also why I'm very resistant to changing my measurement units. I
measure everything in points, percentage-adjusted so that one "point"
= 1/6 of a staff space.)
On Apr 28, 2007, at 5:13 AM, Christopher Smith wrote:
In fact, once I cottoned on to the following advice, I got a lot
quicker.
Dynamics, along with any instrument-specific instructions, should
be assigned as note expressions. This often means assigning the
same expressions in several staves, but with metatools and
automatic placement, this goes very quickly, and you can even
assign everything in one staff and copy only note-attached
expressions into the other staves.
Things that are global, like rit, accel, a tempo, rehearsal
letters, and any style markings, should be assigned using measure-
attached expressions. These are the only things that measure-
attached expressions should be used for (though I also put in
elapsed measures this way, you know, repeated measures that get
numbered?)
If I'm understanding correctly, this means that if I have a "ritard"
and a "mf" that I want at the same vertical position, they will
actually have different V values, because one is measured from the
top of the staff and the other is measured from whatever you set as a
default V position, right? That seems like it would be confusing to me.
I guess I'm not totally sold on the idea of always measuring a
dynamic marking's V position from the lowest note. Maybe that's
because most of my dynamic markings go into a two-staff piano part.
There can be other factors, but for the most part when I'm placing a
dynamic I want it to be visually centered between the RH and LH. That
means the primary factors are how much the RH music extends below the
staff, how much the LH music extends above the staff, and how far
apart the two staves are.
Yes, it is a drag that you can't use staff lists when using
metatools on measure-attached expressions, but the staff assignment
dialogue box is only a right-click away.
Well, sure, but if you have to go through the staff assignment
dialogue box anyway, why not just go there in the first place, which
is exactly how I do it now?
Thanks to all for the comments. This has been an enlightening
conversation for me. At this point I don't see sufficient time
savings to warrant changing my overall habits, but I've got a much
better idea of how the feature could help me in some specific
situations. Also, it sounds like I'll benefit a little by doing many
of my expressions as note-attached but still defining them with a
staff-based vertical alignment point, even if I never use metatools
at all.
mdl
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