On Mon, May 31, 2010 4:06 pm, Christopher Smith wrote: > I wouldn't want to put odd notation in front of a > sight-reading orchestra musician today; I would want it as clear as > possible.
So here's the problem. Composers are gold you shouldn't indicate phrasing with slurs because string players might think it's bowing. You can't add accents because they would give a false sense of beat placement. You can't change the time signature from top to bottom even if the parts aren't playing the same rhythms. Heck, what do you do in this piece? <http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/music/waam/fanfare-heat-revised.pdf> Change the time signature from part to part, or hope they figure out the phrasing? The trumpets vs. trombones at mm 35-36? How about the strings in measures 56 onward? Or 89 onward? Heck, the Vermont Youth Orchestra played this piece and didn't stumble over module/phrase-based beaming: <http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/music/waam/fanfare-heat-premiere.mp3> I used to write pieces without barlines or time signatures, and use beaming as the organizational tool, since it was often different from part to part. Then I'd get requests for barlines, so I put them in, no matter how absolutely weird the resulting notation would become. Here's just one example (this score goes back 12 years, so forgive some of the ugly bits and pre-plugin kludges): <http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/music/pdf/rain.pdf> The bass clarinet lines are nice 'n' smooth and the occasional barlines are placed to indicate entry and exit of those two lines, or specific points of reference. The other parts have a few positioning barlines but and simply are clear and even. The score seems pretty clean to perform, no? Now look at this part, one of those for bass clarinet (done last minute, so tie/slur clashes were never fixed up) where the player wanted barlines added in plain 4/4: <http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/music/pdf/rain-bclar1-treble.pdf> What sense do all those false syncopations make, especially at the end of page 1 and start of page 2? None. Is that easier to read? I think it's totally crazy, and the piece sounded syncopated when it shouldn't have. Here's what it ended up sounding like -- not bad at all, but kinda jerky in the bass clarinet parts: <http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/music/mp3/coldstones/into_the_morning_rain.mp3> So what's the solution? I just expect musicians to understand that beaming primarily indicates organization in linear time -- *not* organization to time signatures. (We used to call that the tyranny of the barline.) Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
