Kieren MacMillan wrote:
I think you might be mistaken regarding the traditional engraving
convention -- my copy of "The Essential Dictionary of Musical
Notation" says
"Another help in reading a melisma is the proper alignment of the
lyric.
The word or syllable, instead of being centered under the note,
should be aligned flush left with the left edge of the notehead."
There are circumstances where that is problematic, though. Let's say I
have a SATB score in four staves, in which all four voices are singing
the same lyrics, but the sopranos are singing a melisma while the basses
are holding a whole note. Ideally the lyrics would line up vertically,
but in practice the bass lyrics will be slightly to the left of the
soprano. The solution to this is to \set associatedVoice, but this can
be very clunky, especially since this \set has to occur at least one
syllable before it is supposed to take effect. (At least I think so --
anytime I use this solution it involves about 30 minutes of trial and
error.)
I can't think of an easily-implemented solution to this, though, other
than a bunch of manual tweaks. While Finale lines them up evenly, it
does so at the expense of the traditional engraving convention you've
mentioned above. This is part of the reason why Finale scores have a
recognizable unpleasant look.
--Daniel
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