Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
On Oct 14, 2006, at 4:43 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: One of my main arguments is that Score's design and UI means that it can never be widely used by anyone but the most dedicated engravers and computer users. I wonder if that doesn't explain a great deal of Score's observed superior output -- ie, not that the software is any better, but that the only people who use it are serious engravers with a practiced eye and dedication to detail. Even on this list, which I suppose to be the cream of the Finale-user crop, there are plenty who are excellent musicians but engravers only incidentally. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
On Oct 14, 2006, at 4:42 AM, Christopher Smith wrote: Some things Finale doesn't do well in spacing: when there is a large interval, or when the stems change direction, Finale spaces the two notes exactly the same as if there was a small interval or no stem direction change. I never realised it before, but hand-engraved parts often push the spacing a bit to make them LOOK identical, while they aren't identical according to strict measurement. I think this is a recurring theme in Finale's spacing shortcomings. I used to do quite a bit of high-end work where I had the luxury of devoting extra time to spacing tweaks in order to make everything look just right. I'd guess that more than half of my tweaks were in this category -- ie, nudging things so that to the eye it appears to be even/balanced/aligned/whatever as opposed to Finale's attempt which really *was* mathematically even/balanced/aligned/whatever, but didn't *look* as much so. When there is a lot of room, Finale is actually pretty good, but it needs more and more tweaking as the density increases. Absolutely true. I remember some crowded and complicated systems where I'd spend a half an hour on just one system, to get it just right. Loose music, on the other hand, was a breeze and needed few if any tweaks. Perhaps someone with a fine engraver's eye will make a Score spacing plugin one day, kind of like Patterson Beams. But I bet all the engravers will STILL tweak the results! If only I had the time and resources, I would love to pursue a project like that -- particularly with regard to lyrics. Back when I was still active (I haven't done any significant engraving work in a few years) I gave quite a bit of thought to what sort of algorithms I'd use for such a plug-in, roughly following my own standard operating procedure when cleaning up a piece. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] smart shape macro bug
Randolph Peters wrote: Can anyone confirm if this is a bug? In Finale 2007 (Mac) we can no longer make macros for smart shapes. There are some predefined ones, but the user manual says we can make our own. (NOT!) I don't remember ever being able to make macros for SmartShapes. (WinFin) -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] smart shape macro bug
It's an unbelievable time-saver, especially in some music, like with piano pedalling, or smart shape intensive scores. Le 06-10-15 à 08:12, dhbailey a écrit : I don't remember ever being able to make macros for SmartShapes. (WinFin) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
I am happy to see that some people on the list would like the spacing of Finale improved. It's not a matter of comparing Finale to Score, but to make Finale do the job better. I, Ansgar Krause and Dejan Badnjar have just sent a request (in the form of a pdf explaining with examples what we would like improved) to Randy Stokes of MakeMusic. I believe Tobias Giesen is aware of this document also. Éric Dussault Le 06-10-15 à 07:21, dc a écrit : 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. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
David W. Fenton wrote: On 14 Oct 2006 at 6:13, dhbailey wrote: [snip] As more layers of management get added at the top, local control gets lost. As overall corporate focus shifts, development dollars get moved from one department to another. Look at Finale and Smartmusic Wasn't SmartMusic developed by the same team responsible for Finale? I don't know which team developed it -- it is my understanding that the two teams are different these days. -- MakeMusic looks on Smartmusic as the big money-earner, not Finale. Sure, the razor blade model. But MM has made SmartMusic and Finale work together, so the existence of SmartMusic increases the market for Finale (i.e., if you want to create SM accompaniments, Finale provides you the tools, no?). Yes, Finale provides the tools. And in the razor-blade example, you can't use YOUR original finale-generated Smartmusic accompaniments until/unless you pay the SmartMusic annual subscription fee, which also grants you access to their vast library of files, so they are charging you to use your own copyrightable materials. I know this isn't germane to the discussion at hand, but it really bothers me that I can't use a tool which I have paid dearly for (Finale) to create a file type which is a basic part of that tool (a smartmusic accompaniment file) in an application which MakeMusic gives away for free as part of my annual Finale upgrade (SmartMusic) without paying the company a royalty, of which they will never pay me a penny. Somehow that sounds very much like a legal case to be fought but I certainly haven't the wherewithal to fight it. And Finale hasn't innovated anything other than the inclusion of GPO since it introduced Staff Styles (something Sibelius still hasn't come up with) -- all the rest of the improvements to Finale have come in response to Sibelius improvements. Yep, that's true, but that may have more to do with the fact that Finale was already a mature product when Sibelius was introduced. I'm not sure how the maturity of Finale matters, since Finale seems to jump on every major feature Sibelius has introduced as soon as it was introduced. Why couldn't Finale's development team have originated those features (most of which have been begged for on this list for years) and made Sibelius' developers have to jump through hoops to keep up with Finale? And nobody seems to ever criticize Sibelius for matching Finale features (GPO anyone?). Actually, Sibelius introduced sample playback via Kontakt BEFORE Finale did. It was only after Sibelius had included Kontakt Silver as a high-quality-sample playback engine (with Kontakt Gold available as an increased-feature, extra-cost add-on) that Finale leapfrogged Sibelius simply by changing the sample set they included with the Kontakt playback engine. Sibelius offers GPO as an extra-cost add-on only. So Sibelius users aren't forced to pay for it if they don't want to use it. Finale users have no choice. I'm not sure there are any other Finale-only features (as opposed to music-notation-program-features in general) which Sibelius has copied. When MakeMusic was THE product of a company called Coda, it was the main focus and got all the development dollars. No longer. The same may well happen with Sibelius. But it's *good* that MM is diversified, and in a way that increases revenues and gets new buyers for Finale. That would be an interesting fact to research, although I'm not sure how it could be done. One would think that such would be the case, but the vast majority of SmartMusic users are school music teachers who haven't got the time to create their own SmartMusic accompaniments -- they use the program for the large library of files which MakeMusic has made available via subscription. And I'll be that many of these school computers which have SmartMusic on them also have Sibelius as the notation program since Sibelius has much greater school penetration than Finale does. But again I don't know how that contention would be researched either, so it can easily remain a contention I can't really back up except by anecdotal evidence gathered mostly from this list. [snip] And given recent discussion on this list, this would be a *bad* thing? Wouldn't a sequencer with Sibelius-quality notational output be a Finale killer? It would be as long as all those who use Sibelius for engraving mostly and playback only for proof-listening (there are many on the Sibelius list who are a lot like many on the Finale list who are engravers/arrangers/composers predominantly and not the sort of performers who want a sequencer program at all beyond what the notation program already has for midi-entry. And I don't think I would like that at any rate, since the appearance of a Finale-killer would sicken me beyond belief -- I own Sibelius but I would dread the day it remains as the only major notation program available, since I
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
At 11:44 PM 10/14/06 +0200, shirling neueweise wrote: uh... warning, fill your coffee mug to the brim. Just a public thank-you for that detailed commentary. I wonder if you have ever tried Graphire Music Press, which seems to produce gorgeous output. I used it, but could never make an effective transition from my Finale habits. Dennis ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
On Oct 14, 2006, at 5:44 PM, shirling neueweise wrote: From: Christopher Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Also the way spacing changes when there are accidentals - Finale doesn't do TOO badly, uh... sorry. can you repeat that!? Heh, heh! I suppose I am revealing my deficiencies in my eye by statements like that! A little later in my message I mentioned that Finale does much better with spacing when there is a lot of room; that goes a long way to improving spacing when accidentals are present. Tightly spaced parts, as Mark D. Lew mentioned, get very labour-intensive to get right. Maybe in my case even more labour-intensive, since I don't really know what I am doing. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
On 15.10.2006 David W. Fenton wrote: Mac users wouldn't be able to use it all, of course. Not under MacOS. Small but important distinction. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
I'd just like to draw the attention once again to a bug in Finale's spacing, and a partial work-around: When spacing is tight, and especially when there are accidentals in tuplet passages, Finale sometimes does a really bad job on the spacing, where accidentals seem to be partly ignored for spacing. This is not a shortcoming of the algorhythm as such, but a real bug, where the beat chart goes bonkers. The workaround is to select the measure(s), and use TGTools Expand Spacing (or Compress Spacing, makes no difference), with a setting of 0 (!). This will at least restore some of the expected spacing. The same trick can be used in tight spacing situations, where it seems that Finale eventually again ignores accidentals (the space before the accidental gets smaller than the space after the accidental). I have reported this problem to MM a long time ago. After a very lengthy discussion with them they did acknowledge the problem, but I rather doubt it will ever be fixed. The TGTools workaround at least helps to deal with the problem. (I am by no means saying that the result will always be perfectly spaced...) Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
On Oct 14, 2006, at 7:43 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: text on an angle is a joke in score and will always remain exactly as you position it. That makes no sense to me given Score's ability to do independent staves/notation on a single page. If jef will allow me to step in here... I think jef meant that angled text in Score is so easy that it's a joke, not that it is so difficult that it's a joke. This point has bigger repercussions, IMHO. One of the things that bothers me about Finale (and if this bothers me, it must INFURIATE engravers like jef!) is that everything in Finale does NOT stay where you put it! Repeat expressions were the first big thing that jumped out me, leaping about an inch or more from where I assigned them. Putting two of the same repeat expression in the same piece is impossible, because you never know where they are going to show up. Shape expressions in the Expression Tool were another item with unforeseeable positioning (maybe this is fixed in 2007?) I'm not even talking about things that move when you don't have Automatic Music Spacing disabled. I'm talking about items that are supposed to attach themselves to a defined point and stay there - they don't. Engraver's Slurs, while improved, are still problematic. Tuplets sometimes are incomprehensible the way they reshape themselves when the pitch changes (either through editing or transposition.) Slur ends and other little items that reposition themselves when they were created in an older version of Finale. Chord suffixes get substituted from older files (I just ran into a bunch of those yesterday. Very embarrassing at a rehearsal.) And those are just the things that jump to mind right now. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] smart shape macro bug
On 15.10.2006 dhbailey wrote: I don't remember ever being able to make macros for SmartShapes. (WinFin) I believe we are talking about metatools, not macros. Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
At 09:24 AM 10/15/06 -0400, Christopher Smith wrote: This point has bigger repercussions, IMHO. One of the things that bothers me about Finale (and if this bothers me, it must INFURIATE engravers like jef!) is that everything in Finale does NOT stay where you put it! Speaking as one who does both traditional and graphical music, I find it crazy-making. This goes to the heart of these programs' purposes. The gap between notation programs and engraving programs will not be bridged for some time. I'm not saying anything new, just distinguishing the purposes, which really and truly matter, depending on which side of the musical notation world you live -- engraving (presentation) or notation (indication). Rather than talk about program specifics, I'm thinking about how to resolve two different approaches to software's purposes, at least conceptually. I've talked about some these things most recently on my blogs of September 25, October 3, 4 and 7 (with examples; blog link in my sig), and wonder if I might roll some of list members' thoughts into a future entry (especially since my own approach is very composition-biased). Engraving, like typography and design, involves judgment that is very difficult to codify (without even taking into account subsequent programming). Certain elements reveal these differences in judgment most obviously, such as ties and slurs and the interplay of complex items. This is the artistic model of presentation, beyond legibility, and is visual rather than musical (except for those composers who bind the visual to the musical). Score, Lilypond and Graphire Music Press and other engraving-oriented programs are built to function within the graphic model, and the rest is secondary or absent. Engraving is a fixed world. Musical notation is the act of committing music to visible form. It involves translation of musical events (compositional or performing) into notation, and includes as many tools and techniques as possible to achieve that goal. Accuracy of intent and legibility of result are critical, and so audio proofing is important and 'intelligent' music input and output should be expected. Finale and Sibelius and other notation-oriented programs may function within both musical and graphical models, but evidence of compromise is everywhere, and bets are always on notation over engraving. Notation is a malleable world. In this adolescent period of music software, no set of programs can act upon the concepts predicated by the others. Attempts to do it will fail until a common approach to data is adopted all around, and that data is detailed and open-ended and respected by the software that uses it. The competitive model (for now) is acting against a commonality of data, and so one cannot yet choose a variety of interfaces, sets of manipulation tools, and output modules. The common formats that exist (such as Midi, XML, Unicode, etc.) are for now all highly circumscribed and insufficient to the task. Two comparisons. The text-editing field also includes book design, and although one can design a book in MSWord (and I have had to on two occasions), it is difficult to achieve a superior level of design quality. It is just a book, legible and (one hopes) correct. Book design programs (limited by budget, I still use Pagemaker) achieve much finer results with the typography and presentation, but do not work interchangeably with an author or editing team. Revised material loses its detailed design features ... but on the other hand, one rarely expects the book designer to be the author, editor, or copy editor. The highly 'finished' book is the one that achieves a high quality of design. The graphics field is also comparatively advanced. Although still limited at the input end, images can be accepted, manipulated, and output by a whole range of software. Though proprietary formats exist (such as PSD), the ability of other programs to work within these formats makes life far easier than in the music notation realm. When a program's feature set increases, the resulting manipulations may not be lost, but become fixed when worked on by other software (or fixed in translation into common formats). But again, the high finished photo or animation is often brought to completion in proprietary formats. At the moment, we are still far from either of these circumstances in music notation and engraving. Again, I'd love to have some of the list members' thoughts that I can quote in a future blog commentary. Dennis -- Please participate in my latest project: http://maltedmedia.com/waam/ My blog: http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/waam-blog.html Composer buy local bumpersticker: http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/bumpersticker.jpg http://www.cafepress.com/buy/80570307/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] smart shape macro bug
Eric, I don't know if the kinds of things you need are in Bill Duncan's custom smart shapes. I use only a few of them, but it might be worth a look, if you use these things a lot. For instance, there's a combined ped...* that stretches and shrinks as spacings change. Chuck On Oct 15, 2006, at 5:22 AM, Éric Dussault wrote: It's an unbelievable time-saver, especially in some music, like with piano pedalling, or smart shape intensive scores. Le 06-10-15 à 08:12, dhbailey a écrit : I don't remember ever being able to make macros for SmartShapes. (WinFin) ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Flute flageolet-glissando symbol
I need a flageolet-glissando symbol. The desired symbol seems to be a stepped line going up and down again. Like a double-set of stairs, up and down. Is there such a symbol anywhere in the Finale fonts, or in another font, or what is the best way to create it (I hate the shape designer, but I am willing to try it...). Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] smart shape macro bug
dhbailey wrote: I don't remember ever being able to make macros for SmartShapes. (WinFin) I should have used the word metatool instead of macro. The OLM says the following (pg. 21-3): To Program a Smart Shape metatool You can assign a number or letter to any Smart Shape that exists in the Smart Line Selection dialog box. In addition, you can assign of these Smart Shapes to be measure or note-attached. 1. If you want to create a measure-attached Smart Shape metatool, first click the Custom Line Tool in the Smart Shape Palette. If you want to create a note-attached Smart Shape metatool, first click the Glissando Tool in the Smart Shape Palette. You will probably want to create a note-attached metatool for markings such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, glissandos, and other markings that extend from one note to the next, or items that need to be positioned relative to the note. Create a measure-attached metatool for items that extend over more than one note, or need to be positioned relative to the measure. 2. Hold down the Shift key and press a number or letter on the QWERTY keyboard. The SMART LINE SELECTION DIALOG BOX appears. 3. Double-click to choose one of the available markings. The Smart Shape Metatool dialog box appears asking if you want to save the metatool. 4. Click Yes to save the metatool. Click No to dismiss the dialog box without creating the metatool. Note that all newly defined metatools are saved with the document. 5. If you assigned a note-attached Smart Shape, double-click the first of two notes or fret numbers to extend it to the next. If you assigned a measure-attached Smart Shape, doubleclick and drag to extend the marking manually. * Anyway Éric Dussault was right. If you use the Finale preferences from a previous version and simply rename it, you won't be able to program your own metatools for Smart Shapes. (Mac, I'm not sure about Win) -Randolph Peters ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Flute flageolet-glissando symbol
Almost forgot. You can choose a different font size if you need it coarser or finer. Christopher On Oct 15, 2006, at 12:20 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: On Oct 15, 2006, at 10:30 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: I need a flageolet-glissando symbol. The desired symbol seems to be a stepped line going up and down again. Like a double-set of stairs, up and down. Is there such a symbol anywhere in the Finale fonts, or in another font, or what is the best way to create it (I hate the shape designer, but I am willing to try it...). Johannes, Try this: Select custom line, and choose the glissando without the gliss. Duplicate it, and edit it so the character used is Maestro m (which looks like a mordent.) It is slot 109 on my Mac, though slot 181 is similar. When you enter this line at a 45 degree angle, it has sharp edges like a staircase, rather than the wavy edges of the gliss. You might have to nudge the endpoints to make it look regular. You might try other fonts to look for a similar character if that one doesn't do it for you. Hope this helps. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Flute flageolet-glissando symbol
On Oct 15, 2006, at 10:30 AM, Johannes Gebauer wrote: I need a flageolet-glissando symbol. The desired symbol seems to be a stepped line going up and down again. Like a double-set of stairs, up and down. Is there such a symbol anywhere in the Finale fonts, or in another font, or what is the best way to create it (I hate the shape designer, but I am willing to try it...). Johannes, Try this: Select custom line, and choose the glissando without the gliss. Duplicate it, and edit it so the character used is Maestro m (which looks like a mordent.) It is slot 109 on my Mac, though slot 181 is similar. When you enter this line at a 45 degree angle, it has sharp edges like a staircase, rather than the wavy edges of the gliss. You might have to nudge the endpoints to make it look regular. You might try other fonts to look for a similar character if that one doesn't do it for you. Hope this helps. Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Flute flageolet-glissando symbol
Hi Johannes, You can use characters 96 (upstairs) and 93 (downstairs) of the Helsinki Special font to make an articulation that behaves like an arpeggio. I've just tried it and it works. If you donn't have that font, I can send it to you off-list. Barbara Johannes Gebauer wrote: I need a flageolet-glissando symbol. The desired symbol seems to be a stepped line going up and down again. Like a double-set of stairs, up and down. Is there such a symbol anywhere in the Finale fonts, or in another font, or what is the best way to create it (I hate the shape designer, but I am willing to try it...). Johannes ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale
At 12:59 PM 10/15/06 -0700, you wrote: Most germane for this discussion is that MusicXML 1.1 can be used to export a very highly detailed representation of Finale files. It is so detailed in terms of formatting that programs like musicRAIN have used it to render scores that are indistinguishable from the Finale originals. Publishers already use SipXML2Score to convert MusicXML files exported from Finale into Score format. MusicXML is not insufficient to the task as you state. It isn't perfect, of course, and MusicXML 1.2 is currently in development. The last time I tried it, as you may recall, the transfer of vector images and other graphical score actions was a disaster, and there was no way at the time to read Music XML into another program and have it provide the full information. Likewise, the detailed positioning information from Score is unavailable in Finale. And I don't know how much of the Midi information is transported with the file -- a big distinction I made early in my post. Things may have improved, in which case the ability to make a lossless transfer (i.e., the receiving program does not alter information it does not understand) of file among Score, Finale, Sibelius, Graphire, etc., is a good start. Since responding with the above to your direct email (which reached me first), I visited the website. I see no examples of graphical notation, or discussion of what information is or is not carried over. In other words, if I create a document in Score and save it in XML format, open it in Finale and make changes, and round-robin it to various people with various generations of different software that is XML-compatible, will all the information be maintained, even if the receiving program does not use it? Dennis -- Please participate in my latest project: http://maltedmedia.com/waam/ My blog: http://maltedmedia.com/bathory/waam-blog.html Composer buy local bumpersticker: http://maltedmedia.com/people/bathory/bumpersticker.jpg http://www.cafepress.com/buy/80570307/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
lyrics spacing (was Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale)
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
Re: lyrics spacing (was Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale)
Mark, Thanks for a great overview about lyric spacing. One thing you didn't mention at all is how the rhythmic value of the note might affect spacing, particularly if there is a long syllable on a short note value, like through on a sixteenth. I seem to run into this an awful lot, and I can NEVER get a measure with this combination in it to look right, no matter what I do. Possibly this is because I don't really know what takes precedence over what. On Oct 15, 2006, at 4:46 PM, Mark D Lew wrote: - 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. This is analogous to chord symbol spacing as well. The Finale options are centred or left-aligned. Centred is correct only for very short chord symbols, like C7. Left-aligned makes a chord symbol like F#m7 look too far to the right, but centred is horrible on that. I thought perhaps (to my eye) that the ROOT should be centred, and let the entire suffix flow off to the right. So C in C7 would be centred, also F# would centred at the point halfway between the left side of the F and the right side of the sharp. Or maybe there is some other alignment point I am missing. I am certainly not the first one to deal with this problem. I know Darcy Argue is constantly tweaking his chord alignments. Darcy, if you are reading this, what do you look at when you nudge chord symbols? Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] F2007 time sigs weirdness
(mac) i can't seem to define time sigs past the 100th measure by using the dialogue boxes. i can do it using metatool assignment (compound as well, also when showing different time sig than the underlying beat groupings) if i assign a compound time sig and then try to open up the dialogue box to alter it, i get time sigs like 27654/16. i can change simple time sigs (eg. 4/4 to 3/4) in the dialogue box, but then hitting okay, going back to the score nothing changes! this seems to only occur when measures below 100 have do not include in measure numbering checked. the trick/workaround for now seems to be to have all time sigs defined as metatools. i normally do, but am working on a score with a huge range of time sigs, and different beat divisions defined in almost every bar. so i have one key set aside which is constantly being redefined (grr). jef -- shirling neueweise ... new music publishers mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :.../ http://newmusicnotation.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
On 15 Oct 2006 at 0:32, Mark D Lew wrote: I remember some crowded and complicated systems where I'd spend a half an hour on just one system, to get it just right. Loose music, on the other hand, was a breeze and needed few if any tweaks. It seems to me that one of the reasons Score is successful is because it enforces a lower bound of spacing such that you can't get spacing that is so tight as to make things go awry. Finale has no such lower bound, and that is a good thing It would be nice, though, if some professional engraving standards were somehow built into Finale so that it could tell you if you've exceeded standard modern engraving density. A Bärenreiter score is more loosely spaced than an old Breitkopf Härtel score, for instance. Both look fine, but they are using different standards for what constitutes the lower bound for spacing density. Having that somehow built into Finale (or a plugin?) would be nice. And if it were somehow built into Finale, it would make it possible to control different spacing parameters independently within certain spacing ranges. Of course, none of this will ever happen. But it would be nice if it did. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
On 15 Oct 2006 at 8:31, dhbailey wrote: David W. Fenton wrote: On 14 Oct 2006 at 6:13, dhbailey wrote: [snip] As more layers of management get added at the top, local control gets lost. As overall corporate focus shifts, development dollars get moved from one department to another. Look at Finale and Smartmusic Wasn't SmartMusic developed by the same team responsible for Finale? I don't know which team developed it -- it is my understanding that the two teams are different these days. Yes, of course, at this point they'd like have two programming teams. But my question was about whether or not Smartmusic was a product of MakeMusic and Finale a product of Coda. I thought Smartmusic came about from the Coda team, even if after the change of name to MM. Of course, I don't actually know if that was a purchase of Coda by MM or if Coda just changed its name after the infusion of new investment. [] And given recent discussion on this list, this would be a *bad* thing? Wouldn't a sequencer with Sibelius-quality notational output be a Finale killer? It would be as long as all those who use Sibelius for engraving mostly and playback only for proof-listening (there are many on the Sibelius list who are a lot like many on the Finale list who are engravers/arrangers/composers predominantly and not the sort of performers who want a sequencer program at all beyond what the notation program already has for midi-entry. Well, you assume three things about the potential embedding Sibelius in a sequencer: 1. the development of Sibelius as a standalone product would cease 2. the development of notational improvements would cease 3. the embedded version would not have all the capabilities that the original version had. I don't see why any of those are warranted as an a priori assumption. And I don't think I would like that at any rate, since the appearance of a Finale-killer would sicken me beyond belief -- I own Sibelius but I would dread the day it remains as the only major notation program available, since I don't like using it. I like to be realistic. I see that Sibelius has all the mind-share for new users because of it's supposed ease of learning/use (I dispute both, actually, but that's not the conventional wisdom). We're already in a precarious place with Finale and have been since Sibelius aggressively upgraded its software in the last two versions. I'm not sure that notation software as anything other than a niche application could continue to exist once a sequencer got to the point of producing Sibelius-level notation. That means niche applications like Score and Lilypond, which can continue to exist below the radar because they aren't really commercially viable (because they don't have a user interface, which makes maintaining and enhancing them much easier). The reason Finale and Sibelius can exist is because they serve a broad number of users with different kinds of needs. Once a sequencer can provide excellent notation, there's no longer any need for a huge swath of potential users of notation programs to need the standalone notation package. -- David W. Fentonhttp://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
Le 06-10-15 à 10:20, dc a écrit : Does this concern music with lyrics, specifically, or general spacing problems? Finale's spacing of music with lyrics is so bad that it's more a question a starting from scratch than improving anything. Tobias is the only one who has something to improve on... Yes. One of the highlighted problems was with lyrics. Éric___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: lyrics chord spacing (was Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale)
Christopher, Mark et al, I don't know how to get this right all the time. I start with left alignment for chords, but I nudge many to the left, and things are never really beautiful without more adjustment than I am willing to devote time to make. I usually settle for a general alignment and no crashes. I don't work with lyrics often, though I have similar problems and often adjust syllables. I'd be screaming about it, if I thought I was smart enough to come up with programmable parameters for consistently good alignment. Since I am not that smart about this, and I see many variables, I tend to think it would be difficult to accomplish. People smarter about turning visual placement into math may feel differently. Chuck On Oct 15, 2006, at 2:55 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: Mark, Thanks for a great overview about lyric spacing. One thing you didn't mention at all is how the rhythmic value of the note might affect spacing, particularly if there is a long syllable on a short note value, like through on a sixteenth. I seem to run into this an awful lot, and I can NEVER get a measure with this combination in it to look right, no matter what I do. Possibly this is because I don't really know what takes precedence over what. On Oct 15, 2006, at 4:46 PM, Mark D Lew wrote: - 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. This is analogous to chord symbol spacing as well. The Finale options are centred or left-aligned. Centred is correct only for very short chord symbols, like C7. Left-aligned makes a chord symbol like F#m7 look too far to the right, but centred is horrible on that. I thought perhaps (to my eye) that the ROOT should be centred, and let the entire suffix flow off to the right. So C in C7 would be centred, also F# would centred at the point halfway between the left side of the F and the right side of the sharp. Or maybe there is some other alignment point I am missing. I am certainly not the first one to deal with this problem. I know Darcy Argue is constantly tweaking his chord alignments. Darcy, if you are reading this, what do you look at when you nudge chord symbols? Christopher ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] F2007 time sigs weirdness
shirling neueweise wrote: (mac) i can't seem to define time sigs past the 100th measure by using the dialogue boxes. i can do it using metatool assignment (compound as well, also when showing different time sig than the underlying beat groupings) if i assign a compound time sig and then try to open up the dialogue box to alter it, i get time sigs like 27654/16. i can change simple time sigs (eg. 4/4 to 3/4) in the dialogue box, but then hitting okay, going back to the score nothing changes! this seems to only occur when measures below 100 have do not include in measure numbering checked. the trick/workaround for now seems to be to have all time sigs defined as metatools. i normally do, but am working on a score with a huge range of time sigs, and different beat divisions defined in almost every bar. so i have one key set aside which is constantly being redefined (grr). jef I just tried it on Windows -- added 200 measures to a default document, made measure 3 so that it wasn't included in measure numbers (on Windows, the check box is Include In Measure Numbers and is checked for all measures by default -- it has to be UNchecked to exclude a particular measure or measures from the numbering) and then went to measure 155 and changed the time signature with no problem. so either I don't understand your problem or it doesn't happen on Windows or I didn't do it properly to check it. -- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] Re: F2007 time sigs weirdness
ah, i think it was because i had overlapping and contradicting regions which hadn't been adjusted to incorporate the do not show measure in m.#'s function. euh, bit long to explain why, but i cleaned up the measure regions box and now it seems fine. dhbailey at davidbaileymusicstudio.com so either I don't understand your problem or it doesn't happen on Windows or I didn't do it properly to check it. -- shirling neueweise ... new music publishers mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :.../ http://newmusicnotation.com ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: lyrics spacing (was Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale)
At 5:55 PM -0400 10/15/06, Christopher Smith wrote: Mark, Thanks for a great overview about lyric spacing. One thing you didn't mention at all is how the rhythmic value of the note might affect spacing, particularly if there is a long syllable on a short note value, like through on a sixteenth. I seem to run into this an awful lot, and I can NEVER get a measure with this combination in it to look right, no matter what I do. Possibly this is because I don't really know what takes precedence over what. I'm enjoying this discussion quite a lot, but I feel that I have to point out something that should be quite obvious. Text will ALWAYS change notational spacing. ALWAYS! It is not a problem to be solved, or a defect in our notational system. It goes with the territory, and has ever since Guido's 11th century developments. If you've ever worked with medieval manuscripts, or even Petrucci's early 16th century prints, you realize that in just about EVERY case they entered the texts first, before the notes. (I think that's absolutely true of Petrucci's triple-impression method: 1st time through the press, print the staff lines--we know because some pages have staves on them that were not actually used; 2nd time through the press any text on the page; 3rd time through the press the notes, set to more-or-less match the text.) Text takes more room than notes, in general and almost always, unless you have the world's most humongous melismas as in Handel arias. Medieval scribes used quite a few shorthand tricks to cut down on the space taken by texts, but even so there always seems to be plenty of space to place the notes over the text. And placing notes more-or-less accurately (but not always!) is something they did take some care about. It can even be a problem in modern chant books like the Liber, when the text is compressed to the point where hyphens are omitted, but the point is that the text should NEVER be that compressed just to make the note spacing pretty. 'Nuff said. Notation was originally INVENTED for texted music. Compromise is necessary and inevitable. John -- John Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
[Finale] plugin bundles appearing as folders (Mac)
Attention Mac users, especially those who have the latest system (10.4.8). Sometimes downloading a plugin like TGTools or JW Systems shows up on your hard drive as a folder instead of a package. This makes them unusable as plugins. Apparently this is some kind of Mac bug that surfaced recently. The way to making these plugins work again to to turn the folder into a package and restarting or logging out and in again. I use FileBuddy (not a free program) to change the bundle bit on the folder. There are probably other ways to do the same thing. Maybe others could add their two bits here. The point is that you don't have to throw away those downloads. They CAN work. -Randolph Peters ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: lyrics spacing (was Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale)
On Oct 15, 2006, at 2:55 PM, Christopher Smith wrote: Thanks for a great overview about lyric spacing. One thing you didn't mention at all is how the rhythmic value of the note might affect spacing, particularly if there is a long syllable on a short note value, like through on a sixteenth. I seem to run into this an awful lot, and I can NEVER get a measure with this combination in it to look right, no matter what I do. Possibly this is because I don't really know what takes precedence over what. Yes, that's the most basic problem, isn't it? I was thinking about that when I wrote before, but I guess I got sidetracked. To a certain extent, there is no solution to this problem. Even if you're writing by hand, something's gotta give. But Finale's default solution of making up ALL of the difference by adding space around the one problematic 16th note is no good. If there aren't also tight syllables on either side, there's probably some room already and it's just a matter of taking it. If one or both neighboring syllables are tight, I'll always push them each out at least a little bit. In my experience the eye comfortably tolerates a certain amount of lyric uncentering, so it's worth doing that to save some distortion in the music spacing. But of course the question is how much. That's a judgment call, which means it will be particularly hard to program into an algorithm. Even so, one ought to be able to build something around a table of weighting factors, with a reasonable default setting and the user able to manipulate the factors to taste. The other important thing is to simply loosen that patch of music. I'll always consider moving a measure off the system so that the entire system is looser. If that doesn't work, I'll loosen the one measure at the expense of others in the system. (Again, how much is a judgment call.) And if that doesn't work, I still prefer to loosen one beat within the measure. I've found that what the eye really rebels against in music spacing is if the beat itself is uneven -- if one 16th out of four gets too much space, or if the 16th gets too much space relative to the dotted 8th. If the entire beat is reasonably in proportion, that seems to satisfy the eye, even if the entire beat is somewhat looser than the music nearby. mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: lyrics spacing (was Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale)
On Oct 15, 2006, at 7:05 PM, John Howell wrote: I'm enjoying this discussion quite a lot, but I feel that I have to point out something that should be quite obvious. Text will ALWAYS change notational spacing. ALWAYS! Of course it will. If it didn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. We could just uncheck lyrics in the music spacing options dialog box and let the lyrics fall where they may. But of course that doesn't work. The lyrics end up poorly spaced and piled on top of one another and it looks like crap. To always give precedence to the lyrics is better than the opposite, but it's still not ideal -- at least not in the sense that Finale does it: centering every syllable and allowing enough space so that no syllable collides with an adjacent syllable nor underhangs an adjacent note or barline. It is not a problem to be solved, or a defect in our notational system. It goes with the territory, and has ever since Guido's 11th century developments. It's not a defect, but it most certainly is a problem to be solved. Stipulating that good music spacing has value and good lyric spacing has value, and furthermore that the two sometimes come into conflict, the problem is how to maximize readability of both together. It's a difficult problem. Because judgment comes into play, it can't be easily stated as a set of rules. And even if we all agree on the exact aesthetic balance (which we never will) it's still very difficult to state that balance algorithmically. Text takes more room than notes, in general and almost always, unless you have the world's most humongous melismas as in Handel arias. I don't think that's true at all. In many styles of music, it's quite common to have an accompaniment pattern of running 16th notes with the lyrics attached predominantly to quarters. In such a situation, you'll have little or no conflict. That is, you could space the music with no regard to the lyrics and they'd still come out fine. I'd estimate that about a quarter or a third of the lieder/art-song repertoire falls in this category. That's less than a majority, sure, but I don't think you can say text almost always takes more room than notes. It can even be a problem in modern chant books like the Liber, when the text is compressed to the point where hyphens are omitted, but the point is that the text should NEVER be that compressed just to make the note spacing pretty. I wouldn't say never. There are always considerations of layout, etc. In my experience, a very common failing of printed vocal music is that the lyrics are printed in text that is too small. The single greatest improvement one could make to readability is to simply print the lyrics larger. (This is particularly the case for music which will be sung unmemorized by an amateur chorus.) If the lyrics are enlarged then that means either (1) the music is also enlarged, or (2) the lyrics are now more tight relative to the music. The former runs you into problems with fitting all the music on the page and adding page turns, which leaves you with the latter. I agree with you that extreme compression of lyrics is a bad thing, but at the same time I would argue that if a house style is generating vocal music where the lyrics are always loose enough relative to the music that none of these questions we've been discussing ever arise, that style is probably printing the lyrics too small and could be improved by enlarging them. 'Nuff said. Notation was originally INVENTED for texted music. Compromise is necessary and inevitable. Indeed. But finding the optimal compromise ... that's the puzzle. I think I've cited this sample before, but a page on Recordare's site http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/recordare/SullPina02Sample.pdf shows a good example of the tug-of-war between lyrics and music. It's a recitative from a Gilbert Sullivan song. Because of the layout, stretching the recit to a third system is impractical, so by necessity it is somewhat tight but not impossibly tight. In the sample, the music and the lyrics are each slightly distorted from their ideal, but each is close enough to be comfortable. Looking at the page it seems unremarkable, and you might never guess how much tweaking was necessary to get to that point. But try setting the same passage from scratch and you'll see. The sample pages at the Recordare store offer several interesting studies in lyric spacing. They're not all perfect, and some are better than others, but they're all quite good. (Full disclosure: most, but not all, of Recordare's offerings are my work, including the GS cited here.) mdl ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] plugin bundles appearing as folders (Mac)
I had the same problem after upgrading to 10.4.8 and trying to use the TGTools and Patterson plug-ins. I wasn't sure what was causing the problem, so I ran TechTool Pro (definitely not a free program) and ended up rebuilding the desktop. That did the trick. I didn't realize that FileBuddy could change bundle bits, which is much easier. I haven't used that program in ages. -Rich Caldwell On Oct 15, 2006, at 10:19 PM, Randolph Peters wrote: Attention Mac users, especially those who have the latest system (10.4.8). Sometimes downloading a plugin like TGTools or JW Systems shows up on your hard drive as a folder instead of a package. This makes them unusable as plugins. Apparently this is some kind of Mac bug that surfaced recently. The way to making these plugins work again to to turn the folder into a package and restarting or logging out and in again. I use FileBuddy (not a free program) to change the bundle bit on the folder. There are probably other ways to do the same thing. Maybe others could add their two bits here. [snip] ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Re: [Finale] Re: score vs. finale [was: Converting...]
On 16.10.2006 David W. Fenton wrote: It would be nice, though, if some professional engraving standards were somehow built into Finale so that it could tell you if you've exceeded standard modern engraving density. I don't think there is such a thing. I have a Henle part here, where one page is extremely tightly spaced, tighter than anything I have ever done... I think this is another case where good engraving always needs a good eye, too, and a computer can only go some of the way... Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de ___ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
