the drum part has dropped off my score

• Apr 3, 2024 - 19:26

Well sort of. The score is finished but I've just noticed that on some pages, the staves have "grown" and therefore pushed the drums off the page and possibly the bass outside of the margin. (Please see attached screenshot)
Not entirely sure how to rectify this so any help will be appreciated.
I already have the scaling down to 1.475.

Attachment Size
page layout 01.jpg 143.31 KB

Comments

For a conductor's score you can go much smaller than 1.475. Elain Gould's recommendation in Behind Bars for the minimum height of a 5 line stave in a full score is 3.7 mm. Divide that by 4 to get the minimum sensible stave space scaling {there are 4 spaces between 5 lines). I make it 0.925 mm.

The conductor doesn't have to read every note "on the fly". They just need to see roughly what each instrument is doing. They can stop and peer closely if they need to see exactly what an instrument should be playing. For individual parts a larger staff size is needed as the player does need to read it exactly while playing.

It depends on the conductor. Some don't hardly look at any score. I prefer to have a full score. Don't really care what Gould says.

In reply to by bobjp

Indeed.
What I see here in the picture would prompt me to add one or two staves for the multiple instruments (alto sax, tenor, trumpet and trombone) and to combine two instruments in one line with Implode. Then you can hide the individual staves and still create the excerpts for each instrument individually. This should be completely sufficient for the conductor's score.

In reply to by bobjp

Yes, a full score, but with smaller staves than an individual part. With large numbers of staves at large size you need large paper which is unwieldy to handle on a conductor's stand. If your objective is to fit all the instruments on one page, something has to give, and stave size seems to me to be the thing that should do that giving.

There are some (IMHO) very interesting video's from Thomas Goss from orchestrationonline.com about preparing (and publishing) scores and parts.
Orchestra Librarians Pt. 1: Instrument Names & Numbers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbYay1hROpk
Orchestra Librarians Pt. 2: Parts Paper Sizes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WUDG0zK8I
Orchestra Librarians Pt. 3A: Format & Page Turns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFtvJNY5s-8
Orchestra Librarians Pt. 3B: Format & Page Turns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPY7lcH3ZtY
and also
Orchestration Question 12: Paper Sizes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0iRFDCKtEQ

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