Tuplet presentation
To avoid polluting this discussion , I am beginning another.
You may have to read these and other pages in full, but so far, I see three possible issues (although some may not be relevant to the linked topic):
1. Page 195 of 'Behind Bars' states: "A bracket should extend from the left-hand edge of the first note head or rest, to the right-hand edge of the final notehead or rest. It does not encompass accidentals, grace notes or an arpeggio line that precede the first note. When a final note is up-stemmed and had a tail (end of bar 2), the bracket still finishes with the stem (i.e. the right-hand edge of the note), not with the tail:"
MuseScore (I don't know how to typeset bar 4):
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2. Page 194 of 'Behind Bars' states: "When one part of a beat is disproportionately long visually, traditionally the numeral remains at the visual centre of the group. However, where there are complex groups of tuplets, it is more helpful if the numeral moves to the rhythmic centre of the group, even if this is visually off-centre:"
MuseScore:
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3. Page 195 of 'Behind Bars' states: "Traditionally, the bracket extends only as far as the last written durection:"
"Thus a numeral centred in a bracket occurs before the central duration, making the rhythm unnecessarily difficult to read. It Is now usual to extend the bracket to the position of the hypothetical final devision of the tuplet, so that the numeral occurs at the rhythmic centre of the group. This makes complex rhythms quicker to read:"
MuseScore:
All scores were produced in 1.3.
Using MuseScore 2.0 Nightly Build (7a46dab) - Mac 10.7.5.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 1 (Behind Bars).png | 172.69 KB |
| 2.mscz | 1.78 KB |
| 2 (Behind Bars).png | 79.49 KB |
| 2 (MuseScore).png | 40.02 KB |
| 1.mscz | 1.85 KB |
| 1 (MuseScore).png | 49.39 KB |
| 3 (1:2) (Behind Bars).png | 33.13 KB |
| 3 (2:2) (Behind Bars).png | 84.1 KB |
| 3.mscz | 1.72 KB |
| 3 (MuseScore).png | 44.53 KB |
Comments
Specifically, then, it sounds like for #1 you are simply saying you don't like the 0.5sp extra padding around stems? Because everything else looks exactly like Gould's recommendation, no? As I said before, there is so much variety in the actual published literature that it's hard for me to take one opinion as gospel here, and in any case, if you prefer Gould's settings, you can customize your defaults, so I don't really see a problem here. I have a slight preference for the slightly wider MuseScore default - looks better to me, and seems more in keeping with a slightly larger amount of the literature than Gould's version. But I could go either way, really. And this seems to be the sort of debate lasconic wanted to avoid...
For #2, it sounds like Gould is giving an optional recommendation to humans to make a judgement call in certain especially complex case to override the default number position. I don't see any way to automate that, but sure, manual control over the number horizontal position would be nice.
In reply to Specifically, then, it sounds by Marc Sabatella
About 1, I think there's variety because publishers possibly didn't have recommendations to refer to. I start a topic because lasconic made a change that should be discussed, I think.
About 2, it might be hard, but we'll see what the opinion is.
There was a third case added later, by the way :).
In reply to About 1, I think there's by chen lung
Regarding recommendations, Gould is just one person, and I weight her opinion accordingly. some of what she says is authoritative - backed by a pronderence of historical evidence - and of course I value the work she has put in collecting that information. But some of her opinions are just personal preference. Based on the evidence, this seems to be in the latter category. It's trivially simple to find scores from throughout history that do things differently, and to the extent there is a trend, my sense is that it toward the slightly wider brackets in the current defaults. But even a cursory examination of the literature shows tuplets all over the map at all points in history. There is is simlly no possible objective basis for saying one way is right and the others wrong. It's just personal preference.
Regarding 2), it's not about coding difficulties. Her suggestion is inherently subjective: which tuplets are sufficiently complex to warrant the asymmetric treatment? You probably can't get three human musicians to agree on exactly which situations qualify. So sure, you could automated *something*' but you'd still have people disagreeing over whether it was right. I think this is something for the himan editor to decide on a case by case basic, and nothing Gould writes in that excerrpt conflicts with that.
Regarding 3) - here also I see it both ways in the historical record with more or less equal frwquency. I say, go with whatever is easiest to implement, and let users who care to overrirde it do so.
I can appreciate each publisher will do something different, but as I've said, I suspect some of them may not have had authoritative references, or questionable ones, so it would have been open to interpretation.
I think the great majority will rely on, or trust the defaults, so I'm concerned about the spreading of a practice that I don't think should be encouraged - also that this whole change seems to be based on the result of one software, Sibelius. They (and others) sometimes produce questionable notation, despite being developed for many years and by more people.
I think more research is necessary.
Even though I'm still not convinced, I would at least investigate as to whether this "padding" is consistent in its behaviour. Flip the stem direction of notes in the attached score (produced in 1.3) and the amount of padding varies (some still line up with the note head, whilst others are away).
In reply to I can appreciate each by chen lung
Here's a question: *why* don't you think this practice should be encouraged? Is it really just beause of what one person wrote in one book? What makes that one opinion more authoritative than that of the publishers who have chosen other options? I could understand trusting Gould more than what we see in insignificant self-published pieces produced by random composers using Sibelius or whatever. But we're not. We're talking about the biggets and most respected publishers ever to exist in all of human history, all doing things differently. If you're going to tell me Gould is right and a dozen major publishers are wrong, I would hope you could produce a *reason* for saying that other than saying she is authoritative and somehow they are not.
Independently of the question of what is "right" (which I think is unanswerable), I can think of two reasons to *like* the current defaults, that have nothing to do with any one person's opinion but are more objective:
1) it allow much more flexibility in vertical positioning, as pne doesn't have to worry about collisions with stems
2) it is more consistent with how an increasing number of actual published works from major publisher are typeset
So what aside from the specific recommendation of one author makes you so dead set against this common and useful set of defaults? It is true Gould's suggestion does match what *some* major publishers have done at *certain* points in their history. I think if anyone wants to convince me this really represents some sort of standard, they are going to have to produce pretty compelling evidence, as I said, I've perused hundreds of scores from all the major publishers here and see no evidence of such a standard whatsoever.
Finale, BTW, as I said elsehwere, seems to puts no padding to the left, but always adds to to the right, regardless of stem direction.
In reply to I can appreciate each by chen lung
Oh yes - as for consistency, it's perfectly consistent as lasconic described it: padding is added around *stems*, not noteheads. Both are configurable parameters. By my read of the actual existing published literature, this is a reasonably common arrangement - used by Sibelius as well as a number of major publishers - and it is also very nice for the practical reason mentioned above (stem avoidance).
FWIW, other common arrangements include stem-to-stem (achievable by negative padding around noteheads), as is center-of-notehead to center-of-notehead (negative padding for both noteheads and stems), as well Gould's particular favorite, outside-of-notehead to stem (zero padding for both). I'd also say all of these added up don't come out as common as curved brackets, for what it's worth, but that's mostly because so much music was published before square brackets became the norm, which they absolutely are by now.