Centering Whole Note on a Bar

• Jul 26, 2017 - 10:55

Dear Forum users,

I whish to center a whole note in a bar. How i do it ?

Regards,
Nuno


Comments

And don't do it at all unless you are deliberately trying to create experimental / unconventional notation or have other very specific reasons for doing so. Conventional notation calls for whole notes to be left aligned, and you shouldn't deviate from this without specific reason.

An old thread but the prevailing answer is unsatisfactory.
When no other note values are present in the measure, centered whole notes was standard engraving practice. Even Gould -who tends to be opinionated about less common practices- refers to centered whole notes (i.e. a skosh left of center) as the standard of traditional engraving.

A brief internet search shows there are still publishers who do it, and there remain also the thousands of scores from prior eras still published with the original engraving.

It also remains conventional in counterpoint, and in musical exercise books for the same purpose - a sample pitch shown simply and cleanly and without any particular implications of a time signature.

Considering how troublesome it is to achieve this look manually (and that it has to be redone if any spacing changes are made) -and how easily MuseScore could do it automatically- a simple check box option like Finale would be great.

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