Should fine be below the staff?
At the moment the default position for the fine is above the staff.
In my experience, and on checking Behind Bars, the fine seems to belong below the staff.
Gould also has (on pg. 238/239) DS. DC etc. below the staff.
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Good question! I feel like I see Fine - as well as DC, DS, et al - above in some scores, below in others, and I feel like like it probably differs between jazz versus classical and between instrumental versus vocal (chord symbols and lyrics often force things into other positions). But indeed, it seems we are probably out of step with the norm. Will be interesting to hear from others on this - we could certainly consider changing the defaults, or perhaps having different templates give different settings.
In reply to Good question! I feel like… by Marc Sabatella
Most of my experience with Jazz, Band and Orchestra has DC or DS above the staff. Some Orchestral vocal scores have them below the staff.
In reply to Most of my experience with… by mike320
Yes, I tend to do that except for fine. I was classically trained first.
Of course I can set my own although"fine" isn't documented in the text styles, so I will have to hunt (unless someone will point). :)
Best,
In reply to Yes, I tend to do that… by xavierjazz
DC, DS, Fine, etc... are under different repeat texts in the Style->Text... menu. It's easiest to right click the text and chose Text style...
In reply to DC, DS, Fine, etc... are… by mike320
Thanks. :)
Repeat text left, repeat text right and repeat text are not very descriptive. It would be good if it were more so.
Should that be a request?
In reply to Thanks. :)… by xavierjazz
I really don't care what they are called. I'm not likely to permanently change them in a loadable style. If I did, I would right click the text and make the adjustment from there rather than trying to sort out repeat text left, right, whatever. That's how I usually change text styles any way. I rarely use the Style->Text... menu. In truth I can't think of a better description for them than what they are currently called. There really isn't a more intuitive name for them. Sorry, I'm thinking with my keyboard.
In reply to I really don't care what… by mike320
If I understand, you ctrl/t for general text. Then when it appears, you right click and hen move it. Is that right?
In reply to If I understand, you ctrl/t… by xavierjazz
For the DC, fine and so forth, use the text from the Repeats & jumps palette. They have special attributes you can see in the inspector. There is currently no shortcut for these.
You should use the Text Style... option to change it's appearance or location. Use either the menu Style->Text or right click the text and select Text Style... If you only want to move a single Fine to the bottom of the staff use Text Properties... from the right click menu. This will keep all of the other jump and repeat text at their default locations.
In reply to For the DC, fine and so… by mike320
That's great. Thanks.
If I understand, they are named by where they are in their "box", their spatial properties. I still don't understand how to relate each to their meaning musically.
Is it true that they are different text boxes? Are they arbitrarily assigned to various musical meanings?
I hope I'm clear?
In reply to That's great. Thanks… by xavierjazz
The names in the boxes are more of a programming tag than a musical tag. MuseScore exposes this to the user to allow us to use Multiple DC's, Segnos and so forth within a single movement. The tags are arbitrary to the extent that you can change them if you want to, mostly so you can use multiple items. I alluded to this in this https://musescore.org/en/node/265130 discussion.
In reply to That's great. Thanks… by xavierjazz
The fact the word "repeat" is in the name is the musical meaning aspect. The differences between "left" and "right" is indeed literally about position within the measure - there isn't actually anything in particular that the "left" things have in common versus the "right" things. I guess instead it could refer to "repeats whose musical effect has to do with the beginning of the measure" versus "repeats whose musical effect has to do with the end of the measure", but "left" and "right" are more succinct.
So the idea is, repeat texts that take effect at the beginning of the measure are generally displayed at the left and therefore have that text style, whereas repeat texts that take effect at the end of the measure are generally displayed at the right and therefore have that text style.
"Fine" takes effect at the end of the measure and as such gets the "right" style, just like "DC", "DS", and "To Coda". However, if the consensus is that these others belong above the staff but Fine belongs below, that suggests we hold have yet another text style, or perhaps add info to the Fine element in the palette to force it below the staff by default.
Gould does give a bit more clarification on this, saying "The signs (segno) and (coda) go above the stave." But for DC, DS, and Fine, she says "Place them above the top stave of a vocal score, below the stave of a single-line part, below the bottom stave of a score or braced part." So this is a bit of a problem in that we don't have a way to differentiate these.
On further reflection, I suspect we place them above by default because these are all defined as "system" elements, meaning they are attached to the top staff in the score, and as such would need to be placed above in order to be sufficiently conspicuous. If we want to obey Gould, it should actually be attached to the bottom staff only, and then appear below. That means we would need to have additional control for system text to specify which staff or staves it shows on in the score. This would also be desirable to allow tempo markings et al to be repeated above the string section in an orchestra score.
So, bottom line - it's really an interesting question, with lots of facets and things to consider for the future! :-)