Questions and Stylistic points re dynamics
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If I write a score with several instruments, is it OK to just put one dynamic mark on one staff - which should apply to all of them, or should I mark each instrument line separately? Is there a convention?
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Sometimes there might be a need for different dynamics for different instruments - are there any conventions re that?
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If an instrument has a few rests before the first played note in a bar, should the dynamic markings be applied to the bar, or only to the first played note?
There seems to be no point in creating additional work if there are accepted conventions which deal with these kind of issues.
Comments
In reply to It is quite usual for… by SteveBlower
Thanks for this. That makes sense, and does clarify most of the points I was asking about, but it also makes for more work. In a music production environment (with people ...) I can imagine having extra people to mark up all the parts separately if the composer's intentions re dynamics across all the instruments are clear.
Although Bach was very prolific, a trip to Leipzig makes one realise that he actually had a very large workforce of students and other musicians who did things like copying out his scores, copying parts, annotating etc. So even back in the 1700s there were ways of making music production either more efficient, or less burdensome for the composer, or possibly both.
Is there any way that some of this can be automated in a system like Musescore. For example - all the dynamics applying to all the instruments with notes in a bar? For a piano piece or a piece with only a few instruments this is less of an issue, but for a piece with more instruments it can become quite time consuming.
In reply to Thanks for this. That makes… by dave2020X
The way I do it is to view the score zoomed out to see all the instruments then starting at the top work down stave by stave and ctrl+click on each note where want the same dynamic. Then click on the required dynamic to add it to all selected notes in one hit.
In reply to The way I do it is to view… by SteveBlower
Interesting. Thanks for the tip, which I think works for other things too, such as adding accents and pauses, and even altering pitches on a note by note basis. crtl + click appears to work on a note selection basis, and also works across bars and staves.
In reply to Interesting. Thanks for the… by dave2020X
Ctrl+click creates a list selection. As @mike320 describes, you can do also creat list selections using right click/select similar with many useful option to define "similar"
In reply to Thanks for this. That makes… by dave2020X
If you want the same dynamic added to every note on beat 3 of a measure, you can right click a note on beat 3 of any instrument, then choose Select>More... and check Same Beat and Same Measure and every note on beat 3 of that measure will be selected. You can then click the dynamic in the palette and it will be applied to every selected note. (US measure = UK bar)