Questions on lyrics alignment
I am not very familiar with the intricacies of lyrics engraving. Looking at the following example (made with 2.0):
Is there a reason why all the lyrics in the first measure are centred and all the lyrics in the second are left aligned?
In this one:
it seems that a lyric dash to the next direct note leaves the lyrics centred, but a dash 'skipping' several notes makes the preceding lyrics left aligned -- which would also explain the first example.
Is this usual? Looking at the penultimate column of syllables, the result seems strange...
Thanks,
M.
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Comments
The rule as I understand it is, center by default, but left align if it is a melisma (single syllable spanning multiple notes). That applies whether it is an interior syllable melisma (dash) or final syllable (underscore / extender).
It is true that subjectively any given editor might choose to ignore this rule for a given syllable if different verses would otherwise not align well.
In reply to The rule as I understand it by Marc Sabatella
The specific example 2 above is made more complex by the fact that the syllables in the penultimate column do not really span multiple notes; they appear to do that typographically -- as the note they are under is split in two by the measure bar --, but there is actually only one note (and a rather strongly unique note, given the hemiolia; another example of why Mensurstrich is superior to usual notation).
Aside from this, it looks like there is no (and there is not going to be in the future) other way than manually adjust the odd ball «son» syllable.
Whether this necessarily should be done by nudging (as now) or by adding a new alignment flag to the Lyrics class or maybe by a score-wide preference of some kind (an on-the-spot example: forcing a syllable of a verse to 'inherit' the alignment of the syllable in the verse above) is perhaps a question worth raising?
Thanks,
M.
In reply to The specific example 2 above by Miwarre
FWIW, Gould specifically recommends left aligning syllables even for tied notes - any time there is more than one note per syllable. So that's the rule we use.
An Inspector flag to override these types of decisions and allow you to explicitly specific left or center alignment - or maybe to just turn off the automatic adjustment so the text style is used without override - is definitely a good idea, and that came up while all this was being worked on but just didn't seem important enough at the time.
BTW, I would be interested in your opinion on #56471: Lyrics in one voice affect hypen positions in other voices. Seems it would be easy to "fix", but I have a hunch the current behavior might be deliberate to handle some other case I am not thinking of.
I have a COPY of Marc Sabatella on Mastring MuseScore. and have been looking through it in the hope of getting the lyrics to align in my scores. And stil not found it. It used to work without problems in earlier versions of MuseScore, there must be some different ways in my newer computer.
It is a 64 bit laptop with OS, Windows 7 and I am using MuseScore 2.2.
I have several scors with this same problem.
Can anyone direct me to a "how to..." instruction film. Page in Marc's book, I am getting desperate.
Wena Parry
South Wales, U.K.
In reply to I have a COPY of Marc by Wena Parry
Lyrics should default to aligning correctly in most cases, so you shouldn't normally haver to do anything special to make them align. That is, assuming you entered them all on the same verse - lyrics entered for verse 1 obviously aren't supposed to align with lyrics entered for verse 2.
So it isn't clear what you are asking for exactly. It would help if you attached the score you are having problems with and described exactly what you are trying to do.
I can say that whatever it is you are trying to do, the answer can probably be found in the chapter on Lyrics, as well as perhaps the chapters on Making Selections and Editing, but without knowing exactly what you are trying to do, I can't be more specific.