Vertical alignment of bar lines

[Fred G. Unn]

With some chromaticism, the barlines no longer match exactly:

pattern.png (120.46 KiB) Viewed 4113 times

Is that alignment still close enough to bother you? The layout doesn't bother me at all here, even though the bar alignment is obviously very close.

[JJP]

Double-clicking with the Measure Tool then adding a small value (or subtracting by adding a negative value) in Measure Attributes / Display / Add: __ to width is pretty fast too.

In Finale, I also find it quick to use the measure tool. Though, I often like to look at the full page and simply drag a few of the measure handles to adjust visually.

[John Ruggero]

FredGUnn, I'm afraid that it is still too close for my taste. I would would do a bit more than that. I believe Arnstein used the phrase "it draws your eye down" instead of horizontally across the page. The idea is to prevent the music from looking like vertical columns.

[Fred G. Unn]

I believe Arnstein used the phrase "it draws your eye down" instead of horizontally across the page. The idea is to prevent the music from looking like vertical columns.

Rivers in justified text annoy me for this very reason, but I guess the barlines here don't. The casting off reflects the phrasing so doing anything different with the casting off doesn't seem as successful to me. I think it's the lack of accidentals or any other text, inflections, etc that make the eye sort of glaze over in your original example. I'm also assuming this is an exercise that a student would be expected to memorize, so they wouldn't actually be reading it for long anyway.

(Nice pattern BTW. Is this yours? Or from an existing method book?)

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, Fred G. Unn, It's just something I invented as an illustration so that the bar lines would align without a lot of extra work. Clearly, the actual musical content would affect the impression and the aligning would most likely arise in cases something like the example, where there are repetitive figures, like the rhythm slashes mentioned by JJP.

[JJP]

I can see the points you both are making. I think this is yet another case where context is everything, and there is no hard rule to be found. I find John's first example problematic. The combination of the barlines and the stems of the notes aligning vertically tends to lead the eye up and down.

The effect is mitigated with Fred's added chromatics because it breaks a bit of the alignment of the stems, but overall it's still a little distracting to my taste. I'd probably quickly play with the barlines to see if it can be improved without throwing off the spacing or phrasing too much, but it wouldn't be a dire issue.

Perhaps my perspective comes from being a percussionist and rhythm section player. We are often far from our music and often can't find our position on instruments by feel. We may regularly look away or focus on something in our peripheral vision, then have to quickly find our place in the music again. Having staves that look similar with lots of aligned vertical lines makes it hard to keep your bearings when your eyes are moving around. Granted, we are accustomed to this, but why make it harder on the performer?

As I mentioned before, this becomes particularly acute with lots of repeats, whether slashes, repeat bars, or written-out repetitions. John's analogy of patterned wallpaper is particularly apt.

[John Ruggero]

More interesting insights, JJP. Thanks so much.

I don't think I will bring this up over at Dorico. The "team" has enough to do.

[Anders Hedelin]

Sibelius' Night Ride and Sunrise (Schlesinger). A section which is rather repetitive in a 'pre-minimalistic' way:

Sibelius 1.JPG (214.88 KiB) Viewed 4002 times

The sixteenth pattern is identically repeated for another full page!

I'm not sure that moving the barlines a little would be of much help here - or would it? Perhaps numbers below the measures? (I think I would have done something like putting measure numbers to the left above the staff system, and numbers counting the measures of this section below.) Any ideas?

[Shinohara Hoshi]

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[John Ruggero]

That's a great example Anders. As the measures become more full, offsetting of the bar lines becomes less of an option. A. A. always numbered repeated measures of this kind as you suggested, whether abbreviated or written out.

It would be interesting to examine many such cases by different engravers in different eras to see the way this was handled generally. It is obviously tempting for a plate engraver to align such a patterns purely for the ease of engraving, just as with computer engraving. The question is whether there was an effort to avoid this by at least some engravers.

Thank you for your comments, Shinohara Hoshi. If a problem arose because of a complex or very full pattern as in Anders example, then, of course, the bar lines could not be offset. As far as bar numbers, I pay no attention to them when I read music; perhaps other musicians do, however. And while all good music readers keep their eyes on the music at all times, there are cases, as mentioned by JJP where some musicians must look away at times and can lose their way in patterns of this kind.