Repeated tone abbreviations Part 2

[John Ruggero]

I have engraved the initial Brahms example in four ways:

1. Maestro font with Maestro slashes:

Maestro 1.jpg (300.67 KiB) Viewed 15997 times

2. Maestro font with Fravura slashes:

Fravura.jpg (304.26 KiB) Viewed 15997 times

3. Maestro font with Bravura slashes:

Bravura.jpg (307.5 KiB) Viewed 15997 times

4. Maestro font with parallel slashes, using Peter Thomsen's workaround tweaked with Document Option>Beams>Broken Beam Length reset from .75 to .5 spaces:

Maestro 2.jpg (284.32 KiB) Viewed 15997 times

Comments

IMO:

1. All of these approaches were laborious because the beams and slashes need to be coordinated and hand adjusted to place the slashes straddling staff lines or in the spaces.

2. The Bravura and Fravura slashes (which may or may not be sightly different) are superior to the Maestro, which are too thin and angled.

3. The parallel approach (no. 4) was also laborious because the note spacing had to be done by hand and there were two superimposed layers to coordinate. However, the final result is better, yet difficult to accomplish in Finale because the default broken beam length cannot be changed on a localized level and the other possibility, adjusting all the broken beams individually, is a hellish prospect. A possible workaround might be to do a section like this as a separate file and incorporate it later as PDF or as a graphic

Conclusion: Finale lacks a good way to accomplish repeated tone abbreviation.

I am also posting these as PDFs for a more detailed observation. I think that the superiority of the parallel approach is clearer in the PDFs.

[erelievonen]

I have engraved the initial Brahms example in four ways:

1. Maestro font with Maestro slashes:

2. Maestro font with Fravura slashes:

3. Maestro font with Bravura slashes:

4. Maestro font with parallel slashes, using Peter Thomsen's workaround tweaked with Document Option>Beams>Broken Beam Length reset from .75 to .5 spaces:

Comments

IMO:

1. All of these approaches were laborious because the beams and slashes need to be coordinated and hand adjusted to place the slashes straddling staff lines or in the spaces.

2. The Bravura and Fravura slashes (which may or may not be sightly different) are superior to the Maestro, which are too thin and angled.

3. The parallel approach (no. 4) was also laborious because the note spacing had to be done by hand and there were two superimposed layers to coordinate. However, the final result is better, yet difficult to accomplish in Finale because the default broken beam length cannot be changed on localized level and other possibility, adjusting all the broken beams individually, is a hellish prospect. A possible workaround might be to do a section like this as a separate file and incorporate later as PDF or as a graphic

Conclusion: Finale lacks a good way to accomplish repeated tone abbreviation.

I am also posting these as PDFs for more detailed observation. I think that the superiority of the parallel approach is more clear in the PDFs.

My opinions:

I don't have a preference between the two fundamental approaches (identically angles slashes vs. parallel to the beam slashes), as different as they are. They both accomplish the goal and are generally understood, I think.

From a visual standpoint, I prefer John's examples nos. 1 and 4.
I'm not seeing any difference between Bravura and Fravura. To my eye, the B/Fravura slashes are not angled steeply enough: the slashes on the upward sloping beams look like they might have been meant to be parallel to the beams, creating the strange impression of mixing the two different methods. While in Maestro, it's clear that all the slashes are meant to be not parallel to the beam. I prefer the Maestro slashes for this reason. However, I agree with John that the Maestro slashes are a bit thin. B/Fravura has a good thickness.

Using the parallel approach (no.4) in Finale, with all the broken beams adjusted individually, does not need to be a hellish prospect. I believe it would be possible to create a plug-in that would accomplish this automatically (i.e. both creating the two layers, and the individual adjustments of the broken beams). Though I'm not sure about solving the spacing issues John mentioned.

[John Ruggero]

Great input, Ere. Thanks. I guess I like the Bravura because the slashes don't clash as much with the beams, and, of course, I don't care for them to clash at all. I don't see any problem with visual recognition in any of the versions.

I had hoped for a plug-in, but nothing much happened at MM Forum, even after hint or two there and posting a cross-reference to the first thread here. As you implied, this indeed might be a very difficult programming challenge considering that the beam angles must adjust differently from usual.

[MJCube]

#4 is certainly nicer looking than the others to my eye just due to the parallelism.

1. All of these approaches were laborious because the beams and slashes need to be coordinated and hand adjusted to place the slashes straddling staff lines or in the spaces.

FYI in Sibelius, tremolos (looking most like #2) can be done with a single keystroke. I timed myself: working in the dark (with someone sleeping in the room), including launching the application, it took me 7 minutes flat to enter all the notes and markings. I used alphabetic entry, which crosses octave boundaries handily for this example. I selected the first bar in Violin I and hit the key for 1-stroke tremolo. Thereafter I copied the figure to other bars and repitched. For CB I copied the Cello line, transposed down the octave, and added the upper octaves, all with built-in keystrokes, then selected that whole staff and used the keypad to remove the slashes & add staccato dots.

I never did these kind of tremolos in my 16 years with Finale, so I don’t know: just out of curiosity, about how long would you say it takes to enter such a passage in Finale?

[erelievonen]

I guess I like the Bravura because the slashes don't clash as much with the beams, and, of course, I don't care for them to clash at all.

I don't understand this clashing with the beams issue. Surely it is possible to set the default placement so that the slashes are placed far enough from the beams?

I had hoped for a plug-in, but nothing much happened at MM Forum, even after hint or two there and posting a cross-reference to the first thread here. As you implied, this indeed might be a very difficult programming challenge considering that the beam angles must adjust differently from usual.

I you want such a plug-in, maybe you have to ask explicitly, since it might not be a simple task. But surely someone like Jari could do it; I'd imagine Charles L. might also like to take up the challenge.

How do you mean, "the beam angles must adjust differently from usual"? By default, the beam stubs are already angled parallel to the main beam, so they should need no adjustment.

[John Ruggero]

erelievonen wrote:

I don't understand this clashing with the beams issue

I meant visually clashing; I really don't care for the look of the slashes running counter to the beams.

the beam angles must adjust differently from usual

I meant that the default beam angles will be different from usual because the slashes have to be positioned straddling lines or entirely in spaces.

maybe you have to ask explicitly

You are right. I will ask explicitly.

MJCube wrote:

about how long would you say it takes to enter such a passage in Finale

I also had not done these in my many years using Finale, so it was on-the-job training. For nos. 1-3 the actual input was rapid since I used your approach of copying. However, the slash and beam adjustments took time (see my comment above to erelievonen) and because I wanted to do a good job, I kept coming back to it to improve it before I posted it.

For no. 4, the input was probably triple the normal because the notes have to be entered twice and then a series of manipulations performed on the beams. The adjustments were extremely taxing because I had to do all note spacing by hand (the notes must be entered as 16th notes and adjusted to 1/8th note positions) and at least double that because there are two superimposed layers in which the notes, stems and slashes must align perfectly. Plus while there is no slash adjustment per se, the beams must be adjusted as with nos. 1-3.

I am sure that I would be much faster the next time with either of the approaches.

When I have recovered from this, I may try it myself in Sibelius, but can't post the result because I only have the demo. Maybe you would post yours?

[John Ruggero]

Apparently the Steinberg project is aware of this issue. See a recent post by Ralph L. Bowers at:

http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx ... 471407&p=1

I notice that I had referred to a Lua plug-in previously, but have asked again more vigorously.

The last posts by mbhaub, the originator of the thread, are very interesting. The players actually had difficulty with his repeated note slashes, which were "unattractive and not what Breitkopf or Universal would have printed", and as a result, he drew them all in with pen and ink!

[MJCube]

My Sibelius version. An additional minute or so to add & position the brace on the Violins and change the page setup to landscape. This is Sibelius 6 with the Norfolk version of Bravura, adapted for Sibelius. I widened the default staff distance to 8 spaces, and everything else is straight out of the box. No adjustments to the beam angles or position of anything else.

[John Ruggero]

That is really nice, MJCube, and I really like the Bravura slashes. Sibelius seems handle this a lot better than Finale, unless I have failed to make use of some settings that might have made more of the work automatic. Just one thing though, I decided, rightly or wrongly, that all of the single slashes should straddle lines evenly or be centered in spaces. This does cause a little more fiddling with the beam angles, but seems to help visibility.

[John Ruggero]

MJCube, I forgot to ask if Sibelius can do the slashes parallel to the beams, and if not, is there a workaround like Peter Thomsen"s to force a good result.