Various Line Settings

[Fred G. Unn]

Fred had stated earlier that ledger lines should be about 125% thicker than staff lines, which is in agreement with the majority so far.

I do think that this is somewhat reliant on what the staff line thickness actually is though. In my example I was using 3 EVPU staff lines and 3.75 ledger lines. If one were to use 3.75 staff lines then the ledgers at 125% would be 4.6875 which seems way too thick. Likewise, the thin Finale default staff lines could probably support ledger lines greater than 125%. With the default 1.79 EVPU barlines, my 3.75 ledgers would be over twice as thick which seems like a crazy ratio, but those thin staff lines could probably easily go to 150% or so.

[Fred G. Unn]

Oh, and Gould says ledger lines should be 200% on pg 26. Perhaps this is ok with very thin staff lines, but it looks too thick to my eye with either .1 spaces or .125 for the staff lines. Ross just says it should be "somewhat thicker" on pg 182.

[Peter West]

I don't understand Wess's explanation of the technical aspects of laser printing and its relationship to engraving. Perhaps others will take that on..

basically printers scan in lines across the page. If you set you line thickness in Finale to marginally less than the thickness of the printed line, it will print one line, if you make it marginally thicker you will get two. You can specify very fine increments in Finale, but if your printer has a course line structure, you may get odd results with some staff lines appearing thicker than others. Usually this only affects inkjet printers and low resolution laser printers. As most laser printers print 600 lines or 1200 lines per inch, you can virtually ignore it unless you want particularly thin lines.

[Knut]

Oh, and Gould says ledger lines should be 200% on pg 26. Perhaps this is ok with very thin staff lines, but it looks too thick to my eye with either .1 spaces or .125 for the staff lines. Ross just says it should be "somewhat thicker" on pg 182.

I mentioned these sources in my last post as well, and I agree that 200% is generally too much. Both Peter and I seem to use the ledger line = barline relationship, although his barlines are slightly thinner than mine.

[Fred G. Unn]

I mentioned these sources in my last post as well

Sorry, I read pg 1 on my phone earlier, and forgot you had already mentioned this by the time I got around to posting.

[Knut]

No worries.

[John Ruggero]

With Peter's correction of his equations and comments made by others since my last tally, my settings for an average staff are now:

Staff line: 0.1
Ledger Line: 0.125
Barline: 0.15
Stem: .1
Hairpin line: .125
Hairpin opening: 1.33

There has been little discussion of the Finale hairpin opening setting. I find that I do a lot of hand adjusting of hairpins, but I am hoping that the setting that I adopted from Knut will cut down on that.

[OCTO]

I wonder: does it apply for any staff size (4-7mm)?

If not, is there any table-ratio (spreadsheet) that we can use to re-calculate the different sizes?

ADD-ON Q: How should resized staff be handled in this situation (violin+piano score)? Should the lines in the violin small staff be reduced equally (lines: bar, staff, stem, ledger)? It is a bit suspicious if the answer is YES. (Finale does it equally, except barlines, I think it is ugly.)

[Peter West]

John: Hairpin openings are variable. Finale's default of 1.5 spaces is ugly. Many people decrease this to about 1.3 spaces, which I use for Music Sales. Boosey have a whole page on hairpins in their style sheet but I cannot see a specification. The examples in the style sheet appear to be slightly more than 1 space, maybe 1.2. Durand/Salabert use 0.8 spaces, which, when you get used to it is very elegant, but quite idiosyncratic. I wouldn't recommend emulating it, or your music will look like a Durand edition!

I would generally recommend something around 1.2 - 1/35 spaces.

[Knut]

I wonder: does it apply for any staff size (4-7mm)?

If not, is there any table-ratio (spreadsheet) that we can use to re-calculate the different sizes?

ADD-ON Q: How should resized staff be handled in this situation (violin+piano score)? Should the lines in the violin small staff be reduced equally (lines: bar, staff, stem, ledger)? It is a bit suspicious if the answer is YES. (Finale does it equally, except barlines, I think it is ugly.)

In my opinion, yes. The problem with Finale is that the line width's are reduced by same amount as the staff size, while the line widths should be the same, at least optically, for both staff sizes in a setting of mixed staff sizes.

Mixed staff sizes.png (35.43 KiB) Viewed 10216 times

Using the same staff line thickness for both sizes like this was common in plate engraving, since, as I understand it, the same tool was used for both. As you can see, it results in the opposite effect, making the smaller staff heavier than the larger one.

I always go by % when calculating staff size, which makes recalculating the line widths easier. To get a more balanced appearance, I would suggest an increase in line with of about 25% for every 75% reduction in size. I haven't tested it thoroughly, but I think it should be about right.