[puzzle] Slur solutions 4

[Knut]

85% seems to large to me; 66% - 70%, too small. 75-80% is more what I am accustomed to seeing in piano music. The secondary clefs in the Durand above look like 75% to me. New glyphs are needed; no doubt about it.

Breitkopf and some other publishers use around 85% size, but smaller clefs are more common. I think you're right about the ideal size. Currently, though, you wouldn't be able to use different glyphs for courtesy clefs in Finale anyway, and as indicated in the post above, it might be best to follow the standards of the applications that are able to utilize them.

[Knut]

For anyone interested, here's the past discussion on the subject of courtesy clef size and vertical placement in the context of a music font:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=62

[John Ruggero]

A Finale work-around for notation (not playback) just occurred to me. Create glyphs for well-designed G and F secondary clefs that touch the lines and are of the desired reduction and substitute them for two of the "octavation" G and F clefs in the Document Options>Clef>Clef Designer. Use them normally, but select and transpose the passage involved to compensate, which is easily done with the "8" or "9" keys.

[Knut]

A Finale work-around for notation (not playback) just occurred to me. Create glyphs for well-designed G and F secondary clefs that touch the lines and are of the desired reduction and substitute them for two of the "octavation" G and F clefs in the Document Options>Clef>Clef Designer. Use them normally, but select and transpose the passage involved to compensate, which is easily done with the "8" or "9" keys.

Clef transposition (middle C position) can be specified in the Clef Designer, so there's no need to transpose the music if this setting is altered to fit the bill. However, I don't see what this workaround would accomplish. Even if you use a different clef design for clef changes, the same glyph at 100% would be used as the main clef on the start of any system(s) following the clef change. For this to work you would need to 'cancel' the dedicated glyph before a system break by changing the clef back to the regular glyph and hiding it's courtesy reduction.

The workaround I use to test and showcase these glyphs is simply to hide each instance of the reduced primary clef and replace them with expressions of the dedicated glyphs, setup to position correctly by default. Spacing would have to be done manually, but I often do that anyway.

Since Finale is supposed to support SMuFL in it's next version, there is a chance that MakeMusic will introduce support for these glyphs simultaneously. My guess though, is that this is nowhere near the top of there list of new features, unfortunately.

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, Knut. Your transposition tip makes my workaround so much better. Replacing an occasional ending courtesy clef with an expression seems like little trouble, and I now have all the clefs I need. Experience may show disadvantages, however. We'll see.

[Knut]

Thanks, Knut. Your transposition tip which makes my workaround so much better. Replacing an occasional ending courtesy clef with an expression seems like little trouble, and I now have all the clefs I need. Experience may show disadvantages, however. We'll see.

No problem!

If you're only hiding clefs 'occasionally' with your method, it seems to me that I've misunderstood something. How do you get the main clefs at the start of each system to display the normal glyphs without cancelling each and every clef change?

[John Ruggero]

I would select my normal 100% clef with the clef tool for the first measure of the next system.

I have only done a little work on a small G clef and don't yet have an F clef, so I used the default Finale 75% F clef. My small G clef = large G clef with a 80% horizontal and 83% vertical reduction. Maybe it should be taller; more like 85%. Anyway, it would look something like this (I know the spacing is not great but it is only an example to show the clefs.):

Secondary clefs.jpg (19.74 KiB) Viewed 12053 times

[OCTO]

Sure. Here's the file with default settings and no slurs.

Thanks.
Sorry for not replying, to much here! But I will.

About % size:
I believe that the problem is not in the % but in the balancing of the symbol's BW-power with the other symbols at the page.
So to say: when a symbol gets reduced it's black power must be increased; or to say easier, its thinner parts must be emboldened.

[John Ruggero]

OCTO wrote:

when a symbol gets reduced...its thinner parts must be emboldened.

Very interesting, OCTO. I will take this into consideration when working on my little clefs.

[Knut]

I would select my normal 100% clef with the clef tool for the first measure of the next system.

That's what I thought you meant. This seems to me like a good solution for piano music with many clef changes at shorter intervals. For other situations, however, I think my method is more effective, and maintains better control over musical reflow on the layout stage or between scores and parts.

I find it interesting that you would choose different rates of reduction horizontally and vertically. I'll experiment a bit more and post a suggested redesign tomorrow.

About % size:
I believe that the problem is not in the % but in the balancing of the symbol's BW-power with the other symbols at the page.
So to say: when a symbol gets reduced it's black power must be increased; or to say easier, its thinner parts must be emboldened.

[/quote]

As you can read from my comments earlier in the thread, I agree that the weight (or BW balance, if you will) of the courtesy clefs is one of the two main reasons to utilize separate dedicated glyphs for this purpose. The other one is vertical placement, which John so helpfully educated me on in another thread.

However, at a reduction of 85% there is very little loss of weight, which is one of the reasons I chose this size in the engraving above (which uses the primary glyphs only). For a very thin font like Maestro the difference will also be visible at a higher reduction percentage than for a heavier font like my own.