Notesizes in Strauss Don Quixote (Jos. Aibl Verlag / UE)

[Anders Hedelin]

Thanks for letting me know, and for directing me to the manuscript.
The examples given above with different-sized notes all seem to be more or less about saving space. Do you know of any intentional, expressive/structural use of sizes between the two traditional ones (regular and grace-note/cadenza size)? Just now I can't recall any such myself.

[John Ruggero]

I don't know of any either, but I used such medium note heads for the intro to Chopin's Etude op. 25 no. 7, where grace note size just seemed to small for the situation.

[OCTO]

Another example of reducing the notesizes.
Also sprach Zarathustra, Op.30, Munich: Joseph Aibl, 1896. Plate 2859.
At M295, the whole system has reduced notes:

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That would not be so problematic (looks somehow the russian editions, which have definitely smaller noteheads in general), but the system before has exactly the same staff height and at the first glance the reduced system looks as "cued":

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[John Ruggero]

It seems to be a mixture of different sizes. For example, aren't Bassoons 1-2 ms.2-3 full size? If so, the cause would seem to be space-saving.

Recently, I have found it necessary to reduce note size slightly for cramped ledger line notes so the ledger lines don't touch, since Finale doesn't allow for different ledger line lengths in the same document.

[Anders Hedelin]

One thing that might force the oboe part to be in a smaller size is the double notes for the unisons. Are they really necessary when it says "a 3", or how to explain that? I can't recall having seen this notation before.

[OCTO]

... since Finale doesn't allow for different ledger line lengths in the same document.

I have managed to manipulate lines and curves in PDF in Affinity Designer, so that might be the way to fix it.

[John Ruggero]

... since Finale doesn't allow for different ledger line lengths in the same document.

I have managed to manipulate lines and curves in PDF in Affinity Designer, so that might be the way to fix it.

Thanks, OCTO. And I could probably Photoshop it after everything else is finished. But it would be laborious. I read that Dorico can change the width of individual ledger lines. That's the kind of capability I was hoping for from Dorico and might eventually cause me to switch, once it is capable of handling some of the things that are so easy to do in Finale.

And perhaps Dorico also adjusts the ledger lines automatically to avoid collisions?

[RMK]

Recently, I have found it necessary to reduce note size slightly for cramped ledger line notes so the ledger lines don't touch, since Finale doesn't allow for different ledger line lengths in the same document.

I believe Robert Patterson has a plug-in (possibly only in a beta version) that does exactly this.

[John Ruggero]

Thanks RMK. Is this the one from the Patterson Plug in Collection?

"Minimum Distance Between Ledger Lines ___. Allows for closer spacing between ledger lines than Finale's built-in spacing usually permits. This option is independent of any of the items in the list. It works by internally changing the ledger line width setting in the document and then restoring the original value after spacing is complete. If you set it equal to the "Minimum Distance Between Items" value in Document Options->Music Spacing, it has no effect. Negative values are treated as zero. Note that Finale may still leave a small amount of space between ledger lines even when this value is zero, depending on your ledger line options."

I am not sure it does what I need. That is, to change the width of a single or group of ledger lines without affecting the rest of the document.

And to answer my own question, according to the promotional material, Dorico does change ledger line width automatically to avoid collisions.

[OCTO]

And I could probably Photoshop it after everything else is finished. But it would be laborious.

Since I started editing finished scores (pages) in a vector graphic software, I understood how much more work one can do in order to make truly adjusted score, and I have became aware that none of notation software I used so far (F, S, MS) can render the graphic in a satisfying way, nor to fine tune (manually) any of the parameters. Our forum memeber wess-music has opened the door for me regarding this approach.
(P.s. not photoshop-like but a vector graphic software is the way)