NOTATIO

(This question has to do with things other than graphical lines.)

Specifically I'm curious to know what your adjusted settings are for

staff lines

ledger lines

barlines

stems

optionally, I'd love to hear how you may have adjusted line thickness and endpoints for slurs and/or ties.


For transparency's sake, these are the setting I'm working with for now, but am VERY open to changing if something more attractive shows up.

Staff line thickness: 3/20 spaces

Ledger line thickness: 1/5 spaces

Thin barline thickness: 1/4 spaces

Stem thickness: 4/25 spaces

The Dorico defaults for lines are pretty decent IMO, with settings of ...

Staff: 1/8 spaces
Ledger: 1/6 spaces
Thin barline: 1/5 spaces
Stem thickness: 3/25

It looks like you are generally lightening things a little bit, but reinforcing the stems.

For general principles, I think with hand engraved music usually the staff lines were thinnest, with stems thicker (as they were cut by hand), and barlines even thicker. Now generally stems are the thinnest, thinner than the staff lines, with ledger lines and barlines thicker. There have also been studies that have shown human perception is different when evaluating thickness of horizontal vs vertical lines, so vertical lines have to be thicker than horizontal lines just to be perceived to be the same. (One such study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6802759/) Obviously output device can make a huge difference too. I usually print everything myself with parts on 9.5x12.5 paper on my Ricoh 6330 oversized laser printer, so my settings are geared towards what I see coming out of that.

I'm pretty open to adjusting too! I've actually been doing a lot of reevaluating of my settings lately as I update a bunch of teaching materials before the semester starts. So much of the time my stuff is performed in clubs and terrible lighting, so I actually increase the staff lines ever so slightly, just so they don't vanish. To go with that, I increase ledger lines slightly too. I leave the thin barline and stems at the default. Even just increasing the barline to 21/100 looks a little thick to me. Currently I'm using ...

Staff line: 13/100 spaces
Ledger line: 17/100 spaces
Thin barline: 1/5 spaces
Stem thickness: 3/25 spaces

Fred G. Unn wrote: ↑28 Jul 2025, 21:03 It looks like you are generally lightening things a little bit

actually, my setting makes everything slightly thicker. VERY slightly, it barely shows when I ctrl+z / ctrl+y to undo and redo, for comparison.

here's the first staff of my violin sonata, with those settings.
I don't see a MASSIVE difference, but it does, overall, looking slightly more "meaty".

MichelRE wrote: ↑28 Jul 2025, 21:12 actually, my setting makes everything slightly thicker. VERY slightly, it barely shows when I ctrl+z / ctrl+y to undo and redo, for comparison.

Math, how does it work? LOL! Yes, 1/5 is obviously thicker than 1/6, sorry!

Here's a quick comparison with all my default settings:
I'm not super happy about the two slurs in the Violin that end up running along the top line so I would edit those. I'm trying out a new (to me this week) treble clef too as I'm bored with Bravura, but it might be a touch laid back. Other than selecting one fermata per staff I don't think I edited anything here.

personally, I like my slurs a tiny bit flatter with slightly sloped shoulders.

MichelRE wrote: ↑29 Jul 2025, 10:27 personally, I like my slurs a tiny bit flatter with slightly sloped shoulders.

Are you sure that you are not being influenced by the earliest Dorico defaults? The first time I ever saw sloped shoulders like that in printed music was in Dorico 1. Fred G. Unn's look normal to me.

I think that the overall engraving is excellent in both versions, but the metronome indications seem awfully big for a chamber music score. The staff lines in the the first example seem to be competing with other lines. Perhaps they should be slightly thinner as in the second example.

John Ruggero wrote: ↑29 Jul 2025, 14:26 the metronome indications seem awfully big for a chamber music score.

You're probably right, I just left everything as my defaults. Originally tempo, if indicated at all, was just text. Then the metronome came along in the early 1800s so metronome markings started to creep into scores, but they were still secondary to the tempo indications. (IIRC Beethoven was one of the first, if not the first, to use them.) As metronome marks were secondary indications they were smaller and often parenthesized. Fast forward to today, when the metronome mark is often the only thing that matters in recording studios, and is often given to several decimal places as to properly sync the click. Tempo as text is now secondary and often omitted entirely. My standard defaults just leave the text and metronome marks on equal terms, without the unnecessary clutter of parentheses.

Come to think of it, parentheses around metronome indications could be ambiguous. Without them, the marking seems to take on more force, as if the composer wants the music at that tempo and no other. Within parentheses they might seem to be more of a suggestion. Beethoven's metronome indications in op. 106 were not enclosed in parentheses. Perhaps the parentheses came about when editors started to insert them as a way to show that they were not by the composer. The early 19th century editions of Beethoven's Sonatas by Moscheles, for example, have our present day style indications enclosed in parentheses.