Alignment of grace notes

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OCTO
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Alignment of grace notes

Post by OCTO »

Should grace notes be aligned? Particularly it is visible if a dynamic symbol is attached.
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Knut
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Re: Alignment of grace notes

Post by Knut »

I think grace notes should not align unless their circumstances are absolutely equal.

However, I do think the dynamic should be aligned with the main note unless the grace note passage is fairly extended, so you shouldn't need to worry about aligning the dynamics in this specific case.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Alignment of grace notes

Post by John Ruggero »

I think that Knut and Gould (who does not state it as emphatically) are correct, but the grace notes in this example look needlessly misaligned to me. Perhaps this was to make a point? If there are equal numbers of grace notes in each part, and there are not many (2 or 3) I think that a valiant attempt should be made to align the first and last grace notes of each group so the result is as pleasing as possible.

A question about the sfz. I have always considered this to be an accent mark that pertains to a single note, not a group. Is that the case in the example? If not, an FF might be more appropriate. In either case, aligning the first grace notes would align the sfz or ff more appropriately.
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OCTO
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Re: Alignment of grace notes

Post by OCTO »

I see. Maybe the sfz should just be placed under the main note.
And this is the default Finale output. Definitely some kind of editing is needed there, I am not sure which one, perhaps to compress everything to the left. This one looks surprisingly inconsistent, almost that they don't play together.
Knut
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Re: Alignment of grace notes

Post by Knut »

While I think grace notes as a general rule should be spaced as closely as possible, I agree with John that the spacing in this case seems inconsistent. I would space the grace notes on the top two staves closer together, and decrease the space on the lower one slightly, to reach some kind of middle ground.

Since this is a sforzando marking, I would think the placement would depend on where you want the effect. To me, it seems most logically placed on the main note, but I'm not entirely sure.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Alignment of grace notes

Post by John Ruggero »

Usually, the sfz is placed under the main note when there are preceding grace notes, because it is the main note that is to be accented, not the grace notes. If the grace notes and the main note are all to be accented, then this is very unusual and a creative solution must be found since we do not have a standard symbol to show a group of notes accented as a unit. Liszt came up with such a symbol, a large inverted v encompassing the notes, but it didn't catch on.
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