Staff line thickness

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wess-music
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Staff line thickness

Post by wess-music »

EDIT

last night I wrote this treat into wrong section.
After a brief talk with our host Mr. Zivkovic I accept "a prima vista" his suggestion to establish a new treat.
I hope it may concern some of you.

Thank you for your reading.

Wess
___________


Dear Colleagues,

together with my interest at fonts in 1999-2000 another greatest preoccupation of mine was the thickness of the staff lines especially when we are talking about the computer-sized (staff) hight and respectively the appropriate values for all its parts.

BTW, shell I mention that my switch over this theme was provoked by all interesting thoughts of yours?
Well, this is the only truth.

Here I will resurrect more or less intentionally an old treat about outlined fonts, where I spotted the actual reasons for part of the values into the applied thickens when for some aesthetically reasons I had shown rounded text elements and how it results for better visibility, IMO.

What I found really positive in this "cool" (sorry about the slang) forum is the fact, that the accent of our ideas is not put on some specific software or even when it is, it could be easily "transferred" from one to another application, because the rules are kind of mile-stones of music engraving – respectively guardians of all solid principles.

Here we faced the question "what can I input as right values for the staff lines in order to reach fine layout score?"

In 1994, when I made my first attempt to print on 600 DPI LJ (HP 4 or 5) from Finale 2.0 file, a colleague of mine, composer, unbiased against new technologies, told me clearly: your staff lines are too thin. They do not correspond with the filled object (notes-rests, beams, ties, slurs, etc.).
I opened immediately first piano score found in one hand distance and realised that he was definitely right.

Nevertheless, observing manually engraved music, we will determine that the thickness of the staff line can vary reaching ⅕ or even ¼ of the space. From recent point of view this might be consider totally inappropriate.
There is another issue, mostly omitted when for instance some of my student analyse the old scores – the effect of so called "ink dispersion" over small radius on the paper which results extra boldness of the note heads (and all other symbols).
If you try to input notes (note heads only!) with 25p (even 26p) font size instead of default 24p, probably no one will criticise you that it looks unbalanced since i.e. Maestro Wide or Engraver are intended for such proposes, I hope.

And the answer, considering Laser Jets resolutions, is easy to be found.
First of all, all staff lines must be measured in integer values for best results.
However, Finale and Sibelius work with scaled sizes for page/staff/system – respectively the same is mandatory for the lines.

Till nowadays I've never done sample with 100% staff hight. Usually the staff hight lies between 4 and 8 mm, mostly 5 mm (for orchestral scores) and 7 (piano, solo...) mm, 7.5 for parts, and 8 also for parts (strings and percussion), but NEVER 8.455 mm (100% staff hight).

In our work we struggle with the conversion of great number of units in Finale / Sibelius, however I will concentrate myself only on "mm" plus other common measurement units such as space, inches and EVPUs.
For our colleagues working in inches, the next equitation would remain almost the same with very little differences.

My hypothesis is that the "well looking" staff line thickness must not exceed 1/10 — 1/8 of a single (vertical) staff space and its value must be an integer number of single laser jet dot(s).
If not – unexpected lever of an approximation will apply regardless of our intentions.

Translating these values in millimetres we've got 1 space = 1.75 mm in 7 mm (piano/solo) staff.
1/8 space = 12.5% space
1/10 space = 10% space

12.5% of 1.75 = 0.21875 mm
10% of 1.75 = 0.175

LJ maintaining resolution of 1200 DPI can virtually draw ca. 0.0211(6) mm single line.
LJ maintaining resolution of 600 DPI can virtually draw ca. 0.042(3) mm single line.

Considering above facts, 8 lines (drawn from 1200 DPI LJ) are equal to 0.169(3) mm
or just 4 lines (from 600 DPI LJ).
The program SCORE utilises predefined settings which resulted to almost such value (0.17 mm) for 7 mm staff and 0.127 mm for 5 mm staff. (6 lines@1200 DPI or 3 lines@600DPI)
This equitation represents staff lines that are 10% of the space (7 mm rostral).

Personally in some cases I find this lines a bit thin and I've experimented with 12.5 % which means that I will apply 10 lines@1200 DPI or 5 lines@600DPI.
In such case the staff lines (for 7 mm staff) is 0.211(6) mm

Now the question is how to transfer this value in Finale since we apply scalings all the time:

Let's first consider that 83% represent 7 mm staff.
Then equitation is: 0.2116 (real line thickness) /0.83=0.255 mm
Finale will translate this with little approximation – namely 0.02547 cm (0.2547 mm)
or
0.1244 spaces
2.89063 EVPUs
0.01004 Inches
12.5% space - 0.212 mm.png
12.5% space - 0.212 mm.png (92.9 KiB) Viewed 13875 times
When opened in Illustrator the staff lines appear as 0.212 mm – in other words – with very slight approximation.
Absolutely the same value could be seen in Inkscape too.

Nevertheless, many of my colleagues accept Maestro and Opus font for their daily work.
And considering that these fonts are ... a bit more fragile than any solidly looking music font, IMO the above settings with 10 lines (@1200 DPI or 5@600) do not harmonise with those fonts themselves.

Well, in order to improve the results let's try staff line equal to 1/10 of the space – respectively 8 printer's lines (@1200DPI, respectively 4 lines@600DPI)

8 * 0.0211(6) = 0.169(3) ≈ 0.17 mm
or
4 * 0.042(3) = 0.169(3) ≈ 0.17 mm

The equitation this time would be:

0.169(3)/0.83=0.204 mm
Finale will translate this with little approximation – namely 0.02039 cm (0.2039 mm)
or
0.09635 spaces
2.3125 EVPUs
0.00803 Inches
10% space - 0.169 mm.png
10% space - 0.169 mm.png (93.27 KiB) Viewed 13875 times
When opened and checked in Illustrator the staff lines appear as 0.169 mm

_______

Well, that's all for tonight!

Best regards,
Wess
Peter West
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by Peter West »

I use a different calculation. because I and my clients use laser print at 1200dpi, the image is not so sensitive to round up/down pluses as with inkjet. I set my staff lines to 0.1 spaces. When the staff is less than 4 mm I increase that to 0.125
Finale 2008/9/10/11/12/14, Sibelius 6/7.5, In Design CC 2015, Illustrator CS4
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John Ruggero
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by John Ruggero »

Thanks so much, Peter. That is so helpful as I am trying to bring some order to my engraving. There is a post of yours from 2012 that gives your settings for staff lines, ledger lines, bar lines and stems. Did you mean centimeters in that post, or am I now totally confused? Here it is:

"Staff lines 0.022 spaces (cm?)
Stems and ledger lines 0.026 spaces (cm?)
Barlines 0.033 spaces" (cm?)

If so, we get approximately:

Staff lines .1 space
Stems and ledger lines .125 space
Barlines .15 space
M1 Mac mini (OS 12.4), Dorico, Finale 25.5, GPO 4, Affinity Publisher 2, SmartScore 64 Pro, JW Plug-ins, TG Tools, Keyboard maestro

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wess-music
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by wess-music »

Dear John,

all values in both (screenshots) tables I've attached are in centimetres and they refer for 7 mm staff hight, however the same settings work rather well with 5 mm staff too.

As Peter West suggests, for very tinny staff (4 mm) the value advisably could be multiplied by "1.25"

Best regards,
Wess
Peter West
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Location: Cornwall, England
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by Peter West »

Hi John, indeed, I did mean cm in the 2012 post, sorry about that
Finale 2008/9/10/11/12/14, Sibelius 6/7.5, In Design CC 2015, Illustrator CS4
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John Ruggero
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by John Ruggero »

And would the final settings listed meet with your approval? I rounded them off a bit and wonder if more precision is necessary.

Thanks for the clarification, Wess.
M1 Mac mini (OS 12.4), Dorico, Finale 25.5, GPO 4, Affinity Publisher 2, SmartScore 64 Pro, JW Plug-ins, TG Tools, Keyboard maestro

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Peter West
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by Peter West »

I normally use spaces for my settings. 1, 1.25 and 1.5 would be my normal settings these days

Peter
Finale 2008/9/10/11/12/14, Sibelius 6/7.5, In Design CC 2015, Illustrator CS4
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John Ruggero
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by John Ruggero »

Thanks, Peter. the round numbers: .1, .125, .150 are easy to remember and deal with.

Wess, it seems that you and Peter are in essential agreement about the approx. .1 spaces for staff lines. Is that correct?
And what do you think of Peter's other settings? I like what I am seeing with these proportions.
M1 Mac mini (OS 12.4), Dorico, Finale 25.5, GPO 4, Affinity Publisher 2, SmartScore 64 Pro, JW Plug-ins, TG Tools, Keyboard maestro

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wess-music
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by wess-music »

John Ruggero wrote: Wess, it seems that you and Peter are in essential agreement about the approx. .1 spaces for staff lines.
Absolutely!

All settings that you can see from both attached screenshots are already tested and in use for years.
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OCTO
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Re: Staff line thickness

Post by OCTO »

I have never been thinking so deeply about the staff lines, and now I recognise how little I can, thank you @wess @peter and @john.
This just confirms that notation is not composing, and that there should be just engravers, as there are composers.
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