Various Line Settings

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John Ruggero
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by John Ruggero »

A clarification concerning units. It is only this morning that the fog lifted, and it became clear to me that Finale's "space" is an absolute distance of 1/12 of an inch or one quarter of a .33 inch (.85 cm) staff.

The settings that we are formulating are apparently for the most common size, a .7 cm staff, which is slightly smaller than Finale's default staff of .72 cm. There have been numerous references to staff sizes in even cm's, so that I am assuming that this is the new standard.

As an experiment and following Knut's formula of 25% increase for every 75% reduction for staff line thickness, I calculated the following based on my preferences so far:

(all settings are in Finale's "space" units)

For a .7 cm staff: approximately 100% in Finale

Staff line: 0.1
Ledger Line: 0.125
Barline: 0.15
Stem: 0.1
Hairpin line: 0.125

For a .6 cm staff: 86% reduction 22% increase

Staff line: 0.122 (or approx 0.125)
Ledger Line: 0.153 (or approx 0.150)
Barline: 0.183 (or approx 0.175)
Stem: 0.122 (or approx 0.125)
Hairpin line: 0.153 (or approx 0.150)

For a .5 cm staff: 71% reduction 26% increase

Staff line: 0.126 (or approx 0.125)
Ledger Line: 0.158 (or approx 0.160)
Barline: 0.190
Stem: 0.126 (or approx 0.125)
Hairpin line: .0.158 (or approx 0.160)


For a .4 cm staff: 57% reduction 33% increase

Staff line: 0.133
Ledger Line: 0.166
Barline: 0.2
Stem: 0.133
Hairpin line: .0.166

All seems to work well except for the bar line thickness for the 5mm and 4mm, which is much too great. I suspect that bar line thickness follows a different rule.

I attach the four Finale files, so that forum members can check my work and experiment if they wish.
7mm.musx
(84.77 KiB) Downloaded 326 times
6mm.musx
(84.83 KiB) Downloaded 333 times
5mm.musx
(84.82 KiB) Downloaded 316 times
4mm.musx
(84.82 KiB) Downloaded 311 times
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David Ward
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by David Ward »

Although I, as a mere composer, find these discussions deeply fascinating, following them does sometimes seem a bit like trying to fathom quantum physics.

Question: how much of this detail is it reasonable for a composer to know, assuming that at least some of his own 'engraving' is likely to be put in front of performers without being redone by an expert? To how great an extent ought one to be able to rely on software (Finale/Sibelius) defaults? Are these truly terrible? Performers have not complained (at least to me) about my parts, and I have put some effort into getting as many of the less arcane (to a non-engraver) things right as I am able. (And I often enough see parts from supposedly reputable sources put before orchestras that are obviously, even to my eye, not as well-engraved as they might be.)
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tisimst
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by tisimst »

I think that it really depends on how good your eye is for the details. A person with a good file can still engrave poorly while a person using a file with normal defaults can engrave a score very well. You, David, must fall in the later category ;-)

On a side note, I have heard from reputable sources that some of the major publishing houses nowadays are losing the "quality" that we expect to see, either because the populace in general is caring less about the quality or the engraving work is being outsourced to cheap labor with a quicker response time. Sad, but true.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by John Ruggero »

David, it might seem overly complex at the moment, but I would just like to get these settings straight once and for all so that I will never need to think about them again and can get on with things. Yes, I do think that some of the Finale default settings are terrible: hairpins that open to widely, staff lines that are too thin or thick, slurs that bow too much, first and second endings that I've never seen in 65 years of reading music, etc. and there is no reason on earth that one can't change a few settings in templates that will serve for years and get so much better results. Here is an opportunity not to be missed to get answers from some of the best engravers going.

As far as performers complaining, bless them all, you know what my response will be from previous posts! And I am sure that they wouldn't complain about your scores in any case; what I saw on that large monitor of yours looked great.
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Knut
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by Knut »

John Ruggero wrote:The settings that we are formulating are apparently for the most common size, a .7 cm staff, which is slightly smaller than Finale's default staff of .72 cm. There have been numerous references to staff sizes in even cm's, so that I am assuming that this is the new standard.
I should clarify that I rarely, work with a staff size larger than 80%. Most often I use 75% (63,5 cm) on A4 for both parts and Piano music, which is the dimensions my default line widths are based on.
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OCTO
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by OCTO »

@David W
John and tisimst have explained it beautifully. John's suggestions are indeed great: once you get it right with help from professional engravers you just keep on that standard.

@john
I am confused: isn't Finale's space the same term "space" in the analog engraving?
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John Ruggero
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by John Ruggero »

The last two posts illustrate why it is so hard to get these line settings straight, at least for me. Wess has already mentioned the complete jumble of units that we are dealing with. Please allow me to talk this through to clear it up for myself.

What Knut seems to saying is that he works not in staff sizes based on centimeters, but in Finale "System Scaling" percentages to be seen in the Page Layout Menu>Resize Staff System. But translating Finale staff percentages into absolute values requires explanation, as does Finale's use of the term "space".

Finale's percentages are based on a .333 inch staff as 100%. And the .333 inch (1/3 inch) staff is divided into four .083 inch (1/12 inch or .21 cm) "Finale spaces". So while this is the same as an engraver's space for a .333 staff, it is not the same as an engraver's space for any other size staff, because engraver's spaces are a relative measure that is 1/4 of the particular staff size being used. Since 1 staff always equals 4 engraver's spaces, an engraver's space has a different absolute value for every size staff. For example, an engravers space for a .25 inch staff = 1/16 inch, but an engraver's space for a .333 inch staff = 1/12 inch etc.

Essentially, Finale redefined the term "space" to make it an absolute value of 1/12 inch, not a relative value that changes with the staff size. So when we talk about "spaces" without clarifying whether these are engraver's spaces or "Finale spaces", we are already walking into a swamp of confusion.

Here are the staff sizes as they correspond to Finale's System Scaling, with some new sizes added:

.85 cm staff = .333 inch staff = 4.00 "Finale spaces" = Finale 100% system scaling
.8 cm staff = .31 inch staff = 3.78 "Finale spaces" = Finale 94% system scaling
.72 cm staff = .28 inch staff = 3.40 "Finale spaces" = Finale 85% system scaling = *Finale's Default File Staff*
.7 cm staff = .28 inch staff = 3.30 "Finale spaces" = Finale 82% system scaling
.65 cm staff = .25 inch staff = 3.00 "Finale spaces" = Finale 75% system scaling
.6 cm staff = .24 inch staff = 2.83 "Finale spaces" = Finale 70% system scaling
.5 cm staff = .20 inch staff = 2.36 "Finale spaces" = Finale 59% system scaling
.4 cm staff = .16 inch staff = 1.89 "Finale spaces" = Finale 47% system scaling

When Knut says he is using an 80% staff, he is using an approximately .7 cm = .28 inch staff, and when he says he is using a 75% staff he is using an approximately .65 cm = .25 inch staff. So Knut is using a staff a little smaller than a standard .72 cm Finale Default File staff as his upper limit, and a .65 cm (1/4 inch) staff as his most used staff. I believe that the settings that I have decided upon for my .7 cm staff would be applicable for both of those sizes and the percentages that Knut advocated would therefore continue to hold for the other size staves.

Please note that the Finale system scaling percentages shown in the chart above are not the same as the reduction percentages shown in the chart in my previous post. These new percentage reductions start with a .85 cm staff as 100%.

The previous reduction percentages started with a .7 staff cm as 100% and that makes them identical to the numbers in the the Resize tool dialogue box when using it to reduce an unmodified Finale Default File page by a certain percentage.

If all or part of this is incorrect, I would greatly appreciate help from those who know this stuff much better than I. I will add additional proposed settings for the new staff sizes listed above in another post.
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Knut
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by Knut »

John Ruggero wrote:Essentially, Finale redefined the term "space" to make it an absolute value of 1/12 inch, not a relative value that changes with the staff size. So when we talk about "spaces" without clarifying whether these are engraver's spaces or "Finale spaces", we are already walking into a swamp of confusion.
John, you are correct in that in it's calculation of staff size, Finale defines spaces as an absolute value. This is, however, not true outside of the Page Layout Tool (except for a few situations dealing with the actual page size as a reference), since Finale then defines spaces (and all other values) relative to the staff size %, just like an engraver would.

Finale's definition of an "absolute space" is based on a staff size somewhat larger than the traditional staff #1 (.31"), increased, like you correctly point out, to fit into the 1/12" paradigm (to simplify absolute recalculations based on inches). Outside of this, however, Finale defines 1 space, 24 EVPUs, .33" or .85cm as the distance between two staff lines, relative to the chosen staff size.

In case a client would give me absolute requirements concerning staff size based on millimeters or inches, I would of course use these values rather than %, but since such requirements are rarely relevant to straight forward engraving work, I prefer to go by %.

Just to complement your values, the attached table, based on a similar table in Steven Powell's Music Engraving Today, shows the different staff sizes with their traditional numbers and size in Finale %, centimeters and spaces. Also featured is the exact heights corresponding to each number in Ted Ross' book.
Table of Staff Sizes.pdf
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Last edited by Knut on 16 Nov 2015, 06:45, edited 1 time in total.
Peter West
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by Peter West »

If only it were so simple!

For example make a system with 2 staves, set one staff at 100% and one at 50 %

Enter 4 quarter notes on the upper staff so as not to use accidentals or leger lines. Copy the music to the lower staff

Set music spacing to a relatively large value, say q = 6 spaces

Select the top staff and respace the music

select only the bottom staff and respace the music.

You will see that 6 spaces refers to 6 spaces of the 100% staff. If it applied to the staff itself, then selecting only the bottom staff and applying spacing should halve the distance between the notes.

In scroll view stave reductions are not displayed, spacing in scroll view would never be affected by staff reduction. The 6 spaces in music spacing refers to6 spaces of the undefined die default) staff size when viewed in scroll view.
Last edited by Peter West on 15 Nov 2015, 11:03, edited 1 time in total.
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Knut
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Re: Various Line Settings

Post by Knut »

Peter West wrote:If only it were so simple!

For example make a system with 2 staves, set one staff at 100% and one at 50 %

Enter 4 quarter notes on the upper staff so as not to use accidentals or leger lines. Copy the music to the lower staff

Set music spacing to a relatively large value, say q = 6 spaces

Select the top staff and respect the music

select only the bottom staff and respect the music.

You will see that 6 spaces refers to 6 spaces of the 100% staff. If it applied to the staff itself, then selecting only the bottom staff and applying spacing should halve the distance between the notes.
Good points, Peter! I forgot about the Resize Tool. I guess the reason Finale behaves this way, is that by adjusting the staff size with the Resize Tool, you're essentially going outside the parameters set by the Page Layout Tool, which is what the relative space is based on. I totally agree though that when using different staff sizes within the same document, those staves should ideally be unit independent.
Peter West wrote:In scroll view stave reductions are not displayed, spacing in scroll view would never be affected by staff reduction. The 6 spaces in music spacing refers to6 spaces of the undefined die default) staff size when viewed in scroll view.
Well, since scroll view isn't the place intended for page layout, this is quite logical to me.
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