Accidentals alignment

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Schneider
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by Schneider »

Now back to my first question: I understand that both of you do not like the accidental's default placement of LP. But does any of you have found such alignment in traditionally engraved scores?
Is there any rules (Gould?) :?:
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John Ruggero
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Re: Accidentals alignment

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Some more casual looking-through scores bore out my first impression. Only tight areas seem to be kerned and in tight areas there is an attempt to keep the ledger lines the same length if possible. If that is not possible , the ledger lines closest to the accidental are shortened the least amount necessary.

This does sometimes produce the shapes that you showed in the examples in your OP. But if LP is producing those defaults in all cases and always by the same amounts, it is over-reacting and needs to scale the amount of shortening. But maybe I misunderstood your OP and you were only showing extreme cases.
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HaraldS
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Re: Accidentals alignment

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The different widths of staff lines vs. ledger lines in the Lilipond examples do bother me a lot more than everything else, I have to admit.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by John Ruggero »

HaraldS wrote: 05 Oct 2019, 17:55 The different widths of staff lines vs. ledger lines in the Lilipond examples do bother me a lot more than everything else, I have to admit.
You are so right. I was so fixated on the length of the ledger lines, that I completely missed the difference in width, which exaggerates the effect of the former.
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Schneider
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by Schneider »

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Schneider
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by Schneider »

OCTO wrote: 04 Oct 2019, 10:41[...] And also I don't think there should be accidental/line kerning except crowded situations. [...]
See also: viewtopic.php?p=2468#p2468
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John Ruggero
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by John Ruggero »

Schneider, regarding Knut's example in the second thread you sited above, it seems to be exceptional in non-crowded conditions. I am not seeing it regularly in editions of Beethoven's sonatas by Arrau, Schenker, Schnabel, Tovey, and also some Weiner Urtext and Henle Chopin scores; and so hold to the findings I summarized above. I'll keep looking; it's amazing what one misses in music that one has read for decades.

Do the original examples show what LilyPond does in every case? And for a more complete discussion, it would be good to see some flats and naturals, and how Dorico kerns its ledger lines.
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John Ruggero
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by John Ruggero »

Having now spent a little more time looking through sheet music by various publishers, I continue to hold to my original view. And I am beginning to wonder if the unequal ledger lines that I see so rarely was just imprecision by the plate engravers. But I will continue on...
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John Ruggero
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by John Ruggero »

So far I am not seeing a systematic difference in ledger line length in the various items that I appraised. Here are some examples. The first example is from the Breitkopf Brahms Complete the second from the first edition of Debussy's Etudes, the others are various editions of Beethoven's Sonata op. 111. Where there is a difference, It appears to me to to be engraving imprecision.
Brahms Handel Variations ledger lines.jpeg
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OCTO
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Re: Accidentals alignment

Post by OCTO »

Schneider wrote: 06 Oct 2019, 10:04
OCTO wrote: 04 Oct 2019, 10:41[...] And also I don't think there should be accidental/line kerning except crowded situations. [...]
See also: viewtopic.php?p=2468#p2468
I know that we discussed it earlier.
I still believe that the shortening ledger line is needed only in the case of crowded situations.

My opinion is partly based on the visual appearance of the ledger lines: both "hooks" are equally important for quick reading. If it is shortened, you need to compensate it with the tight note-spacing.

In another words:
You have to choose: either to put the flat symbol enough far away (without reducing the ledger line length) thus increasing risk for wide spacing, OR to shorten the ledger line and tighten the spacing and increase risk for legibility of the ledger line-note.

Furthermore, I have found that the accidental spacing in the older, manually engraved scores is not fixed.

Here are several examples of Henle and Bärenreter (randomly chosen) where I don't find shortening the ledger lines in non-crowded or semi-crowded situations. Accidentals touching the ledger line is very common though.
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