octave line question

[MichelRE]

There are other issues with slurs as well (for example, when writing a slurred quadruple stop on the violin, it attaches to the wrong notes and there's no easy way to fix it other than in the finicky Engrave mode.)

I could certainly adjust those slurs, but the work is so long that I'd probably spend a month just adjusting slurs manually.
I mean, there are points on the slur in Engrave mode that allow you to adjust angles and curves, but I don't have the best eye for that sort of thing.

Is this a bit better?
I'm not terribly good at this, so I need some guidance.

[MichelRE]

I think the problem with slurs is that there are simply so many possible permutations of the shape, depending on context, with so many elements to be taken into consideration, like accidentals, stems, beams, other noteheads, positions within a chord, etc...

maybe it's just so complicated that no engraving software has been able to incorporate all of the potential permutations a slur can have and manage to make it "pretty"?

[NeeraWM]

I agree ...
I spend a very considerable amount of time every day editing slurs' curves ...
One must believe this is very complex to achieve. Oh ... and if you dissect a Sibelius slur in Illustrator, you get three objects one on top of the other!!

[John Ruggero]

MichelRE I agree that your slur shapes need help, but you shouldn't have to tweak them so much by hand. Have you looked at past threads concerning Dorico slurs on the Dorico Forum? I was just as critical of them in the beginning, but changes in settings have given me pretty good results, almost as good as Finale. (And no I don't agree that Finale's slurs are terrible. Just the opposite. Only the tips need some beefing up and Finale can produce the best slurs I have ever seen in music engraving.)

There are recommendations by FredGUnn at Dorico and I believe I posted my Dorico settings somewhere here at Notatio.

What I don't understand is why these applications don't produce great basic slur shapes out of the box, without many changes to the settings, when any user can to that.

I do understand that programming slurs to meet the many different musical situations must be extremely difficult.

[NeeraWM]

Slurs become problematic when the interval between first and last note gets big.
At that point, no setting will help or, if it will, all other scenarios will be scrambled.
In music for strings, when string-crossing passages can get more than two octaves between the lowest and highest note, things will have to be set up manually.

[John Ruggero]

viewtopic.php?p=9852&hilit=steep+slurs#p9852

[Fred G. Unn]

I think I've posted my settings either here or on the Dorico forum, but here's what I get by default with my settings:

slurs.png (110.98 KiB) Viewed 119 times

If I change the Maximum increase in height to avoid collisions setting to something larger, I can get something like this as a default here, but I seem to recall too much of larger value here adversely affects other slurs and makes them too balloon-y.

slurs2.png (107.71 KiB) Viewed 119 times

I'll play around a bit more, but I would assume there's not a magical combination of settings that will both give desirable results with this example, and also with more commonly found situations.

[NeeraWM]

I agree with Fred G. Unn.
Every time I changed my settings to solve a specific issue, it caused the 80%-ish very good slurs to suddenly look incredibly bad.
For sure I could still improve something here and there, but one needs to be given the luxury to stop and experiment ...

[John Ruggero]

I also agree that changing general slur settings to meet a specific situation is a no-win in both Finale and Dorico. However, it is possible to modify the Dorico default settings and the Finale default settings to handle most situations well and thus minimize hand adjustment.

Now, if only those or something like them were the default settings.

[John Ruggero]

For reference:

Here are the slurs shown in a Finale Default File. Note the famous wispy ends of the slurs which must be changed. However, the general shape is good:

Finale Default .png (103.03 KiB) Viewed 69 times

Here in Finale with my personal settings:

Finale Personal Settings.png (149.41 KiB) Viewed 69 times

Here with the necessary hand adjustment:

Finale Hand Adjustment.png (113.79 KiB) Viewed 69 times

Dorico with my personal settings:

Dorico with Personal Settings.png (57.25 KiB) Viewed 58 times

Dorico adjusted. It was actually easier to adjust in Dorico than Finale:

Dorico adjusted.png (57.29 KiB) Viewed 58 times