NOTATIO

Vaughan wrote: In the Scriabin example, I like the engraver's tucking the natural under the rest in the RH of measure 3. That's the kind of thing I like to do if I have the time to spend!

This is the sort of thing that will be much improved with the advent of SMuFL, given that it stores information about each individual character's white space within it's bounding box. This will provide a much better foundation for satisfactory music spacing and automatic placement of characters.

dspreadbury wrote: It does seem pretty likely, though, that engravers would have sometimes chosen to make accidentals tighter on their notes in very tight conditions: however, I've never had this directly expressed to me by any of the handful of plate engravers I've had the privilege to know, and nor have I seen it written in any of the standard texts on engraving.

Well, maybe this is something that could be investigated! I would more than happy to be able to discuss this with some of the great living plate engravers.
Having kerning possibilities in software and fonts is something that could be of a huge step forward in the computer engraving process.

You're right, Knut, that SMuFL makes this kind of thing easier to achieve, but scoring applications still have to make use of this kind of metadata to improve things. I suspect that it would be very difficult for either Finale or Sibelius to produce this kind of kerning by default, because both applications use a more simplistic approach to rhythmic spacing than our application: they both treat each successive rhythmic position as a column that extends infinitely up and down at the leftmost and rightmost extent of the note or chord and its associated bits and bobs (accidentals, rhythm dots, etc.), whereas our application traces the left- and right-hand profiles of each rhythmic position, and allows them to tuck above and below one another if the natural rhythmic spacing allows it.

To my mind, it's a bit like the difference between using movable type for music, as e.g. Novello used to do, where each note or chord is on the same piece of type as the stave lines on which it belongs, and using punches to engrave onto a metal plate: the latter is more time-consuming and complex, but it can produce a finer result (in expert hands).

John Ruggero wrote: Fred, I was planning to start another on beaming when this one dies down. (Unless you want to start one.)

Feel free to go ahead and get one going. I'm on a deadline today, early flight tomorrow and a gig out of town this weekend, so I'm going to be absent around here for a few days.

John, that's actually one of Finale's beam settings. Here are the descriptions of two of these settings:

Flatten Beams Based On Standard Note. Using this option the beam angle will be determined by the note which is closest to the center staff line—the Standard Note. Where there are two notes equidistant from the center staff line, the note closest to the beam will be used as the Standard Note. If this note is on the outside of the beam group, the beam is angled, otherwise the beam is flattened. If there are two Standard Notes in the beam group the beam angle is flat.
Flatten Beams Based On Extreme Note. Using this option the beam angle will be determined by the note which is closest to the beam—the Extreme Note. If this note is on the outside of the beam group, the beam is angled, otherwise the beam is flattened.

Both of these settings will cause Finale to flatten the beam in the example above. Determining the slope solely according to the outer notes will produce the 2nd and 3rd results in Fred's example above. I really wouldn't angle it at all and, FWIW, neither would Elaine Gould (see pp. 22-23).

Vaughan, maybe time to start another thread (with the same text, interesting topic!).
Here it is getting messy.... :? 8-)

My response to Vaughan's last post may be found at the beginning of a new thread in this category called "On Beaming."

It would be absolutely more than fantastic if some plate-engravers could join here to learn more about the accidental-spacing and their decision for differentiation.