NOTATIO

I'm stumped on what's the best place for the half note in the bass staff. After or before?

Wescott wrote: 14 Feb 2026, 21:47 I'm stumped on what's the best place for the half note in the bass staff. After or before?

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Generally speaking, I personally would want to push the voice with the lowest notes further back. But here, doing so would cause the whole notes to be misaligned, creating a visually unfocused effect. So, I really appreciate your approach of shifting the half note forward here.

In this particular case, placing the half note after the whole notes makes it feel more emphasized and prominent, while placing it before creates a stronger sense of sonic cohesion—you can really feel that these are sounds happening at the same moment.

I agree with Shinlanqi. Better to dovetail the half note so that at least half of it falls together with the whole notes.

Thanks, Shinianqi and John Ruggero. Much appreciated!

Hmm... My naive opinion would be align the lower stave half-note (E3) with the whole-notes above and shift the whole-note (C3) below slightly to the right. Especially since there is a half-note (E4) aligned in the upper stave.

Magister Tekton wrote: 17 Feb 2026, 01:19 Hmm... My naive opinion would be align the lower stave half-note (E3) with the whole-notes above and shift the whole-note (C3) below slightly to the right. Especially since there is a half-note (E4) aligned in the upper stave.

Hello, Magister! Igor Engraver has a default output that resembles what you are suggesting:

I like that. Aligning the half-note stems you don't notice the shift of the lower-stave whole-notes. Having the stems not-aligning just reads awkwardly and jarring.

Dorico also produces A, which looks askew to me, and I prefer B. I think that the "majority rules", and, if the note values were interchanged, as in the following, the half notes rather than the whole notes would line up:

John Ruggero wrote: 19 Feb 2026, 15:15 Interchanged.png

The LH half-notes could all be one voice in this case, stems up. Then all the LH noteheads would be aligned.

Yes, the left hand half notes could be stemmed together, but I was showing the situation in which the upper left hand voice would not be stemmed with the lower voices for musical reasons such as being part of a melody line that the composer wants to define visually.