[ANN] Ten Music Notation Programs, second edition

[Fred G. Unn]

Someone named Mansfield bought Graphire and is now selling it for $40. I think there was something on this forum about it. Email address for inquiries would be something at mansfield.com. IIRC it runs on some recent version of Windows; the Mac version runs in the classic OS9 environment, which the Sheepshaver emulator handles well.

Interesting! I had no idea it was still maintained at all. I seem to recall quite a few publishers using it in the late-90s, but didn't realize any still were. I also seem to remember it being quite expensive at the time, so it was out of budget for me back then.

[jrethorst]

There are posts on Graphire here. My apologies for mistakenly quoting the current price as $40; posts here say it's $140. IIRC it was $1000 when Graphire supported it. Info is at <ernie@mansfieldmusic.com>.

[Fred G. Unn]

FWIW, I guess I would do it like this:



I don't see much point in keeping the archaic repeat convention ("et poi la Coda") so I just used the modern one. Horizontal spacing and all beams and ties are my default settings and are unedited.

[John Ruggero]

Beautiful job that could be added to the document. Much better on eight systems than seven. Agreed about the D.C al Coda, unless this were a scholarly edition. Dorico 4 does continue to overextend the arpeggio indications. Also the position of some of the rests seems a space too high to me. For example, the eighth rests in m. 2. Have they changed the default behavior? I think the some of rest positions were better in the earlier Dorico version.

[MichelRE]

Dorico 4 does continue to overextend the arpeggio indications.

In Dorico, to affect the top/bottom of an arp. indication you have to do it on a case by case.

there are settings to affect the default positions of horizontal lines, but for some reason, not for vertical lines (arp. being considered a vertical line)

I might mention that I find the arp lines in Gould's book to also be too long.

[John Ruggero]

Thanks, MichelRE. The ones on pgs.131-133 in Gould look correct to me. Perhaps elsewhere? Or maybe you like them ultrashort?

[Fred G. Unn]

Also the position of some of the rests seems a space too high to me. For example, the eighth rests in m. 2. Have they changed the default behavior?

Thanks! I generally try to avoid a rest touching a notehead as it violates my "no collisions" golden rule. I also generally like keeping rests in the same voice aligned across the bar if possible. I'm not too strict about that one as obviously that isn't always feasible, but if I bring them both down in m2, I get this, and I definitely don't like the second rest up against the lower notehead.



Rest position was one thing that I did modify from the defaults quite a bit, so those are definitely not the default settings. I'm not sure how noticeable it is, but I cheated in m21 and that dotted quarter rest is actually scaled to 85% to avoid touching the lower note.

I agree with Michel that the arp. markings are a bit of an annoyance in Dorico, and they are obviously edited as well. I went for the 8 system layout instead of 7, because I sort of hate orphan bars that don't align with the phrase. Unless unavoidable to facilitate a page turn further down the page, I would never have a phrase starting in the last bar of the system, like in the second system in the Dorico example in the PDF. That repeat could easily be missed if this was for a recording session or had to be sightread on a gig.

Everything else is pretty much my default settings, including beaming, ties, fonts, horizontal spacing, etc. The sharps and naturals are from benwiggy's Sebastian font, which I have saved in my default settings.

[MichelRE]

Thanks, MichelRE. The ones on pgs.131-133 in Gould look correct to me. Perhaps elsewhere? Or maybe you like them ultrashort?

well, maybe not "ultra" short, but I'd rather have the top of the arp line arrive flush with the top of the top note, and the bottom of the line arrive flush with the bottom edge of the bottom note. in her examples they are a bit longer than that, particularly the bottom edges.

[Fred G. Unn]

I think it's tricky to get that exactly as they need to be adjusted in intervals of the arp glyph. It's not like a solid line that can easily have fixed endpoints and any length you want. Perhaps mine are a bit too long in the example above, but I usually err on the side of too long vs too short. They are a bit fussy to edit in Dorico though.

[MichelRE]

I think Finale's arp. font allows for a tiny amount of give-and-take. I noticed that at very close-up magnification, when you adjust the length of an arp. line the thickness changes minutely.
As far as I'm concerned, this is an acceptable solution. in the end, those minor deviations in thickness don't show when looking at the score in its printed form.

I hope Dorico can come to some sort of arrangement with the glyph used to create the arp. line.