Re: [Best Practices] splitting and combining choral parts

[Michael Gerdau]

Hie Kieren and Simon,

> first of all: Looks like a nice piece!

Yes :)

> Second: offtopic nitpicks. There are some superfluous LyricExtenders
> there – I’d rather leave them out if they are very short.

I agree on that one.

> And I like for long syllables
> to be increasingly left-aligned, for which I wrote a custom grob callback.

I'm torn between liking it and not liking it...
...will have to look at it some more time :)

> I’d vote to keep with four staves, at least in this example.

I again agree. I find switches between the number of staves for short
periods (i.e. a few bars this, a few bars that and another few bars some
other way) confusing and it takes too much of my precious attention
when performing.

> The other major point is that
> it doesn’t print ‘redundant’ lyrics, i.e. passages with equal rhythm and
> wording in multiple voices have the lyrics printed only once, mostly
> below the topmost of the staves. This is certainly a controversial
> feature,

Yes, it definitely *IS* controversial :)

I'm a bass singer. if you really wish to leave out the redundant lyrics
then do so for all other voices but bass ;)

Seriously :
If you wish to leave out lyrics then at least put them between soprano
and alto and between tenor and bass. That way each voice has lyrics
adjacent to the music.

I find the distance between lyrics and music in Simon's version too
close. To my eyes it appears cramped and makes it less easy to read
during performance.

Last not least for vocal lines I always turn off autoBeam and manually
put beams to groups that are sung on a single syllable. For my singers
eyes that strongly helps to keep words and music in a proper flow.

I'm sure from a keyboard player's perspective this is different. I know
as a violinist I would want autoBeam on as well :)

Find attached my preferences applied to the original score.

Kind regards,
Michael
--
 Michael Gerdau       email: address@hidden
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