rettinghaus
commented
4 years ago @craigsapp There is a whole range of glyphs in SMuFL: https://www.smufl.org/version/latest/range/octaves/ Which one should be used by default?
Closed craigsapp closed 1 year ago
rettinghaus
commented
4 years ago @craigsapp There is a whole range of glyphs in SMuFL: https://www.smufl.org/version/latest/range/octaves/ Which one should be used by default?
craigsapp
commented
4 years ago The "8" by itself is not a problem in most cases, but in tight situations, it can be a problem such as in this case.
"8" is more of a modern style, while a more traditional style would be to use "8va" (SMUFL U+E511 with the "va" up high for the octave-up transposition), and "8ba" (SMUFL U+E513) would be good for transposing down an octave. Under no circumstance use U+E512 for the octave down since that one is very confusing with U+E511 for an octave up (and that would be redundant with just having "8" in any case). Adding the "va" and "ba" (and "ma" for rare 15, and very rare 22) would increase the readability a little bit, particularly in this case.
I like "8vb" (U+E51C) myself for "8Va Bassa", but I think that this is frowned upon in general by notational purists. Likewise 15 and 22 would be "mb" in such cases (which disambiguates them from the up 2/3 octaves). But those are too rare to care about.
I like the parenthetical style of Sibelius for the ottava mark at a system break. But adding it or not will not change the readability for performances (more of an aesthetic style that is interesting in terms of extracting excerpts from a full score, where you would be able to indicate that the octave line is continuing from a previous measure).
In the following example (Hindemith sonata for two pianos), the placement of the octave line is ambiguous:
The dotted lines for the octave marking are closer to the bottom staff of the part above, and adding to the confusion is that there is a line wrap, so there is no downward tick to indicate that it is an 8va rather than an 8ba.
The reason for the spacing is due to a rectangular bounding box:
There are a few possibilities for improving the readability of this sort of case:
(1) add "va" and "ba" depending on the direction of the octave shift. Usually this is clear from the context, but due to the bounding box behavior, it is difficult to notice until the end. Currently there is only an "8", but it is clear that it means 8va due to the placement of the line near the top of the "8" (but this is a small difference that would not be too obvious). (2) refine the bounding box to allow a cut-out in the middle. (3) Add padding above the octave line, particularly when there is a different part above it on the same system.
Here is a comparison of the same music rendered in Sibelius (with all of the above adjustments:
(putting parentheses around the continuing "8" at the linebreak might also be useful, but less important).
MEI test data: