I know many people here need to closely replicate historical engraving marks and conventions. In my case, I only write modern stuff and don’t have to match any old styles. I look for ways to use the modern technology to make it easier for musicians to play the music, and especially get the intentions of the arranger while sight-reading.
I am starting to integrate color more into my parts, which the musicians find helpful. For example, I do the “road map” indications (DS, segno, coda) in bright red. I wish there were a good way to make the repeat marks and wings red also, but I haven’t found a good way to do that.
I write many big band arrangements. In that world, understanding song form is vitally important because most big band music is highly structured in sections. Naturally, rehearsal marks and double bars help. But I am finding it very useful to use the suffix property of the rehearsal mark to add a little bit of song form info, such as this:
The first time I did that, people were confused, but now rehearsals are much easier. I went one step farther and colored the enclosures light green, to help the eye find the song form quickly.
The problem is that the enclosure is covered up by the background, unnecessarily so, because there is plenty of blank space. If I set the engraving options → padding to at least 1/4 space, then the enclosure shows completely. But that makes the enclosure much taller than it needs to be, which leads to collisions. Perhaps a different font might behave better, but it seems like Dorico is painting that background color too tall.
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