I am aware of several online resources for creating chant notation, but I’m recreating a publication that uses it on the staff above modern notation (with joined outer bar lines), and I’m wanting to try and make it work entirely in Dorico. I also want more control over its appearance, more so than what seems possible online.
I’m wondering if one method, admittedly hacky, would be to create custom playing techniques for the various glyph types, and simply adjust them graphically.
I’d welcome any suggestions (as long as they don’t include Medieval 2 for Finale). Thanks.
The Jazz Ornaments appear to the left and right side of the note, so you could maybe use them to produce more complex neums, like quilismas or liquesants, by swapping them for relevant shapes.
I’ve requested that the developer of the Medieval plugin port it over, but I know he was waiting on more of the developer features to be fleshed out before he could do it. I still hold out hope. One day. I would be the first person in line to buy it if that happened. (Or better still: native support from Dorico itself. I’ll keep praying.)
James, would you be willing to assist by clearly showing all of the variations pr combinations of neumes I would need? This is outside my area of expertise. That would allow me to wrap my head around all of the iterations that are needed.
Tbh, I suspect this is almost a fool’s errand; there are oodles of different neume shapes, And then for many of them, you would have to configure them for a myriad of different intervals. If anything: I would expect a font to work better in this scenario. But at that point, using GABC is no harder, It’s just not directly integrated into Dorico.
You are probably right, and wiser me would listen. But it still feels easier than Roman numeral analysis!
The difficulty is not how to get all the neumes, but rather how to come up with a system that doesn’t require constantly consulting a cheat sheet for every glyph.
From the link you posted, I assume any of these can start on any position on the staff? Which of them can be larger (that is, representing a larger interval)?
James, I think i have an idea of how to do this in Dorico, using a custom font. I’ll post an example here soon. First I just need to know every iteration of shape to make sure I set it up right.
I’ve been working on this a bit more and I think I have a solution for at least basic chant with about a half dozen different neumes. My idea is to try a basic version first, and if it goes well, expand it later.
A couple questions, which I could answer myself with extensive perusal, but probably are easier to ask here:
just 4-line staff?
What are the highest and lowest possible notes on the staff?
What are the most important neumes to use?
When inputting notes, would you prefer to think of specifying them by location (1, 2, 3, 4… being the pitch positions from the bottom up) or some other way?
Just a 4 line staff. Although I confess, I really love this special gradual that has hybrid notation… I wish this became a “thing” and have always wanted to recreate it.
Scroll down here and you’ll see what the GABC engine (standard for chant stuff) is equipped to handle.
Oof. That’s a tough one to answer in a way. Anything two and three note. This gets tricky because certain neumes have similar meanings but are only used in particular contexts (but are always used in those contexts). Broadly speaking, I’d defer to any chant manual that has the index of basic neumes in the front. It’s a fairly standard list between books. Start on pg 11 of this scan of the Liber Usualis (the motherload).
I am squarely of two minds on this, and absolutely torn. On the one hand, part of me thinks that it would be best to borrow the GABC terminology. Many people have already invested in learning it at least a little, even if it’s an uneasy truce. There is also a huge repository of things already coded for it, so if note names stayed the same, there is already a mountain of data that could be more easily adapted, rather than newly transcribed. GABC is “straightforward” in that the note names are based off of the standard DO clef. That said, it takes some getting used to, and you have to pause and think sometimes. So 1-4 (how are we doing spaces? 1s-4s?) is perfectly straightforward, and then it doesn’t matter what clef is assigned. And that is a very lovely thing…