Bar numbers alignment below the staff

Hey Marco, can you not put the bar numbers above the staff?
If I was reading the music, anything that gets between the dynamics I find distracting. Also, why are the time signatures ‘oversized’? Is this just a ‘film convention?’ My eye-sight, now at 57 is not what it used to be, but if I can see the notes, then I can see time sig changes …just asking?

Hi! Png slices were showing up black when viewed in the browser, so I reverted to tiff. I’ll re-upload later.
Yes, film conventions for both. Numbers above is indeed the solution I’m using for select instruments for now. The great thing is that we can specify these preferences per-layout so it’s a good workaround. Thanks!

That’s odd… I can see them on my phone. Safari.

The ones at the top are windows screenshots, can you see these, generated from Dorico?



For commercial music, bar numbers below the staff every bar is the convention, bar numbers above the staff is considered wrong. There are quite a few differences between what is correct in commercial music engraving vs. classical engraving. I do both so I have to switch modes back and forth quite a bit.

Yes those PNGs show up fine without downloading. On Windows I had to download the TIFF’s above before viewing them, but the PNGs open without downloading.

I cannot see these on my browser. Chrome, Windows 10.
They’re black, and I can barely make out the notes and lines.

Oh that’s weird. I confirm they do not appear in Chrome but appear just fine in both Firefox and MS Edge. It must be a bug in Chrome?

They do not appear using Windows 10 Image viewer either. They do appear using the old Preview utility. Might it be the compression codec used? As far as I know, PNG can contain uncompressed bitmaps as well as several different compressed formats.

Sorry for my ignorance Marco , what is ‘commercial music’ and could you give an example. Thanks.

Marco is talking about scores and parts prepared for recording sessions for movie and TV soundtracks, etc.

These have very specific conventions about the layout, to optimize the situation where everybody (including the conductor!) is sight-reading the music. The ideal situation is that everything is recorded just once, 100% right first time. if you want to start from bar 73 for example, if it takes 10 seconds for the players to actually find bar 73 in their parts because the bar numbers are not where they expect them to be, that is 10 seconds of wasted time that costs money - and if somebody starts playing from the wrong bar, that wastes even more money!

Cheers Rob

Broadway shares these conventions: bar numbers below every barline on every bar, except keyboard parts when they go above the barline on the top staff.

This area is the last real complaint I have about Dorico, and I lose lots of time having to move bar numbers around one by one. What would be ideal is if the bar numbers could be fixed in an absolute position, since most of the time, when they are right under the barline, they aren’t touching anything anyhow. What kills me is when Dorico feels the need to put the bar numbers on the outside of slurs or ties. This can cost hours of time to correct, depending on the project.

Is there a standard font-type/size/style for numbering in Bway parts?

It varies a little but I’ve just been through a load of Piano/Vocal scores and Helvetica at 7pt seems to come round again and again.

There is some wiggle room on “standard,” depending on the copyist, but what Leo said is pretty much accurate. I would only add that the bar numbers aren’t italicized either, at least in my experience.

Second all of that, and I’d add that each music preparation house seems to have something of a point of pride in their specific choice of font combinations and sizes, which makes “their” template “theirs”. No absolute standards on cosmetic details.

The REAL fun comes when you play a Keyboard/Guitar doubling book on Broadway. I have done this often, and in every instance, the bar numbers are above the staff whenever the keyboard is playing, but switch to being below the staff when the guitar is active.

At this point, Dorico is nowhere near able to handle this scenario natively. Thankfully, this hasn’t really come up in my copying work at least. :slight_smile:

Wow, that sounds psychedelic! And I thought film music was odd! :open_mouth: :laughing: