I am the Librarian for the Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra and amongst my duties is keeping scores and parts current. As some of our members have poorer eyesight than the average person, I’ve taken it upon myself to create some Parts for these players.
I’ve attached an example of the normal Tenor 1 part and the “Larger Print” Tenor 1 and I’d welcome any feed back as to how I can improve the score to make it as easy as possible to read. The Normal score is fine BTW, most of our members have no issues reading scores that are even smaller than the scores attached here - and there are some awful scores out there…
I have increased the astral size to maximum, increased the bar numbers and increased the visibility of the time signature, but it strikes me that there could be lots more I could do - I could increase the expressions such as mf or rall…, the triplet could perhaps be increased in size, but what I don’t want is a crowded score made up of lots of larger characters. It strikes me that that would be just as difficult to read, but for different reasons.
So over to the Dorico hive mind. Has anyone got experience of writing scores for poorer eyesight and could give me some advice?
Not really engraving, but bars 11 and 53 could do with an explicit B-flat, which Dorico doesn’t add automatically.
You aren’t limited to the rastral sizes in the dropdown menu, underneath it you can write your own space size that can be as big as you want. The tempo text could do with a bigger size, and maybe the dynamics too, but other than that this looks pretty good.
Another method I’ve seen used is simply to print the existing A4-formatted part on B4 or A3, which obviously keeps all the proportions equal and saves you the work of formatting an extra part.
In my opinion – my age is sixtynine – increasing the size of specific musical items is not necessary, just increasing the rastral size is fine. However you can still improve the legibility by increasing the horizontal note spacing.
This is interesting. I assumed that everything would need to be enlarged.
I have tried to keep the piece down to 2 pages, If I increase the note spacing then it strays into 3 pages. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it was just a self imposed limit. I will run all of this past some of our members and ask if they mind having more pages.
In total sincerity, buy them magnifier reading glasses, available in up to 3.5 power at any pharmacy. Seriously! It’s what I use. I am not meaning to be silly or anything. Solves the problem of the score becoming too big to fit the paper.
If you play a wind instrument, you will need a certain distance between your head and the music stand to take into account for the instrument you are playing.
Meaning you can’t get close enough with f.e. 3.5 diopters reading glasses, and play your instrument comfortably at the same time.
An enlarged score does make more sense.
You aren’t being silly. I play the Bass saxophone so have some unique challenges when it comes to positioning the music so I can see both the conductor and the music. My glasses allow one to be in focus but not both.
I suspect magnifying glasses would make the conductor too much of a blur and make following their arm waving difficult to see. Which I’m led to believe is a bad thing…..
You are correct KB. When I started to play the Bass Saxophone, the instrument is so large I had to position the music to one side so I can still see the score. The problem then was that my varifocals don’t work unless I am straight on to the reading material. I could see the conductor but the music was out of focus.
I got myself some full width varifocals so I can see slightly sideways whilst still having the conductor generally in focus.
The pieces I am working on though, are for the few members with much worse eyesight than mine. I know they struggle to read some scores and it would be a great shame if they stopped playing just because the notes are too small.
Just mentioning apps like SeeScore 2 (there are others) which can help some with poor eyesight. I tried it many years ago (v1) out of interest when it was first released. It is still around, now v2, last updated a few months ago, so presumably is still actively developed. Free download to trial it.
Apps like this import musicXML and render it to screen as notation at whatever size you need to see it. Add a suitable foot pedal for “page turning”. This takes away all the guessing for rastal sizing, limitations of paper size, page turning, or having to render different rastals for different individuals for each part.
Good old Specsavers to the rescue. I have a pair of glasses specifically for music, when I get my eyes tested I take my trumpet, music stand and a couple of pieces of music with me (different fonts and sizes etc) and they test me while i’m in my playing position. If they’re nice I’ll give them a tune, but it works for me every time. I keep them solely in my gig bag so I always have them.
I would like to point out that needing reading glasses, when turning 45 and above is a normal natural thing and has nothing to do with “bad eyesight”..
There are other instances of poor eyesight where glasses can’t help.
Kudos for doing this! I, myself have extreme vision problems and have to “print” (pdf) my charts to read on a large screen. The choice of font is also a factor in being able to read. Some music fonts have narrow stem lines on notes that can virtually disappear on me. Sharps and naturals can be difficult to distinguish if they are too narrow. A retinal detachment (and repair) causes lines to be wavy while the other eye has enough floaters so as to interfere with about 30% (a guess) of my vision there. Reading (magnifying) glasses can only do so much and, as it’s been said, if they are too strong force me to get too close to the music stand for comfort! (With the narrow, half-height lenses the conductor can still be “visible.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who rocks up to SpecSavers with his music stand and some scores! I cannot take the Bass Saxophone as it’s a beast to transport, but I always test out glasses with music in the same position I have it for playing.
I, myself have extreme vision problems and have to “print” (pdf) my charts to read on a large screen. The choice of font is also a factor in being able to read. Some music fonts have narrow stem lines on notes that can virtually disappear on me. Sharps and naturals can be difficult to distinguish if they are too narrow. A retinal detachment (and repair) causes lines to be wavy while the other eye has enough floaters so as to interfere with about 30% (a guess) of my vision there. Reading (magnifying) glasses can only do so much and, as it’s been said, if they are too strong force me to get too close to the music stand for comfort! (With the narrow, half-height lenses the conductor can still be “visible.”