I am getting very extreme slur shapes going from system to system. Is there a setting to improve the following which shows the start and end of a two-note slur::
Engrave Options/Slurs – Interpolate vertical position…
It will help, but some manual tweaking will probably be necessary.
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Thanks dwlarson. It helped a little. It now looks like this, but as you said, all four segments still need work, one of which will be harder to tweak:
What puzzles me is why software in general has so much trouble with this situation. Are designers over-thinking this? What is wanted are completely horizontal slurs like this:
Gould would beg to differ, and I agree with her; in your example a horizontal slur could easily be misinterpreted as a tie, and the change of notes (from Fs to As) may be missed. The tilt of the slur warns the player that the pitch is changing.
I’m not sure why you’re slurring both notes given they’re on a single stem, either - that makes them look even more like ties.
As to why software struggles to do what you’re asking, I believe it’s just that Dorico won’t let the mid point of the slur (at the system break) intersect the staff.
Thanks, pianoleo. I agree with Gould and do tilt at least the outgoing slurs a little for the reasons mentioned. (I find many of her examples above to be highly exaggerated, however, ) What I meant was that if Dorico at least did horizontal slurs, which might be easier to program and look more like the finished result, the tweaking would be minor. When they come out looking like they do, particularly the incoming slurs, shaping each slur becomes a major operation. It was the same in Finale. I guess I am thinking that examples like Gould’s have designers thinking that they have to do a lot more than is really necessary. I see nothing like that in engraving that I admire.
I am using two slurs because Beethoven used two slurs and I do hyper-authentic editions. He didn’t always use two slurs in such situations; but here all of the many similar cases in this section use two slurs, which indicates to me that this is a meaningful notation that should be preserved. And both the Henle and Wiener Urtext editions do the same.
The following example shows what I am after. This would have been much easier starting from completely horizontal slurs. The slur at A was particularly hard to shape:
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