I was just re-evaluating my grace note settings and noticed that Dorico can’t reproduce some of the settings recommended by Ross, Stone, and various style guides like B&H and Schirmer. Dorico’s grace note slash looks to be about 45 degrees. Boosey specifically recommends 35 degrees, and Ross (pg 190-191) and many of Stone’s (variable but pg 22) have a more shallow angle than Dorico’s. All of Schirmer’s (pg 47-48) have a more shallow angle too. It would be great if there was a way to modify the angle of the grace note slash to match these standards.
Stone (pg 22) and Boosey also show the slash on the upper right hand corner for a grouping of upstemmed grace notes with a rising line. I admit I hadn’t really thought about that one before, but if there are any future revisions to slash functionality, this would be a good feature to add too.
Here’s the relevant page from B&H:
I agree the angle of the slash should be less steep. Sibelius also suffers from poorly-positioned grace note slashes. In fact I think the B&H ones could be improved upon (done in Score I think) – the slash should be a little further towards the notehead; this combined with a less steep angle will enable a clear triangle of white space between the slash and the flag/stem. Also the B&H stems are slightly too tall I think. Being less steep the slash will of course need to be a little longer so both ends clearly poke out.
And yes, I agree it’s much better if the slash can be on the upper right for beam angles that go up.
Jeremy
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s SCORE as well. I agree about the triangle of white space and that’s something Ross stresses as well on pg 190. Dorico actually has some pretty good controls with placement here, but doesn’t have different settings for flagged vs beamed notes, so my settings end up being a compromise which isn’t optimal for either. In addition to the upper right option, some separate customizable settings for flagged and beamed grace note slashes would be great too.