However, if I select the whole section (or indeed the whole piece, which if pertinent, was cut and paste from an XML import from Sibelius) and choose Line 1 from the Edit-Notations-Lyrics menu, it just swaps them, not make them all Line 1…
Sorry, I found a post on it, didn’t come up when I searched the forum. It seems it works if you filter all the lyrics and use the properties panel but not the Edit menu. Is this expected behaviour?
If I select all Lyrics, and then increment the stepper in the Properties panel to 2, then down to 1, they all become Line 1. Changing them all to 1 in one go doesn’t work; nor does the contextual menu.
Incidentally, what’s the performance practice for ‘Li - i - ine’…?
Yes, it works if you use the inc/dec section in the properties panel, but not if you filter all the lyrics and use the Edit menu. Not sure it’s supposed to, but that begs the question of why it’s there in the first place.
And as to your question of Li-i-ine, I’m not sure how else to write it, it’s a pop song and the ‘i’ sound is repeated. it’s not sung liiine, it’s sung li i ine over those notes. I’m probably wrong with that…
It’s sung like 3 separate words, li, i and ine. Especially because it’s a swing quavers rhythm…
I have no real preference and I’ve never had anybody question these things in the past but I never really work with singers who are great sight-readers (and that’s no disrespect to the singers I work with…).
I’m quite happy to be told that I’m wrong (it happens to me often!)
And in your post, you mention, the ee sound between the ‘i’ sounds. How would you then write li-ee-i-ee-ine (if that was what was needed, especially if that was on one pitch?)
If you want someone to sing “what they would normally do when singing three notes to one syllable”, then I would write “line________”, and be done with it.
If you are asking for a special, non-standard technique, in which the vowel is re-sounded on each note – (and the singer would not by instinct or training naturally do that in this style of music) – , then I suppose you could use what you’ve written here.
Though if you’re doing it on every melisma, then you could just write a note at the start of the piece that all vowels are to repeat on each successive note.
If the “ee” was just the turn of the diphthong, then yes, I could just restate the vowel, possibly in brackets. If the ‘ee’ was to have any length, then I’d probably write the IPA phonetic symbol in square brackets to cover a note of its duration.
But I’d try very hard not to find myself in that situation.
@Toaster1974 ,
I think you wrote exactly what you wanted originally to get what I think of as a Beatles kind of effect on the word line. I wouldn’t slur the notes together; that would wipe out the effect you want.
I suppose that’s the difficulty inherent in music notation, something so expressive and open to personality and interpretation is by it’s very nature difficult to write down. There’s nothing more dead than a page full of lines, dots and squiggles until a musician gets hold of it…
