Pardon the length of this post. It’s not about Dorico technique but about engraving practice. I’m guessing that the outer limits of notational practice are very much in scope for this forum. When composers are looking for software to push the limits, they talk of Dorico.
I’ll ask this up front: Is there a place where I can read about policy and strategy regarding options for tuplets and particularly in the use of stemlets, which I’d barely seen when I wrote the project I’m working on?
I recall seeing a book on modern notational practice. Can someone recommend something? I should point out that I have been away from professional music, including composing, performing, and engraving, for several decades. I remain intensely interested, but know my knowledge is behind modern standards.
For example, on the subject of tuplets, is there a best practice agreed on by the community of composers who use such things? I’m talking about music that is not as busy as that of practitioners of the so-called “new complexity” but of a level that’s tough enough. I’m particularly interested in issues of bracketing and the use of stemlets.
Take an ordinary 5:4x quintuplet. Often these are broken, something other than five sixteenths played in the time of four. The same is true of any tuplet.
There are now options regarding beaming, and (perhaps controversially), stemlets. I vaguely recall encountering a brief discussion long ago where someone was heatedly against the use of stemlets. What direction does current opinion lean toward these days? I rather like them myself, at least in some cases.
How about the number that goes in the bracket? For a tuplet it could just say 5, or 5:4, or 5:4 with a tiny sixteenth note.
It could be argued that a plain 5 is simplest and that in most cases it will be obvious that it means five sixteenths stuffed into a quarter note. This would make 5:4 more cluttered and pointless. Except sometimes it’s not that easy to spot. And 5:4 plus a teeny sixteenth note is even more to take in, even if it’s intended to clarify.
I’ve seen cases, notably in the music of Elliott Carter such as his third string quartet, where sequences of these appear like picket fences, and where IMO it made utter sense to do it that way because of the intricate ways in which the rhythms of his music wind together and are related.
In my current project, I could just aim to produce an electronic clone of what I did long ago, which was pretty good at the time. Or I could reason that now that I’m generating what is essentially a new edition, maybe I could upgrade my ways of representing things. It’s my music, so I can do what I want. But I want the changes I make to be done because it makes things more readable, not just because I’m excercising a fancy trick I discovered I can do in Dorico.
I’m looking right now at someone else’s score that has measures with time signatures like 3/4 + (4/5)/4. Can Dorico do that – four-fifths of a quarter note?
Finally (for now) help me understand something: I can set certain defaults that are different than the factory defaults, but I still have the option to do it differently in certain cases by adjusting local properties. Is that correct? I haven’t gotten into that yet.
