Add another style of tuplet bracket for Early Music coloration

• Jul 18, 2020 - 10:57

Mensural notation used time signatures rather differently from today, and to insert a group of triplets into a line of duple notes they wrote the notes in red or black. In modern transcriptions these coloured notes are indicated with a short, broken bracket that is not available in the current bracket style. Using the usual bracket with the '3' looks messy, omitting the '3' gives an unbroken bracket which looks wrong, and '3' without the bracket may be overlooked if there are constant switches between duplets and triplets.

Here is an example from an instrumental piece by the renaissance composer John Baldwin:
EM coloration.png

The first bar uses the normal bracket throughout; the second has two brackets without the number, while the third and fourth brackets I created from the colouration start and end symbols from the master palette. Although I could (even should?) use a single pair of the coloration symbols for the whole passage this might be too confusing for a lot of modern players; hence my request for a compromise which looks much cleaner.

Attachment Size
EM coloration.png 14.21 KB

Comments

Possible hacky workaround. Set the fontsize to 1pt, not italic and don't follow staff size. (Although it leaves a small dot-like 3 visible:
307999.png

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks - that's a bit better but really I would prefer the much shorter corners of my last example, and the dot might puzzle people (though it may be invisible by the time it's printed out - I haven't tried it yet). To a non-programmer like myself it seems a straightforward request, but maybe it isn't! However, thank you for your help and I'll use your method for the time being.

In reply to by jeetee

Thanks - that is a bit better but really I would prefer the much shorter corners of my last example, and the dot might puzzle people (though it may be invisible by the time it's printed out - I haven't tried it yet). To a non-programmer like myself it seems a straightforward request, but maybe it isn't! However, thank you for your help and I'll use your method for the time being.

There are left and right brackets such as you want - press Z and goto Symbols and look for Tuplet bracket start for short stem (and the corresponding Tuplet bracket end...). Big downside is the need to enter and position them manually.

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