Crescendos with level lines after a peak
Unless I'm overlooking something, it would be nifty to be able to signify a constancy of crescendo within the hairpin: e.g:
I realize I can do the regular hairpin and then add horizontal lines following them, but I mean as an integral function of a crescendo and not as a work around. This signifies the ramping of the "getting louder" and then "maintaining that loudness" until the horizontal-hairpin ends. At least its a thought to the developers or anyone else involved.
If it were implemented there would be some way to program a velocity change from the beginning to the leveling, then the level lines would maintain that until finished, and then go back to whatever the previous velocity was prior to its being enacted (via dynamic marking or default or whatever).
Any thoughts? Either way, hope its worth thinking about to others. I like coming across little things in sheet music that don't seem to be implemented for ideas ;) I'm thankful for this software! It's the main reason I started to be more involved with the notation process, and I'm learning much.
Comments
Edit: it seems proper to put a forte hairpin symbol after the peaked crescendo, then level it back down with a decrescendo hairpin when desired into the original dynamic mark. It's still a potential option though.
To me, that looks like a inexplicable redundancy—if you cut off those horizontal arms, you'd have standard notation to indicate "getting louder" over the course of the first eighth note and triplet, and then "maintaining that loudness" from that point forward, until otherwise indicated.
Is this commonly done in published music? I can't recall ever seeing it, nor can I imagine why someone would want to do that, since as mentioned, the proposed interpretation is exactly the same as if the crescendo just stopped. Why invent a nerw notation for something the standard one already conveys?
In reply to Is this commonly done in by Marc Sabatella
I agree with both your responses. I sort of jumped the gun with sharing what I found without thinking it through. I've only come across these horizontal lines in one instance, so it doesn't seem standard at all. I'm sort of new to being a notation researcher if I can call it that, and I hadn't realized until recently that a crescendo ought to be followed by a particular dynamic marking, which in turn reverts back to the original or different dynamic with or without a decrescendo depending on the music. This understanding definitely eliminates any desire of mine to mimic this horizontal behavior
In reply to I agree with both your by worldwideweary
Actually, that's not quite right. It is true that it is usually a good idea to put a dynmamic at the end of a crescendo or diminuendo, so the plaer knows *how much* louder or softer to get. But once you've placed a crescendo, the old dynamic is gone - there is no such situation in which it ever "reverts back to the original". That is, you have mp, then a crescendo, the new dynamic level is "louder than mp", and it never goes back to mp unless of course you explicitlhy put in an mp. Neither MuseScore nor a human musician reading the score will have any idea how much louder than mp you want it, which is why it's a good idea to put something there at the end of the crescendo, unless you *want* it to be up to the whim of the player, or perhaps something about the context makes it more apparent.
In reply to Actually, that's not quite by Marc Sabatella
When I said "reverts back" I slipped in my specificity and desired to express that a dynamic is required to revert back: exactly what you said but not in your words :) These forums are sharpening my knives, ... er, engravers. OK, that was lame.
I suppose it could be confusing because the sforzato mark, a > for a particular note to be stressed means to stress that particular note, but the following note is note affected by it. It looks very similar to a hairpin marking save for the fact that the hairpin is usually implemented in the middle of the measure rather than above/below a note-head. Thanks for the reply.
In reply to When I said "reverts back" I by worldwideweary
Understood. There is also the dynamic marking "sfz" (and similar) which are "special" in this respect. That's why these markings doesn't currently affect playback by default, because our implementation of dynamics playback assuems dynamics are always "from this point forward". Whereas the marking you describe is an articulation, not a dynamic, so it affects the current note only. Eventually we should probably add playback support for sfz et al.
In reply to Understood. There is also by Marc Sabatella
As Marc pointed out, the > as an articulation lasts for only one note value. But Marc, what if I want a soft that lasts for one note value? I don't find the equivalent < articulation. On Wikipedia I found what they call an anti-accent: it looks similar to a U, and they call it a breve. Is this or an equivalent possible in MuseScore? If not, this would seem to be a nice addendum.
I made a new post (https://musescore.org/en/node/110901) since it is off-topic from the first question.