Spacing notes evenly in a run in Baroque vocal music
I've attached a PDF showing a sample line from Handel's Dettingen Anthem. There are nine-note semiquaver/quaver runs on the second syllable of "re-JOICE". The program automatically adjusts the position of the second note of the run to allow space enough for all five letters of "-joice" on the first note. The result is an awkward-looking gap between the first two notes in the run compared with all the other notes, which are normally spaced.
Is there any way of stopping it from doing this, and "forcing" it to space the notes evenly irrespective of syllable placement? I'm thinking of something analogous to MS Word, in which you can choose rows or columns and make the program distribute them evenly - i.e. make them all the same size.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Vocal underlay under runs - test.pdf | 12.57 KB |
Comments
PDF's and pictures of scores rarely help. Without seeing the .mscz file I would guess that if you select the beam you can check "Local relayout" in the inspector and get the results you want.
In reply to PDF's and pictures of scores… by mike320
OMG - that's magic! I've attached the .mscz file, in which I've applied your solution over the first appearance of "-joice" and not over the second, to illustrate the difference. It isn't perfect, because the spacing of the four semiquavers under the first beam (i.e. over the syllable "-joice") is still greater than the second (and any subsequent) four using the same syllable, but at least their spacing is now regular and therefore no longer obtrusively odd. Thanks for saving me a whole heap of mucking about shifting individual notes using the Inspector! Much appreciated.
In reply to OMG - that's magic! I've… by Anselm Kersten
The beams over the "joice,"s are longer than the other 16th beams in your example. That's because the beam length wasn't changed, just the distribution of the notes. BTW, it looks great in version 3. Check it out and say "Yes" when it asks if you want to reset positions.
In reply to The beams over the "joice,"s… by mike320
OMG OMG - just downloaded Musescore 3 and tried it in that. This thing just keeps getting better. Now the example is perfect - thanks to that option you mentioned (BTW, your reply above crossed with me editing my previous comment and adjusting the attachment). It adjusted all the semiquavers beautifully, as in the extended example attached, and did the same to another Handel score I'm working on. Again, muchos gracias!