Lyrics and note space interaction with multiple voices

• Jul 22, 2017 - 03:52

I see a number of past threads about lyrics associated with multiple voices, but I can't find or am overlooking any discussion of how these lyrics affect note placement. I am surprised to find that lyrics associated with any voice seem to result in space being added between notes in other voices to accommodate the lyrics. See attached.

Voice_lyrics.jpg

Unless there is some engraving convention involved, I'd think that the note spacing on voice 1 should ignore lyrics from voice 2, and vice versa. I have had a number of situations where I had to revert to staff text rather than lyric text, to keep my measures a workable width.


Comments

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

The effect is less pronounced when lyrics are centered rather than left-flush, which is what I chose for the example. But yours certainly seems to be leaving voice 1 unaffected. So perhaps I have some odd setting that has been causing this. (It's been a frequent issue.) I'm running MS 2.1.0.

Here's the project file.

Voice_lyrics.mscz

In reply to by spinality

The previous example was created with "current master", which is to say, a development build of what will eventually become 3.0. Better spacing of lyrics (and notes in general_ is one of the major new features. Indeed, for 2.1, we are too "greedy" in allocating space in a number of ways, this being but one of them.

In reply to by spinality

FYI, the current master is a future version, hopefully 3.0 but it's probably a ways out.

Here is a screen shot of what I came up with in 2.1.0

Lyrics_1.png

I selected measure (a range) and right clicked one of the lyrics and click select>all similar elements in range selection then selected Text style... The only change I made to the style was to center it using the center text button circled below.

center button.png

There is an effect on the notes in voice 1 that line up with the associated lyric text. The effect is less, perhaps you will find this more acceptable. My file is attached.

Attachment Size
Voice_lyrics_1.mscz 17.98 KB

In reply to by mike320

Thank you for the comments. Yes, I was aware that centered text had less of the problem, or rather spread it out a little differently, but my example was simplified to illustrate and magnify the symptom. In my normal usage situations, the problem remains.

I am often working with extremely tight spacing, because many of my scores are being viewed on an iPad and there is thus an enormous practical difference between one tight page and two sparse pages, or two tight pages and three sparse pages. On such scores, adding lyrics is often the final straw, and suddenly a nice looking single- or two-page document demands an extra page. It is easy enough to use staff text for such situations; but obviously that is not ideal. I'm delighted if the current master is addressing aspects of lyric spacing.

Thanks again. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking some obvious feature ("Don't adjust secondary voice spacing...") and that this issue was identified.

Do you still have an unanswered question? Please log in first to post your question.