Centre noteheads of stemless note values in chord?
1. Open attached score (produced in 2.0 beta 2).
Actual result: The small note is left-aligned.
Discussion: For stemless note values (i.e. semibreve and breve), I wonder if we should centre them? It looks better to me.
Using MuseScore 2.0 Nightly Build b264afb - Mac 10.7.5.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Centre noteheads of stemless note values in chord.mscz | 3.05 KB |
| Centre noteheads of stemless note values in chord - Actual result.png | 29.26 KB |
Comments
Do you have a use case for this? All small notes are aligned to the stem (actual or potential).
I assume it's for showing background vocals within a lead vocal staff, or verse 2 and verse 1 on the same staff when they have different rhythms.
As it is, I can't remember all the ins and outs of how small note alignment works, except that it's all a pretty delicate balance, and I don't see a compelling reason to risk messing up other cases just because you might happen to want to center some notes. That's what manual adjustment is for.
In reply to I assume it's for showing by Marc Sabatella
Yes, it is commonly used for the purposes you've outlined.
I came across one and I just wondered (even if it's not implemented now):
![Right-aligned small semibreve.png]( "Right-aligned small semibreve.png")
In reply to Yes, it is commonly used for by chen lung
The publisher here seems to have chosen right-alignment. Is there a reason why left-alignment would be any less correct - or why center-alignment would be preferable? I'm curious whether any of our commonly cited reference sources takes a stance on something so obscure.
In reply to The publisher here seems to by [DELETED] 448831
I'm of the mindset that all notes in a chord would be naturally centred - the presence of a stem has just meant that notes of differing sizes 'cling' to it.
More generally: Most publications I see don't use centring (I know of only one typesetter that does), but Marc, Miwarre (who has old scores with this) and I liked the effect, so it was implemented for normal noteheads (between multi-voice and other staves).
In reply to The publisher here seems to by [DELETED] 448831
Gould doesn't specifically say anything about centering, but her examples show all notes of all sizes being left-aligned, and indeed, that's the norm in the industry. But some editors do prefer centering for whole notes and larger notes, and I do agree it looks nice. Once you open than can of worms, however, you end up with a host of corner cases where you basically can't have your cake and eat it too. So we live with it. And as I said, given the large number of cases that do work as expected, I'm not itching to mess with the cases that do work well to fix a new corner case.
In reply to Gould doesn't specifically by Marc Sabatella
I've filed it, but marked as postponed: #47261: Centre noteheads of small stemless note values in chord
In reply to Gould doesn't specifically by Marc Sabatella
I misunderstood the original example. I thought it showed two chords in two different voices, in which case there could be a valid difference of opinion on how they should be aligned. But it turns out that is not the case - the score actually contains a *single* chord in which one note happens to be made small. In which case, it is quite clear the nites must be aligned to the same stem. If you want notes not aligned to a single stem, then don't enter them as a single chord - simple as that. If you enter these as separate chords, they *are* centered by default.