"Fade In/Out", "Swell", "Wiggle Sawtooth/Vibrato" positioned poorly if stem direction up

• Oct 14, 2015 - 08:04

Certain articulations/ornaments will not be positioned nicely when the stem direction points up.

Here is what the first half of articulations (fermata through turn) look like on middle B note when in Bb Tenor Sax:

ornaments_B_tenor.png

If I then engage Concert Pitch, the stems flip, but I don't like how the articulations that I've circled in red are re-positioned:

ornaments_A_concert_pitch-circled-red.png

I don't like how "Fade In", "Fade Out", "Swell", "Wiggle Vibrato Large Fastest", "Wiggle Vibrato Large Slowest" overlap the note head when stem points up. (I think should be positioned a little lower below note head so don't overlap.)

I don't like how "Wiggle Sawtooth" and "Wiggle Sawtooth Wide" cover the whole note when stem points up. (I think should instead flip direction vertically...this would be analogous to how "Staccatissimo", "Portato", and "Marcato" flip vertically when stem direction changes.)

Happens in mscore 2.0.2 and dd4530e

(I don't know if this is already known behavior...I'm having trouble figuring out the right keywords to search the forums with.)

If anyone knows of a good workaround other than manual readjustment, let me know. I do lots of horn charts with these articulations.

Attachment Size
ornament-beam-direction_.mscz 4.29 KB

Comments

In reply to by ericfontainejazz

It's certainly not a solution for most of the articulations you mention since they don't have any up/down version defined in SMuFL.

If you had some examples of published music that would be nice. My first solution would be to change the anchor point of these symbols to top of the staff instead of 'automatic chord'. For automatic chord we probably need some code, similar to the one use for sforzatos.

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

I've looked through all my jazz sax transcription books...I can't seem to find an example of vibrato occurring when the note stem points up, but only can find it when stem pointing down here in Charlie Parker Omnibook (c) 1978 Atlantic Music Corp on song "Si Si":

IMG_20151014_231715.jpg

I can't find a flipped version of that vibrato symbol anywhere in Smulf on these 4 pages: http://edirom.de/smufl-browser/index.html?page=1&class=wigglesVibratoVa… nor in mscore symbols:

vibrato-mscore.png
wiggle.png

So I am thinking the simplest solution would be to do your first solution "change the anchor point of these symbols to top of the staff".

As aside, I notice in that same song an example of a bend:

IMG_20151014_231721.jpg

That bend indicates start note at indicated pitch but then drop down in pitch and return to indicated pitch. I see Smufl has something as "brassBend" U+E5E3 (and U+1D189) on this page http://edirom.de/smufl-browser/index.html?page=39 as well as the but I don't see any flipped version, nor here:

bend.png

But now I am also realizing that the concept of a bend is very much absolute in direction, meaning that using a flipped version when stem points up would not communicate the same direction of the bend, so I think would not even make sense to use a flipped version. That statement also holds for sawtooth (regular, narrow, and wide) glyphs.

Looking at all these different types of vibratos, wiggles, & bends, I think I would want to make a general solution for them all. Again, I think making anchor above staff is best simplest solution.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

thanks. Sorry I just did a quick google search.

It would be nice to also include all those /brassTechniques/ that aren't already included in the "Articulations & Ornaments" or "Arpeggio & Glissandi" pallete. I also feel that should split "Aritculations & Ornaments" into two separate pallets "Articulations" and "Ornaments" to allow for more space.

I know how to make my own palette in mscore, but I don't know how to make default offset so something like the bend doesn't by default overlap the note, e.g.:

B-bend.png

Editing the palette cell properties and changing the Y offset only changes how the icon displays in the palette. So I'd like to make a separate "Articulations" (or maybe an "Uncommon Articulations") palette that include all this unusual articulations but has proper offset or anchors above staff by default.

Articulation placement is highly complex with all sorts of special cases for different specific articulations, stem direction, where the note is on staff or not, etc. So it's really hard to say for sure what might be going on without doing more investigation. *Could* be just a matter of needing a different glyph, but you might want to trace through the code a bit more before concluding that for sure.

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