Re: voiceOne dynamics should go above the staff

[Alexander Kobel]

On 2010-09-19 13:18, Trevor Daniels wrote:
> [...] This argues for making
> the default dynamic placement independent of voice,
> leaving the rarer case to be treated as an exception.
>
> But a quick look through some of my music shows dynamics
> are more commonly placed above the staff, so I wonder
> why placing them below is the default? But I don't
> have any instrumental parts to hand - where are the
> dynamics in these usually placed?

In choir parts (french scores) with individual staves per voice, I can't 
remember any professional edition where the dynamics are written below 
the staff when there's enough space to have a choice.
Mainly, I guess, because the distance to the staff gets too far for 
either dynamics or lyrics, and one of those could be mixed up with the 
previous or next voice.  Instead, they the publishers try to keep 
everything close to the notes, and that means above the staff (or, even 
better, with the baseline extenders slightly inside the staff and the 
dynamics just a little bit _before_ the corresponding note).  Only 
hairpins sometimes are between lyrics and staff, but it's not uncommon 
the other way around, too. [*]
I'm not sure about instrumental parts, though, where IIRC the distance 
between staves often is larger, and there are no lyrics.  And while I 
often want dynamics placed closer than LilyPond, I don't think it's 
sensible to allow them inside the staff per default.

[*] But IMHO that's rarely good for LilyPond right now, since we have 
only a simple bounding box around hairpins, and often the lyrics get 
pushed too far downwards.  Also, the same often happens with large slurs 
above extender lines or hyphens, by the way.


Cheers,
Alexander