Re: NR 2.1 Vocal music

[Trevor Daniels]

Graham Percival wrote Saturday, September 11, 2010 8:30 PM


> On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Trevor Daniels 
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 2.1.8 Opera and stage musicals ready for review
>
> Err... 2.1.6 in today's current git?  ok, doing so.  I've 
> forgotten
> anything else we've discussed about 2.1 vocal music, which may or 
> may
> not be a good idea for this doc review.

My mistake - it used to be 2.1.8 before I reorganised
the first two sections.

> - I see significant material in the "top" of 2.1.6.  Remember that
> some people only look at the "leaves" of the documentation.  In 
> this
> case, that's "References for opera and stage musicals".

In the html view the pages are split only at the
numbered sections, so the whole of 2.1.6 appears
as a single page.  So I think this is fine at this
level.

> I'm not certain how important the definition of conductor's score,
> orchestral parts, libretto, etc., are, but if they stay where they
> are, then the rest of this subsection should not assume that the
> reader has seen those definitions.

See previous comment.

> I'd also be tempted to move some of these definitions to the 
> Glossary,
> and omit the others.  I mean, I'd expect that people are 
> sufficiently
> familiar with "conductor's score" and "orchestral parts", whereas
> "libretto" could definitely use a Glossary entry.  At first 
> glance,
> I'd then make this material merely:
> The music, lyrics and dialogue to opera and stage musicals are 
> usually
> set out in one or more of the following forms: a conductor's 
> score,
> the orchestra parts, a vocal score, a vocal book, and a libretto.
>
> ...
> actually, I think I definitely recommend moving this material into 
> the
> References, and splitting the long list of References into their
> relative sections.  i.e. have two lists:
> "... one or more of the following forms:"
>  * Conductor's score:
>      - grouping staves, nested staff groups.  (you're missing a 
> comma
> before the "see Nested staff groups, btw)
>      - hiding parts
>      - separating systems
>           NB: umm, aren't those all the subsections of 1.6 ?  I'd 
> be
> sorely tempted just to say "Many useful techniques for preparing
> conductor scores are presented in Staff notation".  I mean, it's a
> short section, and at least 80% of it is highly relevant to 
> preparing
> scores.  It's not too much to suggest that the user to read the 
> whole
> thing.
>
> - is Page formatting any more relevant to musicals than other 
> forms of
> music?  I suppose it might be important for preparing a small 
> booklet
> (i.e. print on 4 sides of a folded a4 sheet).  OTOH, I'd expect 
> that
> to be relevant to hymn as well, and possibly choral stuff in 
> general.
>
> I'm quite willing to believe that we should improve the docs for
> spacing (especially since I've been publicly saying that I wanted 
> a
> complete rewrite of that chapter for the past 3 years :).  And in
> particular, it might be good to have a dedicated section for small
> booklets / alternate forms of music display / etc.

OK, let's drop the page formatting bit.

> - notwithstanding all the above, I like the specific mention of
> instrument names for character names.  I still think that you 
> should
> only have a single link to Staff notation, but I think it's 
> definitely
> worth having 1-2 sentences explaining about the instrument name 
> trick.
> Alternately, this could be done with a @lilypond .  For 
> comparison,
> see 2.3.1 Bowing indications, Harmonics, etc.  None of that is 
> *new*
> notation (pretty much everything is already in the articulation
> appendix), but we decided that it's worth giving a few short 
> examples
> for clarity.

I think I'll do this in a separate subsubsec
- Character names.

And I think I'll make separate sections for cues
as well.

Then I'll see if the remaining references need
re-arranging as you suggest.

> ... err, does anybody know why snap pizzicato is a snippet?

Yes, you replied on 6 Oct 2008 to my query:

= "Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> wrote:

=> What do you think about including the Bart__k pizzicato as a
=> @lilypondfile in this section?  It's quite technical, so I've 
left it
=> as just a marker for now while I canvass opinion and let my own
=> thoughts gel.
=
= Sure.
=
= Cheers,
= - Graham

The snippet already existed.  I can't remember who
prepared it.

> anyway, although we really discourage duplicating material, we 
> make
> allowances for small, well-focused cases of specific instrumental 
> (and
> vocal) writing.

Nothing to do with vocal though ...

> err, "dialogue over music" just says TBC.  Am I looking at an old
> version?  I'm pretty certain that I just compiled the docs from
> scratch (testing Carl's funky fix)... did you push everything? 
> I'm
> wondering again about the 2.1.8 vs. 2.1.6 question... I'll stop
> reviewing whatever it is that I'm reviewing, and come back to this
> another day.

No - it's my stupid fault.  I rushed out my note this
morning just before some visitors arrived for the day -
without stopping to think.  It wasn't actually ready
for review at all.  I suggested to James he might have
a think about Dialogue over music, but he's not replied
yet.

But thanks anyway - your comments have been useful.

> Cheers,
> - Graham

Trevor