Re: Lines and Ties and Slurs oh my!

[Shane Brandes]

I am currently working on a score that was originally engraved
somewhere between 1839- 1869. The date is unfortunately omitted. So
after doing all the proofreading I began looking at things that should
be changed to modern practice or just looked for things that appeared
out of sorts and as I went through looking at the ties and slurs, it
was astonishing how closely for the most part Lilypond made near exact
reproductions of the original shapes of the slurs it was sort of
creepy in a way, in so far as there is no reason Lilypond code should
have been exposed to a now obscure publishing house. While there are
minor things here and there that could "improved," but it does not
seem worth the effort.
   There really is something to be said for having slight amounts of
imperfections. It is really more human in a way. I know we are
conditioned in this age to have everything exactly perfect and it
causes a sort of bland beauty which is also somehow unpleasantly
sterile. This shows in so many aspects of our civilization, our music
is dreadfully dry in performance and machine like, our buildings now
that they are Cad drawn are increasingly divorced from the human form
and the natural dimensions we inspired in earlier architecture, and
most of automobiles in current production look like used bars of soap.
   So while I find the pursuit of perfection somehow attractive there
is definitely a downside to this endeavor and maybe the time would be
more worthwhile spent working on other areas of the program that
could, in fact, use more attention for improvement.

Shane

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 10:44 AM,  <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>    Howdy!
>
>           I spent the last 2 afternoons in the Toronto Reference Library
> going
> through Henle and Bärenreiter scores from the 1970's and 80's. Mostly
> Goldberg, other Bach
>  stuff and  some Beethoven. I specifically looked at ties and came to the
> following conclusions...
>
>
>          i) There is huge variability and general lack of consistency not
> only in between
>             the Henle and Bärenreiter, but even within the same editions.
> All of the "errors"
>             and "inconsistencies" noted in this thread  that appear in
> LilyPond also appear in
>             both the Henle and Bärenreiter
>
>         ii) The shape of the ties is noticeably thinner at the ends and
> broader in the middle,
>             more so than the LilyPond tie.
>
>        iii) ties are generally terminated over/under the middle of the
> notehead
>
>          I can only conclude that historically there was much less
> attention to the minute
>  details of tie consistency etc, and much of the detailing was left to the
> discretion of
> the engraver. Also since it was done manually, the minute variations that
> result actually
>  work to "hide" the inconsistencies that otherwise would be more
> noticeable and produces
> a much more pleasing affect to the eye.. unlike the repetative algorithmic
> application
> of similar "errors" or "inconsistencies" that we might attribute to LilyPond.
>
>         I don't think that attempting to emulate historical practice of
> manual engraving
> wrt. ties, is either possible or desireable. What we need is a modern
> standard that
> makes sense in the age of computer engraving.
>
>          Here is my general sense of LilyPond ties and how they seem to be
> drawn and behave....
>
>            i) ties drawn between notes on the outside most staff space
> terminate on
>               the outside staff line
>
>           ii) ties drawn between notes on ledger lines terminate
> over/under the middle of
>               the notehead
>
>           iii) ties drawn between notes on spaces above ledger lines
> terminate to the
>               side of the notehead
>
>           iv) as space becomes more constrained, ties on the inner staff
> are diminished
>                (shortened and less arch) in order to not cross over a
> staff line, at
>                the expense of a more appropriate orientation to the notehead.
>
>            v) ties drawn between notes on internal staff spaces, sometimes
> have more gap / space
> between the notehead making  them inconsistent with other similar
>
>          I think that  i) above,  should change so that the tie terminates
> outside the staff.
>  I am ok with ii) and iii); this seems to make sense to me now as it
> somehow allocates
> the space around the note / tie / ledger line  in a good way. Also I think
> that
> ties in the inner staff should cross over staff lines in order to maintain
> a more
> consistent orientation to the notehead.
>
>           In conclusion, I think that perhaps 80% of ties in LilyPond are
> fine, fixing
> i) would make that substantially greater, as would a fix for iv)
>
>           What makes a tie "good" or "bad" is often the result of personal
> preference.
> I don't think that rewriting the entire Tie code is the solution, and that
> it is probably best to make some relatively minor (?) changes to "fix"
> what is a consensus
> of the problematic ties, perhaps i) iv) and v) ?
>
>                 Thoughts?
>
>               -steve
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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