Is there a way I haven't found to make the otherwise excellent hairpin crescendo/decrescendo marks adjust vertically? The note stems often interfere with them. I've gone back to using Pierre Schmidt's "crescendo" font for this reason (thanks, Pierre!).
William,
The vertical position of hairpins is governed by the dynamic marking preceding it. If there isn't a dynamic marking before the hairpin, try putting one in and moving it up or down and you will see how the hairpins adjust. If you don't need or want the dynamic marking to print you can always change its visibility to never.
HTH,
Michael
Well, I tried it and it works. Thanks, Michael (now why didn't I think of that.....)
William Ashworth
Don't forget that you can repeat a dynamic mark, and make it invisible. For example, you might have ff at the start of your piece, and for some reason it has to be quite low. If your hairpin starts later and would look odd that low, you can put ff in again, make it invisible, and position it so the hairpin looks right. That way the playback will still be correct too.
The "governing dynamic mark" seems like a bad way to do this. If I don't want a dynamic mark before it, I have to add an invisible one...and I feel sorry for newbies who don't know how to look for help on the subject. It seems like there should be an anchor by default in front of the crescendo group to set properties for it and adjust it. (This could be like an "invisible dynamic" incorporated into the crescendo mark.)
While you're at it, we might as well discuss properties for the crescendo... in addition to the vertical placement, you could do exponential, inverted exponential, or gradual.
Thanks for the information, by the way! It answered my question, too! :)
I imagine that when NWC2 moves from beta and into general availability a new manual will be written that will explain these things - it's probably already underway... Newbies need have no fear.