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Topic: “Behind Bars” Lyric sizes (Read 2416 times) previous topic - next topic

“Behind Bars” Lyric sizes

I always struggle with picking a font size and type for my compositions. The default is too small I think.

Also, I hear from other engravers that italics is not preferred for text instructions on the score. I don’t want to keep rethinking this with every score and could use some guidance. What does Gould’s B.B. recommend for tempo instructions, etc? Any other advice?

It’s probable that this has been discussed before but things change over time.

Many thanks!

Re: Beyond Bars Lyric sizes

Reply #1 –
I think you meant Behind Bars (the Elaine Gould book), which I have a copy of, so I read through the relevant sections for lyrics. Surprisingly, I did not find any mentions of font sizes, although there were references to staff size for various score types. There are recommendations on text alignment and spacing, and for lyric extenders (a.k.a. melisma lines). I guess the best practice is to "pick something that looks right".  Although it is possible that I missed this during my search.

This is a perfect opportunity to bring up what I see as an annoying quirk of NWC regarding lyrics: the way it determines line spacing. For a particular font, as you change the point size, the line spacing is also changed, but the two sometimes are not changed equally. It is as though the line spacing is rounded to some coordinate system, and will sometimes give tighter or looser line spacing. Also, it is only possible to directly enter point size as a whole number (although there are workarounds to enter fractional font sizes that I will leave to others to describe).  In addition to more uniform/predictable lyric spacing, I'd like to see a few enhancements around lyrics:
  • A separate setting for lyric line spacing
  • The ability to specify fractional font sizes without needing to resort to workarounds
  • The ability to incorporate bold, italic or underlining in lyrics (without having to resort to special composite fonts) Maybe bold and underline are overkill, but italics at least would be nice to have.
  • The ability to change lyric position (and spacing) "on the fly" using boundary commands.

Re: Beyond Bars Lyric sizes

Reply #2 –
Are you talking about the size of lyrics (so it says in the subject) or about text sizes in general (as you mention "text instructions" in your question)?

First of all, find out what you want or like: Just take a number of printed scores (I'd say at least 20; and preferably recent ones; and of course professional ones), decide which you like for their readability, measure the sizes they use - and there you are.
Most publishers have at least the first pages of scores available on the internet - often with water marks or the like to prevent copying, but that's of no concern to you.
Measuring font sizes is tricky - a standard ruler with millimeter granularity is not fine enough. But I think it should be easy to enlarge a pdf or a scanned page e.g. exactly by a factor of 5 (500%) and then measure the sizes.

Here is what "Behind Bars" says for lyrics (p.438): Regarding fonts, it says
Quote
Place the text below the vocal line, in roman type. Italic may be used to differentiate sounds that are not part of the literary text, such as mm and ah ...
And regarding size, it says:
Quote
TEXT SIZE
The text must be at a comfortable size to read easily. Do not reduce its size to accommodate lengthy syllables for short note-values. A good proprotion for the height of a lower-case letter (such as 'm') is one stave-space.
That's all there is (or I found).

In practice, I found that people in our choir are happy when I increase the font size for lyrics by one point from NWC's default sizes. A recent score of mine has a "staff metrics" of 15.5pt and a lyrics font size of 9.5pt, and no-one complained. Typically, I now go for 10pt for the lyrics size and even 11pt for some pieces, with correspondingly larger staff metrics.

Hope that helps a little ...

H.M.

Re: “Behind Bars” Lyric sizes

Reply #3 –
Thank you both for your replies. I had written the wrong book title down so I have edited it and clarified my questions.

I continue to be frustrated by:
Not knowing what staff size I should make my scores. As a performer,  I often use smaller sizes to reduce the page turns. But it seems too small for others and I want it to look professional.

How much space should be between systems? I like to enlarge the margins to get more on the page but some printers aren’t happy with that and cutoff the lower notes.

Choosing staff size: Sometimes I get it wrong and the music looks too big and thus intimidating (strange how our brains work!)

The text issue: choosing font and size for things like “ a tempo “ and “ rit” or “Unison. “

Thanks for any more illumination!

 

Re: “Behind Bars” Lyric sizes

Reply #4 –
Quote from: SEBC –
...I continue to be frustrated by:
Not knowing what staff size I should make my scores. As a performer,  I often use smaller sizes to reduce the page turns. But it seems too small for others and I want it to look professional.
How much space should be between systems? I like to enlarge the margins to get more on the page but some printers aren’t happy with that and cutoff the lower notes.
Choosing staff size: Sometimes I get it wrong and the music looks too big and thus intimidating (strange how our brains work!)
The text issue: choosing font and size for things like “ a tempo “ and “ rit” or “Unison. “
These choices may be easier if you print to a PDF file rather than directly to your printer.  When printing from pdf to paper, my pdf programme gives a choice to  "reduce to printer margins" - I suspect that will take care of your note cut-off problem.

The music I print is usually for older musicians, some of whom don't have great eyesight.  The standard NWC2STA size of 16 and the default settings for the other fonts seem to be good for most of my band members.

Where I need to tweak the number of pages, I play with the distance between staffs, rather than the staff metrics.  And I've learned not to scrimp on pages.  If a piece takes three pages, it takes three.   I don't like to crowd the staffs to fit them on one sheet of paper.  To a large extent, the page breaks can be controlled in NWC2, and of course, three sheets taped together will fit a standard music stand without page turns.