Comfotable Notation Size?

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Comfotable Notation Size?

2006-05-19 09:01 pm

I am curious as to what notation/staff size most brass or wind instrumentalist prefer. I know what I like, but if one were writing parts for other people, what would be a good size that most people would find suitable? Too small is, of course, just that. Too large can be very distracting as well. I realize that it would be dependent to some degree on the compass of the instrument and that tweaks may be necessary to accommodate desired paging, odd measures and breaks. What I am looking for is the best (?) starting point for staff size for parts that most people would find comfortable and attractive. Any experience or opinions on this?

Re: Comfotable Notation Size?

Reply #1 – 2006-05-19 11:46 pm

G'day CDon,
I do a lot of charts for our church band. Mostly to reduce the number of pages on a stand, many of our charts in original form are 3 to 5 pages and this is simply too many.

As a result I fiddle with staff point size and vertical sizes a lot. I personally find, and feedback from the band members seems to agree, that a staff point size less than 16 is starting to get too small.

As we usually have the lyrics on the chart too we need to accomodate them as well. Fortunately we rarely have more than 2 lyric lines and often only 1. This is good as we like to run the lyrics at 12pt, again any smaller is too small and cannot be read easily.

In addition I need to allow space for chord markings. I don't usually bother with "fret charts" but have done. Normally just the symbol, 'A', 'Bm' etc.. Again space must be allowed for these which I usually set fairly large, around 16pt.

In the end, the vertical sizes are usually on the close order of 18 and 18, adjusted to allow for minimising the page usage. I've only ever had to go to 3 pages once!

You need to allow enough spacing to easily find the system you're reading from, if they are too crowded you get lost. Better to have larger upper and lower sizes and have a smaller staff size than to have smaller upper and lower sizes and a larger staff size.

Another thing that I do is have all the lyrics, text directives, chord markings, rehearsal marks etc. on one staff. This I call the "lyric" staff. I usually copy the staff that has the melody to this staff, hide all the elements, then add the additional markings. this staff is then layered over any other staff I may want to use.

Thus, when I arrange a trombone or flugel part for myself or a flute part for my wife, we have the exact same staff structure, lyrics, chords and other markings as everyone else. Note that our keyboard player is NOT a pianist and reads the chord charts, not a piano part. Where the "colour" instruments (brass, flute etc.) are silent I cannot use multibar rests if I am to have the lyrics and chords visible so I usually have invisible crotchet rests with "preserve width" comping marks centred over them (using Boxmarks or now my new -soon to be released- SwingDings font). This allows for a little improv. to go on too should the occasion warrant it.

Hope this helps...

Re: Comfotable Notation Size?

Reply #2 – 2006-05-20 03:20 am

I copy parts out for a 15 to 17 piece jazz band, most members of which are middle-aged or elderly. Checking some of the charts I've produced, I see I frequently use either 16 or 18, and nobody complains about not being able to read the parts.

Vertical staff sizes? Generally 16 to 18 upper and 10 lower, except instruments whose notation is often below the clef. In those cases, I make the lower vertical size bigger so there's no overlap of markings between one staff and the next.

I generally fit about 10 lines on a letter size page. That leaves lots of room for the title and footers. If the music for one part takes 12 lines, I might adjust the size of the notes just for printing the one part, if that means more bars will appear on a line and less lines will be needed. I might also reduce the vertical staff size to fit 12 lines to a page. If I have several lines spilling over to a second page, I tend to expand the vertical staff sizes so the pages all have roughly the same number of staffs on them.

Hmm, looking back over what Lawrie wrote, I think he and I are pretty much on the same page.

Re: Comfotable Notation Size?

Reply #3 – 2006-05-20 07:20 am

Anything over 20pt seems to insult my flute players.
16pt is my minimum except for one important exception:

A piece with not many accidentals and lots of 32nd notes is sometimes best done in 14pt. The situation to avoid at all costs is where you only get 1 measure on a line, e.g. Pachebel's Canon.
Accidentals and strange rythyms make me favor a larger size more than the range of notes.

For piano music, (my instrument), I have found that the presence of 3 or 4 accidentals on a single chord usually means 18pt. Anything less and I can't read on the fly. Otherwise, 16pt works well. I used 14pt on my piano reduction of Pachebel's Canon.

You didn't ask, but one deviation I make for piano music is in the margins. I set left and right to 1/4 inch, top to 0, Title font to 20. It seems to me that the reason for margins is for adding memos and that the paper wears out around the edges. With NWC, I don't need memos, I can build them into the piece. When the paper wears, I just pitch it and print another. This gets me the functionality of 9x12 with 8½x11 paper. I keep the bottom margin at ½" minimum, since I never know when I'll have a piano with a deep lip.

Re: Comfotable Notation Size?

Reply #4 – 2006-05-21 03:46 pm

As a violinist, page turns are a big problem and I will sometimes transcribe my part just to avoid it. I am doing the 1st violin of Helios (Neilson) and a staff size of 16 currently.

Re: Comfotable Notation Size?

Reply #5 – 2006-05-21 10:49 pm

A large 'Thank you!' to those who provided input to this topic…! You have provided exactly the sort of info that I was looking for. With that, I’m going to undertake a project that I have in mind, and, hopefully, I can complete it with a minimum of rework. I do appreciate everyone’s time.

Re: Comfotable Notation Size?

Reply #6 – 2006-05-26 10:17 pm

For orchestral parts I usually use 18pts. If it fits on a single page, I use 20pts. For a book, I use 16pts. If I have to play from the part, I use 20 pts, but my eyes don't work as well as they used to.