Question about lyrics

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Hector Pascal
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Post by Hector Pascal » Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:41 am

Hi everyone,

I am setting a choir piece and I finger poked with the Document Settings > Lyrics.

Could someone suggest what the best settings are for alignment and justification? See picture of my settings which I have finger poked.

Your assistance would be appreciated, as I cannot recall what the default Finale settings were for these particular options, and my current settings look a little bit hard to sightread

Many thanks,
Hector Pascal.
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Mon Jan 23, 2017 7:03 am

First of all: Justification settings mostly relate to more than one verse: they control how two lyrics on the syllable line up with each other. So if you're not doing verses, you can usually ignore those. (However, for some reason, left justify with centre align can displace notes somewhat.)

Alignment settings affect how the syllable sits under the note. Generally, I would suggest its best to have all syllables centred, except for syllables with word extensions, which are usually ranged left. This is what Gould recommends.

If you are doing verses, then I would suggest that syllables would look best justified by centre, with the exception of the first one on each system and at the very beginning. (And also those with word extensions.)

You can always check Finale's defaults by loading the Maestro Default File, which seem to correspond with what I've said:
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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:58 pm

Hector Pascal wrote:… my current settings look a little bit hard to sightread …
It is not clear to me whether you with your words “hard to sightread” mean the lyrics (= text) or the music (= rhythmic notation)?

If you are trying to make the lyric spacing distort the music spacing as little as possible, then you should probably try something like this:
DocumentOptions-LyricsSyllablePositioning.jpg
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However, no matter what settings you use, you can not avoid having to adjust individual syllables.
Manual adjustment of individual syllables is a normal part of the job - it “comes with the territory”.
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miker
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Post by miker » Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:07 pm

And this brings up a question that confuses me: what's the difference between Alignment and Justification?
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zuill
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Post by zuill » Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:16 pm

I believe alignment refers to the position of the syllable handle to the note, and justification refers to the position of the syllable to its handle.

Zuill
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BuonTempi
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Post by BuonTempi » Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:37 pm

miker wrote:And this brings up a question that confuses me: what's the difference between Alignment and Justification?
As said, justification is most notable when you have more than one verse, as it affects how the syllables in each verse line up together (vertically). As Zuill points out, it affects where the anchor point is. For most situations in single-line lyrics, this doesn't change anything, except left justified with centre aligned, which pushes the notes forward, for the syllable to sit to the left of it.

Alignment is where the syllable sits under the note: I'm intruiged that Peter says Left Left for "Others". I would have thought centred is the way to go. Gould advises against going left, except for melismas.
Last edited by BuonTempi on Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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zuill
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Post by zuill » Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:51 pm

One can manually adjust the settings for any given syllable, to fine tune things. There is a caveat: all verses attached to one note share the same manual setting. One can still nudge syllables individually under the same note, but they still share the alignment and justification settings. I recall a discussion about this recently, and it was suggested as a feature request to change this behavior to allow individual settings for each syllable under one note.

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MikeHalloran
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Post by MikeHalloran » Mon Jan 23, 2017 8:38 pm

zuill wrote:One can manually adjust the settings for any given syllable, to fine tune things. There is a caveat: all verses attached to one note share the same manual setting. One can still nudge syllables individually under the same note, but they still share the alignment and justification settings. I recall a discussion about this recently, and it was suggested as a feature request to change this behavior to allow individual settings for each syllable under one note.

Zuill
... like many of the simpler notation products do (Encore comes to mind). I'm in the "looks good—is good" school when it comes to alignment.

That would be a welcome feature in Finale. My preference would be to be able to override the settings on any syllable, perhaps with the Control key, so you could nudge an individual syllable without affecting anything else.
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miker
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Post by miker » Mon Jan 23, 2017 9:08 pm

Mike,
You can easily shift individual syllables. Make sure you're in the correct verse/layer, and drag the syllable with the mouse. Hold down the Shift key, to constrain it to horizontal.
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Perotinus
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Post by Perotinus » Mon Jan 23, 2017 9:59 pm

Here's a query on this issue: if you do not have word extensions turned on (for whatever reason), will the syllable alignment preferences still left-align the syllable by recognizing that the next note has no syllable beneath it?
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Hector Pascal
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Post by Hector Pascal » Mon Jan 23, 2017 10:23 pm

By the way: Many thanks for all your help, everyone. I have reset the justification and alignment to the default settings, looks much better.
As some of you have suggested, I will do a fine tuning of the syllables at the end of the job, too. Regarding nudging with mouse, I also find that nudging the syllables with the arrow keys helps with making precise adjustments.
Best wishes,
Hector.

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