Finale Forum

hello,

Can someone check over my score and see if it looks professional? I don't know if the pages are crowded in terms of too many measures on each page (particularly the last page).

Thanks
Dylan

Hi Dylan,

I took a quick look at your score, and there were several things that jumped out at me. They are easy to change and fix.
The first thing that I noticed was how crowded your violin part is when there are quick cresc./decresc. in each measure. Those elements shouldn't be colliding. Less measures per system, please. And that can also apply to the Soprano's line. Personal peeve of mine, you can take it fwiw; that's an awful looking lyric font-too skinny, too small, too crunched together.
The names on the left sides of each staff can be moved closer. You don't really need measure numbers on both staves-one will do.
Next thing I didn't notice until I got deeper into the score. All of the sudden you have a snare drum line appear out of nowhere. The percussionist's part has to be seen on the initial system, then you can hide it until they come in.
Also, look into running Patterson Beams. It's a plug in that comes free with Finale. It gets rid of all those nasty 'wedges', or slivers of staff showing.
Just my two cents. There is more, but this will get you started.
Cheers. Good luck with your composition.

Thank you so much! I'll get to work fixing those things.

I am going to make some comments on punctuation.

m. 45 -- It seems that there should be a period after fear, then a capital T on "there".

m. 49 -- comma after soul?

m. 54 -- It seems that there should be a period after understand and a capital to start Listen.

m. 56 -- You use word extensions between the syllables but there should be hyphens instead.

I would put a comma after Frankenstein in m. 56 and again in m. 59.

m. 62 -- missing hyphen in accuse.

mm. 63 and 65 -- the gliss is broken into its elements and it should be one solid wavy line. If you have more space that is not so likely to happen.

m. 77 -- missing hyphen in alone

Thom's suggestions are right on the mark. There is room on page 6 so you should be able to reduce the number of measures in places to fix the overcrowding issue.

Best,

Bill

A general rule on capitalization and punctuation: Please use them (unless setting ee cummings). This helps the singer with phrasing.

In fact, phrase markings and groupings are rarely needed when the words flow like speech as yours clearly do. Singers will normally breathe at commas and periods unless instructed otherwise or the commas are separating items in a list.

Avoid Oxford commas unless you want the singer to breathe there, then use them.

Here are a few improvements documented in this 4 minute video and downloadable below (made with Fin2014.5):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJfZ14Qkfk

Done:
- Replace tempo mark page texts with expressions
- Use JW Yada Yada for tremolo
- Use Patterson Beams
- Hide staff styles removed to make the part readable
- Reflow across pages to have better music spacing
- Vertical alignment of the systems to the top/bottom page border
- Many automatic improvements made with Elbsound.studio's Perfect Layout plug-in

There are still some improvements to be done:
- alignment of above staff hairpins/dynamics
- hairpin collision with lyrics
- a few weird duplicate articulation entries (e.g. measure 30-32, 85)
- maybe staff optimization for the staves where the singer has tacet?
Jan
https://elbsound.studio