Half-dashed slurs

[fcopaja]

Hi, for a critical edition I need to draw a slur that goes "normal" over a few notes, but editorial and dashed for the last two. Is there a way for this in Finale 25 (Mac)? I'd rather not use a regular slur and then a dashed slur over all the notes.

[miker]

I don’t think so. Would it be acceptable to slur the first notes normally, and use a dashed slur over all of them?

[mknoll]

I don't think this is possible with a single slur.

I've never encountered a "common practice" critical edition, though, that wouldn't just dash the whole slur if any part of it was editorial. Was the original slur only over the first few notes and extended editorially, or was it over more notes and shortened editorially? I would still have to check the critical report to find out which, so I don't see what's gained by doing a partially dashed slur.

But if your editorial guidelines require it, I'm pretty sure that it will take two slurs, one normal and one dashed, tweaked to look like one, as miker suggests.

[fcopaja]

Well the problem here is that the composer (long time gone) sometimes started a slur, gets beyond the last measure of a staff, and then in the next staff there's nothing. Or the slur begin and end between notes.
So, some of the slur is authentic, some editorial.

[fcopaja]

This is the best I get superimposing two slurs. Sadly, the imperfections are still noticeable when printed

[mknoll]

So if the composer ended a slur halfway between two notes and the editor decides that the slur was meant to end on the earlier of the two notes, would you still show a dashed slur extending to halfway between the two notes? Or would you use some other visual cue to show that the editor has removed a bit of slur that the composer had written rather than what you're showing here, which is that the editor has added part of a slur that was lacking in the original manuscript?

[zuill]

I do what Mike had suggested. I slur the notes that should be. I then dash the slur that is an edit, or optional. To me, if I saw a slur change half way, I would probably start laughing and shaking my head, and, as in the cartoons, a large ? would appear over my head.

Zuill

[John Ruggero]

The "half"-dashed slur used in critical editions is available in Dorico as one of several slur styles:

https://steinberg.help/dorico/v3/en/dor ... les_r.html

fcopaja, I think your pieced-together version is completely satisfactory. This is not the only kind of slur that has to be handled this way in Finale.

[Peter Thomsen]

This is the best I get superimposing two slurs. Sadly, the imperfections are still noticeable when printed

I would adjust the superimposing at a high zoom level.

Did you adjust at a high zoom level?

[fcopaja]

Sure! at the highest. Still this work only in short span slurs. Matching curves in longer ones takes just too long to achieve.
Seems that's much faster adding small white line segments in the pdf output...

[musikai]

Saw your post on notat.io (where I'm not registered) and only have Sibelius.

But if Finale can use a white graphic set into Background (but in front of the slurs) then you could use 2 slurs right above and cover the solid one with the white graphic.

How it's done:

[John Ruggero]

That's a neat trick, musikai, but seems to require layered graphics, which I have never encountered as a possibility in Finale. Would that it were possible, though.

[miker]

As I said earlier, I would do it like this:

[John Ruggero]

That is sometimes done, Mike, but maybe not so much because it adds considerable clutter, particularly when one is dealing with very long slurs. It is cleaner to add a small dashed section at the end.

[wessmusic]

Hi there,

if this task appears just once or very few times, there is a simple solution, already discussed many ears ago.
However, if your score requires great number of such mix-slurs, than you have either to use an external graphic program or to find another method.

So, here is my approach:

Go to the Graphic editor and draw a horizontal line. The thickness should be 0, but this might be defined later.

Add Custom arrow. You'll need to create such.


When you select "Custom arrow" the palette appears and then click "Create".
Use Polygon tool. Create closed rectangular shape and fill it "WHITE"


Here how the "white" arrow looks like. (I used grey only for the demo purpose.)


Set the line thickness to 0.

Done.

Assign metatool (I used "j") to this shape and place it as a mask over the "attached to beat" slur in order to intersect it.
If you apply slur "attached to note" — there will be no any result.

Set manually the slant of white masks, extending the right box of the (hidden) line.
If necessary add "Staff mask" (in Maestro this is "="), if the slur and white spots go deep into staff lines, as seen in this samples.




And the PDF result (the image can be downloaded or enlarged from "Fit to page" button):
https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code ... dDSXnyrn4k

Cheers,
Wess

[John Ruggero]

Thank you so much for showing this great technique, wess. The "staff mask" alone has many other applications.

[Anders Hedelin]

Brilliant solution, wess! Just one thing that I didn't get: how did you apply the 'staff mask'?

Edit: I have a vague recollection of having seen a part of a five-line staff in the ready-made shape expressions of an earlier version of Finale, but in my v26 it's not there.

[Peter Thomsen]

Brilliant solution, wess! Just one thing that I didn't get: how did you apply the 'staff mask'? …

In the Maestro font there is a font character with the five staff-lines.
To enter that font character, type ‘=’ (equal sign) - as Wess points out.

If your Finale document uses the same Line Thickness for staff-lines as the five lines in the ‘=’ character, then you can use the ‘=’ character in a ‘staff mask’.

If the document’s staff-lines have a different Line Thickness, consider creating the ‘staff mask’ in the Shape Designer.

[wessmusic]

Dear Peter,

in fact I designed the mask exactly as you've described, but I spotted "=" in order to simplify my explanation.
BTW, in the aforementioned sample I used custom font, where "=" glyph matches my project staff lines (2.5 EVPUs).
The advantage of masks, however placed as graphic element (using Expression tool) is indisputable, because one can extend it freely, and (if necessary) apply only one or few lines, instead of all 5. This is very useful when 1/32 beamed group crosses (partially or entirely) the staff and some lines are better to be cut off. It might sound heretically, but for me this method works fine.



Apart form that, applying symbol "=" (even from well created custom font) does not cover the same staff line thickness when the score consists of normal (100%) and scaled down (60-75%) staves.

As for the mask width — IMO, it's good to be slightly wider horizontally than F-clef — additional 24 EVPUs (=1 space) to clef's left and right side are needed.

best,
Wess

[Anders Hedelin]

I had some bad experience with staff masking, or staff-line masking from before, so I tested it again, also with the '=' Maestro character. Unfortunately it didn't go very well. Needless to say the staff size in F is 100%.
Using the '=' Maestro character:

Staff mask Fin 100%.JPG (7.94 KiB) Viewed 4069 times

Staff mask Fin 700%.JPG (14.37 KiB) Viewed 4069 times

Staff mask PDF.JPG (7.76 KiB) Viewed 4069 times

I notice that you use Mac, wess, while I'm on Windows. Could that be the explanation why our examples are so different? Then, at the highest resolution of your example (500%) there is a tiny mismatch between regular and added staff lines. It doesn't seem to show in normal size though.

I'll put the staff-line mask in the following post.

[Anders Hedelin]

Continued.

Staff-line mask Fin.JPG (10.45 KiB) Viewed 4069 times

Staff-line mask PDF.JPG (8.02 KiB) Viewed 4069 times

I use a well paid-for PDF-program, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

BTW, these lines are not masks really, but something like duplicates or restorations.