Re: Sib. 7.1: Accidentals in chords, placement
Posted by Bob N - 21 May 08:09PM |
Please allow me to add my name to all the requests for proper placement of accidentals in chords. I know that you are working on it, so consider this incentive to continue.
It may seem like a small issue to some folks, especially since, in the end, for those who allow the faulty placement (including yours truly on occasion), the music actually gets performed. It is easy to let it go and leave it up to the player. "It's okay." "They will know what it means." "Everything is there; they will read it." Etc. But I think the more important issue is the devaluation of the product, in this case Sibelius, but in a broader sense the entire part of the music industry that utilizes written music. We already are living through a period of time in which the general culture is becoming more accepting of less value. Let's not add to that by allowing such a minor flaw with major implications continue uncorrected.
The language of music, now, exists as the summation of centuries of development and refinement, much as spoken languages have developed. We allow for growth and changes. We adapt to new styles and new methods of expression. Yet there are fundamental aspects which remain at the core of our language. The ability for a player to grasp the meaning of a chord at sight (i.e., alignment of accidentals) is one of those fundamental aspects. All those milliseconds of extra time it takes for a reader to take in the extra space of those extended accidentals add up. And part of those results are mistakes in performance, anxiety in approaching new or newly engraved music, and any number of subtle reactions, the combination of which results in downgraded quality and an overall decline in the acceptance of music.
It's easy to look at this affecting only the professionals -- orchestra players, film musicians, studio players, etc. But it's really the casual users, the everyday folk, who end up being discouraged the most. If you give a new student (of any age) a guitar with action (strings) so high that it hurts to press them to the fingerboard, then that student will quickly get discouraged and loose interest. The best way to foster that interest is to give the student an instrument that has as many of the best qualities as possible, so that what he or she produces on it will be relatively simple to do and will sound lovely.
So let's have Sibelius get those accidentals in order and make all those awkward chords now sound lovely.
-- Bob Nowak |
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