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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/01/2015 in all areas

  1. Staccato just means "short", not a specific duration of shortness. So if there is a reason you need a very specific duration to make the parts work well together, you should write it out exactly. On the other hand, readability matters, and musicians are inherently musical people. So as soon as they get to practice together for the first time, they are likely to figure out exactly how short that staccato needs to be to make the music sing. What you have to weigh is whether you want to risk them all practicing separately right up until the performance and discovering that that staccato really needs to be played as a 1/16th for the first time when they are in front of an audience… Heh… could TOTALLY happen. I got a "surprise! It's a solo!" five minutes before the second service Easter Sunday this year. It's a bit unnerving, but it happens all the time. The tenor soloist and I were both like, "Leaving aside the fact that this could have been mentioned at rehearsal a week ago, dude, we've been here for 3 hours already this morning, and you're only telling us this NOW?!" I had to choose between plunking it through once on the piano and having time to pee before the service. Director was like, "do you want to just do it a cappella, or should I fill in beneath you on the organ?" OH MY GOD!!!
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  2. Or you can just do dotted 8th note plus 16th note (for one beat)...and then 8th measure rest, then 8th note....and repeat. Just put a staccato dot on all of them to indicate you want them short.
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  3. What kind of crummy viola thing is this? Many crummy violas in a symphony, or just one in a quartet? Depending on context, could you change some of your 1/16ths to staccato 1/8ths? (Coordinating many violas that might not be as exact as you need, but for just one that could clean up your score in a hurry.) I paged through my favorite notation bible, and they suggest beaming across rests by half-bar in this sort of situation, rather than just by beat, so those up-stemmed 1/16th notes that are dangling off by themselves could be beamed in with their compatriots in measures 8 through 12. Also, in simple time (4/4, 2/4…) "rests in the middle of a beat may be combined as long as the rhythm is straight-forward." So you can combine the two 1/16 rests into a single 1/8th rest in the middle of beat one of measure 8. Looks cleaner. The example in the book is actually that exactly, so thumbs up on that one! Or, depending on what is going on in other parts, is there a reason it needs to be in 4/4 rather than 2/4 for a few measures? That makes it a bit more digestible. So, all that taken together, how about for measure 8: 1/16th note, 1/8th rest, 1/16th note, 1/8th rest, 1/16 note all beamed together followed by a 1/16th rest. Second half of the measure the same.
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