Notation and Engraving for Scoring Sessions - Part 4 - Dynamics

Notating dynamics for a recording session is considerably different than notating them for a concert work.

The absence of any substantial rehearsal time means to notate as precisely as possible without overloading or cluttering the page with information that is not necessary.

The correct and most effective execution of these notations of course require a substantial understanding of the instrument's properties and playing defaults so this touches again somewhere between  orchestration and notation.

I think the most effective way to tackle the individual points is to show a "bad" and "good" example side by side and provide an explanation. Many of these things apply for notation in general but some of these are more specific to scoring sessions than others as the highest goal with scoring sessions is to maximize readability while still keeping all important information in the scores.

Additional disclaimer: Dorico (which is used in the examples below) currently defaults to a quite rigid collision avoidance routine with dynamics which often causes a quite considerable vertical distance between staff and dynamics (caused by the bar numbers). Ideally this should be reduced which can be done manually, however I've not done this here as it would need extra time that we usually don't have in scoring session situations but I hope that this will be fixed in a future version.

So here we go.

Of course the most obvious is to actually notate dynamics. Many session orchestras end up with scores and parts with insufficient dynamic marking and have to do guesswork, so always make sure that everybody has a dynamic.

Always use an appropriate dynamic font. Especially in Sibelius you often see regular font used for dynamics. The default dynamic font is designed to catch your visual attention and players are trained to focus on that font and not using it will increase chances to miss these.

Dynamics need to vertically align with the notes that they are supposed to affect. The first placement is very problematic as it is not clear where this mp applies.

The same applies for horizontal alignment. Dynamics that are close together (on one staff) should align horizontally on the same level even if that means to have a quite large distance to the staff in specific cases. Engravings like the first example are problematic because it makes it easier to overlook dynamics as players are used to the horizontal alignment.

This is a scoring session specific. Hairpins should usually have a target dynamic. The first solution might be acceptable in concert works where the player can get a feeling for what is needed in the music but with sight reading, the player will simply not know how much to crescendo or decrescendo.

One of my personal pet peeves and unfortunately Sibelius defaults to that so we see it alot but dynamics should never be placed under an "empty space". In this example this seems like a neglectable detail but the forte in the first example marking an "empty bar" is bad engraving. The Dorico default from the second example is correct.

A relatively similar case is the precise notation of a dynamic target within a long note. In the first phrase, the player will not know exactly where to reach the forte while in the second example it is very clear.

In this specific example, the "bad" one would still be acceptable. The general rule of thumb is that a hairpin should not exceed the length of 4 bars. There are two reasons: 1 the longer a hairpin becomes the trickier it is to distinguish in which direction it opens, especially if it breaks over several systems or even pages so the player might simply get lost whether to get louder or softer. Additionally, really long hairpins might make it difficult to properly read the staves, especially when they are very close to the staff they might be mistaken for staff lines. So the better solution is to write the word "crescendo" or "cresc." and maybe additionally write a short hairpin close to the target point. Alternatively you could stage the crescendo through different dynamic markings like:

This will not be exactly the same obviously and can quickly feel cluttered so I would normally default to the first option. Be aware that players might take a bit more liberty with the interpretation of dynamics with the written instruction like "cresc." versus the hairpins.

I see a lot of inexperienced orchestrators micro managing dynamics because they try to translate the CC curves from the mockup into the score. In most cases, giving the player the instruction to play "espressivo" will create a similar if not better result. The first example is unnecessarily cluttered. In fact, in many cases, the "espress." will even be not necessary as players will play a phrase with a certain dramaturgy anyway.

Musicians are not idiots. They understand if a pattern or gesture repeats so it is not necessary to feed them with redundant information as in the first staff. As long as the dynamic shape remains the same, you can without a problem notate it like the second example or even better like such:

sim. stands for "simile" which means "in the same way". So the player knows that they should just keep doing the same thing. This avoids a lot of unnecessary doubling of information and makes the page clearer. Having said that, if you just repeat a structure once or twice, it will be fine to notate it in detail, but if a structure keeps repeating over and over again, notating sim. or reducing the amount of information is appropriate.

With orchestra musicians, it is the absolute playing default that a long note at the end of a phrase will decrescendo. In fact it will be very tricky to notate it in a way where they hold the dynamic till the end of the note at the same level and depending on orchestra might even require a verbal instruction but the notation from the first example is not necessary.

These are the most common issues that should be considered when notating dynamics. Again, as with everything, context matters and applying these things mindlessly is not the best idea either, but they give a rough idea of what to put attention on.