Stem Direction--3rd Line

[eupher61]

It's interesting that Finale (which I don't use) defaults to stem down, and the prof in question said "down only".

I think the guy has used nothing but Finale, seen that default, and made the assumption that that's reality.

I stand by my earlier opinion.

[TubaRay]

And yes, we walked uphill both ways to school, in 10" of snow . . .

What an amazing coincidence! So did I. What is truly amazing is that I did this in South Central Texas.

[pierso20]

Wouldn't it depend on the notes before or after the note on the third line? ...and the grouping of these notes? If you had a group of 1/8 or 1/16 notes beamed together, you sure wouldn't want to change stem direction in that grouping just because a note or notes fell on the third line.

See attached of the beginning of Albinoni's Adagio as engraved by Finale:

Kindly also observe that there are too many beats in mm 3, 5, and 6. Since I do not know the piece I will not hazard a guess as to what the right rhythms are. Either the dot must disappear from the dotted eighths OR the small notes should be 32nds.

Jim "you all get hung up on stem directions and fail to observe a problem 500 times worse" Williams

And not to mention, the slurs are supposed to be slurred THROUGH the ties....

Wow.....look how we as musicians have TORN apart a SHORT little example..

[Rick F]

Oops... Piling on? Nah, just TNFJ normalcy.

Actually, I just started entering the notes of this piece into Finale just last week in preparation to transpose it for tuba/euph quartet (EEET) and only got so far. I'm surprised Finale let me put too many beats in those measures! Never would before. I rechecked my original source and those 1/16 are supposed to be 1/32's. Sorry.

I'm sure most of you have heard Thomaso Albinoni's Adagio. It's a gorgeous work... one of my favorites (next to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings).

See the link below to see the music and listen to the sound file. Demondrae Thurman performed this with pipe organ accomp at SRTEC in Sarasota, FL a few months ago. Absolutely fabulous performance.

http://www.8notes.com/scores/7374.asp?v ... &ftype=gif

[sloan]

As I said, several people in the class got it wrong and we complained in class, consulted other teachers.

THE point is we know now, and we actually kind of laugh at the overthetopness....

But honestly, I could have taken opera history or something else and learned something, EVERYTHING we have been taught has been a direct quote from the adler book....

Not naming any names.....its only respectful, not complaining, I wanted to see what the TNFJ said about the overall direction of stems..

what does *adler* say about stems?

[BVD Press]

I have done a bazillion notation projects in the last 10+ years. The projects have ranged from a student to the Pope (really!). The third line in Treble, Bass, Alto, etc. is neutral. It is much more common to see stem down, but stem up is acceptable as well.

Go here for more notation info:

http://www.npcimaging.com/

One of the gold standards:

http://www.npcimaging.com/books/TedRoss.htm

Below is a sample with some more options for the example posted by Rick F. I prefer the first option, but all are acceptable and come out to the exact same rhythm etc. Please note I used the B to dictate the direction of the 32nd notes on the first beat. Basically for clarity purposes.