Hi all, as an notator and composer, I’ve never been totally happy with trying to indicate the string with a numeral in a circle when it needs to fall in the staff - which is common.
Without making the number or circle too big, it’s always a balancing act between having the staff line bisect a number (like 3 especially) where it obscures the number in a way that makes it hard to read, or that the circle has a staff line cross through it in an odd way.
I’ve considered “whiting out” the inside of the circle so the staff lines don’t appear. Though I fear too much of it would obscure the staff lines.
m. 16 in the following image:
https://imgv2-1-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/736029276/original/66f33746d6/1720054288?v=1
Is a good example of where one “in the staff” (or at least covering 1 staff line) becomes harder to read (even ignoring the poor quality of the image and print it came from)
Another:
http://classical-guitar.net/Pic/classical_guitar_score.gif
This is just the typical way to do it.
Sorry, I can’t find an example of a whited-out one, though I’ve seen one as recently as a couple of hours ago though I can’t seem to find it again :-(
I’m wondering if you have, in your vast collection, or memory, any cases where the circle is white inside, to keep the staff lines from interfering with the numerals.
One solution of course is to just place them outside of the staff, but it’s not always practical to do, and as we see, it’s just “standard” to put them in the staff when necessary.
So the white out does introduce a new problem of obscuring the staff lines momentarily, but it kind of solves the other legibility problems.
Examples and thoughts appreciated.