Re: Avoiding slur collision with other voice

[Mark Polesky]

Trevor Daniels wrote:

> The 'slurs' in the hand-written score look as if they are
> really triplet indicators, with the '3' omitted from the
> later ones.

Trevor is right to discriminate between slurs and tuplet
indicators. Ted Ross (1970) discusses the use of the 
small slur but makes clear that it must be small enough
to avoid confusing it with a slur (see attached png). 
On the other hand, Kurt Stone (1980) writes:

   Square brackets, rather than slurs, should be used
   for unbeamed triplets, etc., to avoid ambiguities.
   Slurs will thus only indicate phrasing or refer to
   other typical slur functions such as bowing.

It is true that the small tuplet slur was at one time
commonplace even among the great publishing houses, but
I find the modern practice preferable.

Perhaps LilyPond could implement a tuplet slur as an
alternative to the bracket, provided it's small enough?
Would anybody want that? It seems kind of low-priority 
to me.

- Mark

tuplet-slur.png
Description: PNG image