Thanks, Ray! The musicians added quite a bit of time to the painting process, but I think I worked out a reasonably realistic look for them...
I, too, like the 3-rank look, plus I want to differentiate the platoon firing troops by using a 2-rank base... something I think is important and interesting to represent the difference in frontages between the deeper French and the shallower allies (mainly Dutch, English and Prussians). The clever way to do it is to use the same base size (2x3 inches) turned sideways - thus six figures in two ranks on 3 inch frontage or six figures in 3 ranks on 2 inch frontage. Unfortunately, I figured this out after I had painted and mounted 8 battalions of English and Prussians...
And this will work with BLB - which, by the way, I am impressed with now that I have them... Now I have to paint two more figures per battalion (currently they are 16 figures each on 4 square 2x2 four figure bases) AND remount them. Sigh. 3rd enlargement and re-basing for some of the troops...
Doug