On the 1st page of my piano score, there are 3 lines: looks great! On a majority of the following pages there are 4 lines: looks great. But on the second page, there are 5 lines: looks not so great. A bit crowded. I’m new to Dorico, can someone give me some tips on how to handle this? I’d like a clean, uncrowded look on all pages of the piece. Thank you!
Can you upload a screenshot of what you’re seeing, please? Or a project is even better. It makes it quite a bit easier for us!
Could be related to the distance between staves. Try increasing it.
Library menu > Layout options, Vertical spacing, Inter-system gap
A screenshot as @DanielMuzMurray mentioned, helps 
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The simplest method would be to add a Frame Break at the start of the 5th system.
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Hi Daniel, here’s a pic of page 2 (the crowded page) and the page after which is what the rest of the pages look like (which i feel look great.)
Yeah, increase the gap between systems.
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Hey Arco, thank you.
Page 2 is crowded, and the following pages are all like page 3 – which i feel is presentable.
Again: Increase the gap between systems.
(I personally would make staff size a bit smaller and go with 5 systems per page. having only 2 bars per system seems like quite a waste to me.)
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Use the Casting off… layout option to force 4 systems per page (which scales with the height of the music frame, so the first page will have 3). This will add system and frame breaks everywhere, so make sure you’re ready for the polishing phase rather than still deciding on notation.
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I never use that casting off thing. I leave it for those “lead sheet” people (not a value assessment on my part). I would simply add a frame break to test how it would look like, if it’s easier to achieve a good looking score, consistent… I don’t think this kind of piano material has to be cast off so rigourously (casting off 3 bars per system leaves no freedom to Dorico to perform its magic).
Here, I would set the ideal gap between grand staff staves to 5,5 (default is 6 and I find it usually way too large), check out my top and bottom music margins so that I keep some margins but they’re not too big… and I would certainly make sure I never go over 100% in vertical fullness (Engrave mode view).
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Personally, I think this is bad advice (especially for novices). As you observe, casting off just locks everything up and unravelling it at the “polishing” phase becomes a nightmare.
Much better (IMO) is to learn how to adjust spacings (especially note spacing).
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I think that casting off systems per page but not bars per system is exactly what the OP is asking for. You don’t have to fix the number of bars in a system, and Dorico is clever enough to reflow the music flexibly when not so constrained.
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Ok, right. Well, I admit I never use that tool 
I rely on the fullness percentages, the overall looks of it, the necessity of good turns (that one goes first, of course!)…
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i will try that
Actually, the Frame Break option worked best. Thank you, Marc!
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worked perfectly
I can’t believe how many compliments I began to get once I started taking this more seriously.
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