Accent above staff for singers only?

In a score with singers and orchestra (an oratorio), I want the accents for the singers to always be above the notes so that they do not push the lyrcs away from the staff, just like dynamics. However, the accents for all other staves should be on notehead side.
There is only one global engraving option for positioning accents which affecs the entire score. Each single exception must be made via the note’s property. But I can’t filter accents or notes with an accent. “Select more” on an accent doesn’t help either. So any single accent on the wrong side has to be detected by eye and flipped? Is there another option or workflow for this that I haven’t seen?

You could select all the singers’ staves, then filter for only notes, then set the articulation placement property for all selected notes in one go?

Edit: Ah yes, if there’s a mixture of articulations in the selection, articulation properties aren’t shown, and articulation placement is set relative to notes/stems rather than above/below the staff. It’s possible this does need to be done manually, I’m afraid (unless someone else has another idea). You could use an instrument filter to view only the singers’ staves whilst working through this process?

Lillie, thank you for your quick answer. Yes, I use the instrument filter for singers. But even if I could select only the notes with accent – there is no property “always above” for the accent. So I have to manually select only the accented notes with stem up :frowning: (and then change their accent property to “Stem side”).
(Edit: In an ideal world, the accent positioning rule would be an optional property of the instrument that would override the global setting.)

Yes, but there are two rules noteside/stemside and above/below… You are wanting some combination of both.

A workaround might be to create a playing technique with the > glyph (you could even link to the accent playback technique). The downside is that positioning might look a little odd

In engraving options, there is a rule “always above”/“natural placement”. This is just what I want for specific instruments. So the combination of rules is already present in Dorico.
Thank you for the playing technique approach. But since the notes are already written, replacing the accents with a playing technique would be even more effort. It all boils down to the fact that accents (or notes with accent) cannot be filtered.

1 Like