I have read and understand that the advice is to adjust manual staff layout at the very end of a project. However, Dorico is not agreeing with my piece (even with my layout set-up) and so in order to read the music clearly enough I have had to keep adjusting things manually along the way (as well as it being a piece in process/progress I keep returning to and adjusting/adding to…)
My question: I would like to be able to insert a page/measures within the music (between frame breaks), as in add pages of music within, without it throwing off all the labor I have already done with staff spacing around it. (Also, it doesn’t just throw it off a little bit, it squishes everything in completely strange and illegible manners). I believe this might be because the page value has changed associated with my manual changes. However, it is really frustrating, as I cannot figure out how to easily edit this score, as well as for future changes I will need to make to it. I believe that one of the biggest reasons to digitize a score is to easily make adjustments to it after the fact. This is one of the biggest problems I have discovered with Dorico, that this aspect is not so easy. (This is one of the only things I miss about Sibelius).
If you could share your project, someone might make suggestions what global options can be altered to get the result you want without having to resort to manual changes.
To get the best advice, you should upload a sample project.
But in general, if you have to ‘keep adjusting things’ then your options are probably incorrect. Once you have ‘adjusted things’ that will restrict Dorico’s ability to lay things out nicely later on.
I feel a bit uncomfortable uploading my project on a public platform.
Maybe I can describe it? So if I “set up things” globally, as in the layout settings, I decide how much space I desire between objects associated with staves. The problem with this, is that it varies and depends on what comes at the beginning of the line versus what comes at the end, with texts and added information. So with global settings, it either gives too much space or not enough. This is the reason why I have had to adjust things manually, because each page is slightly different. I have set it up to approximate where things should land and then make minor adjustments depending on what each page is doing. Does this make sense?
edit:: it changes things only very slightly now…so I still need to adjust but not as much…
the biggest issue seems to be with the ossia staves, so I will look into how to better prepare those globally, which I probably haven’t figured out yet…
This is just one of a number of options that can help (though an important one).
We appreciate you don’t want to share your work, but you can anonymise it.
On a copy, do select all followed by shift-I ret pt which will simply reverse the order of the pitches throughout. Then make some other selections and do shift-I inv, which will invert the selection. Very quickly your piece will be unrecognisable, but the essential layout will remain. Upload the copy.
Thank you, OK, this makes for a rather strange and experimental piece! (and jumbles around hidden objects all over the place but perhaps it is still helpful to see how I am wrongly preparing the score globally at the beginning stage of the project…
It seems to me that you have more or less the same manual staff spacing adjustments on all pages but a few, is that right? I cannot judge if you need them or not, but if they are necessary you could set them for one page, and then copy that staff spacing to other pages.
However, in your shoes I would remove the manual staff spacing (on a copy of the score) and try to see if I could make the score readable enough using the vertical spacing settings in Layout Options.
How the manual note spacing edits (a lot) will fare with this, I do not know.
That is what I have tried to do with this project as I initially stated. I just did as you suggested, I made a copy and re-set the layout (is there a way to simply re-set the vertical, but not horizontal adjustment?). I verified the global numbers. However, the automatic placement of the staves is really not working well as a result. There are many inconsistencies, it is rather uneven, and the ossia staves are all over the place (the ossias sometimes overlay onto the main staff…)
This piece requires each page a kind of shaping event to occur (so that there are happenings page to page with varying densities). It should be straight forward but somehow it’s not. So what I need to do is make frame breaks to set up each page. There will have to be some minor manual adjustments regardless (I am not sure how to get around that, I have only made rather minor adjustments!). All I would like to do is be able to insert a page sometimes within, with its own material contained (will I have to cut and paste in another program???) without it throwing off the work that I have done…
(side note…I tend to not work with precise rhythm but rather spatial/role placement, so the horizontal manual adjustments are rather critical…though it seems the problems are more regarding the vertical…even without manual adjustment…)
It seems like this should be straight forward, but as I saw in another post, that’s not how Dorico works. Dorico works best with global settings…which doesn’t always work for me…
(another side note is that there does seem to be a bug…it doesn’t seem to be following my global commands…I haven’t updated to the most recent version yet because I don’t want to re-install the fonts again at the moment…but would this be part of the issue?)
uploaded images are made only with global settings/no manual adjustments, so in the bottom image how I have done things is I would then manually adjust the second to bottom staff down a bit, even though I have global settings currently to 14 and it makes it 13…this has been a big part of my issue…and the ossias as you can see…
one thing I am noticing is that my vertical fullness is generally over 100% and shows red…but I don’t really want to condense it…am trying to bring the percentage down and see if that helps…
If you can just get it good enough while working, resisting the urge to make small changes, then make all the fine adjustments when the piece is finished.
OK! yes and I’m seeing that you magically made the vertical spacing in green now.
I first do everything by hand and usually only enter in the score at the very end of a piece, but for this one I needed to try out some things with musicians along the way and my hand was too sloppy this time so I have been trying out doing things page by page, adjusting, adding/removing etc. as an experiment…turns out that doesn’t suit Dorico so well! I will really really try to find good global settings in the future!!!
(and…how did you magically correct the gobbly gook version!!! amazing!!!)
another side note:::I am waiting to complete those yellow lines on the pages until the very very end…I know Dorico is not an illustrator program…but I still think it’s better to draw them into Dorico rather than afterwards in Affinity…because if I have to make changes later…what a nightmare! I was experimenting with the lines and they do annoyingly adjust if you don’t watch them carefully!
but perhaps it is still helpful to see how I am wrongly preparing the score globally at the beginning stage of the project…
so I have been trying out doing things page by page, adjusting, adding/removing etc. as an experiment…turns out that doesn’t suit Dorico so well! I will really really try to find good global settings in the future!!!
