This feature isn’t working here. Regardless of weather dynamics are grouped or linked. Most of my dynamics in this piece have been copied from other staves. Any works of wisdom from other users ?
Align Dynamics is purely cosmetic and only works in Engrave mode. When you say it’s “not working”, what exactly do you mean?
It simply doesn’t do anything, that’s most of the time. In mesures with lots of hairpins and P’s and F’s, most of the time nothing moves, but I can’t seem to find a pattern. I’ve read other threads here talking about lacking functions. Is it working all the time for most people? I’m wondering if it depends on some of my parameters?
At least show us a screenshot, if not a cutdown project. Align Dynamics works reliably for me, but I don’t know what your projects look like.
I’ll send you a pm.
Received and (briefly) looked at, and I completely understand why you’re not posting the file here. I won’t share the file, obviously!
Two things:
- In Engraving Options > Dynamics > Vertical Position, the “Minimum Distance below staff for immediate dynamics” should be set exactly half a space higher than the “Minimum Distance below staff for gradual dynamics”. In your project it’s set one quarter of a space higher.
- When using Align Dynamics Dorico can’t override existing Offsets in the properties panel. If you’ve already applied offsets your quickest way to remove them is Edit > Reset Position.
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Thanks for that ! I’ll try those settings. I’ve been playing with different vertical offsets for dynamics without having yet settled on one yet. The publisher uses hairpins with a very narrow opening, and they don’t seem to naturally align as well as when that setting is wider? In the best of worlds the immediate dynamics would line-up with hairpins not with a baseline, but rather a center point.
Dynamics for me seems to be the slowest part of this program. The whole “group”, “link”, Write mode then Engrave mode is very time consuming.
Why not allow aligning that would automatically un-link the dynamics? Vertical position of dynamics is rarely the same on stave above or below. I’d like to be able to quickly align without worrying about what might happen in other staves. How are people working when on big scores with lots of copied dynamics?
Many thanks!
It’s for this reason that I’ve disabled all linking of dynamics. Sure, I have to sometimes do a little extra work, but I don’t get an unpleasant surprise in some other part of the score.
Hi Dan,
I didn’t even know that was possible ! Still learning lots of things about this program. Think I will be doing the same thing from here on out. By the way, in the "Align dynamics feature working for you ?
Yes, but I typically Group instead.
Clarification: there have been times where Align doesn’t work for me.
Meaning you group before aligning?
Grouping aligns them. For large regions, I select everything in the bars, then I use the following custom key commands:
Ctrl-Shift-F4: filter-select only dynamics
Ctrl-Alt-G: Remove from group (sometimes necessary if the dynamics are already grouped elsewhere)
Ctrl-Shift-G: Group
Grouping will align them but a) that’s not much good if your part layouts have different casting off, and b) (just as with Align Dynamics) it won’t override existing Engrave mode offsets, where you’ve already dragged dynamics around. You need to reset those. This really does work in the project you emailed me, but be careful - I note that you have a heap of hairpins that were entered as an incorrect length, then lengthened in Engrave mode. You’ll need to watch out for those when you Reset Position (or turn off the Engrave mode offsets).
Great info here, many thanks. Yes on the file I sent you (Pianoleo, thanks again for looking at it), I’ve had to extend dynamics horizontally. Someone does my data entry, and the manuscript isn’t very clear and consistent, and editorial mods are needed. I hadn’t grouped or ungrouped when trying to align. I’ll try this on a new score and see if things go better.
All the best !
When I get “incomplete” hairpins, I select the whole range, filter-select dynamics, and re-enter the hairpins.
Sorry to revive an old thread but this was the only place I saw this mentioned.
I just came across a situation when I was tweaking the vertical positions of dynamics and eventually realized the disparity between the alignment of the immediate and gradual dynamics once I was away from the magic “1/2 space” difference. Why is this the case? My dynamics were grouped so it took a lot of trial and error to even figure out what the problem was. Is this number reliant on some other number which dictates something else about the spread of the gradual dynamic or something?
Personally I think my head would have wrapped around this whole situation easier if the values being the same actually corresponded to the dynamics aligning when grouped. But I’m likely missing something.
Hi, I’m having issues aligning my dynamics. This is the first time I’m finalizing a score’s engraving in Dorico. In measures 2-3 in my full score, I’m trying to align harp dynamics. The final hairpin and “mp” never aligns with the prior dynamics. I’ve ungrouped all the dynamics and rest all their positions. What am I doing wrong?
Breathe Deep Nov 16.dorico (1.3 MB)
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Select all of the dynamics in bars 2 and 3 (you can select the first one and Ctrl+click or Command-click the others, or you can use Select More), then hit J to open the jump bar, type “group” and choose Group Dynamics from the list of commands that’s shown.
Thank you for this tip (and I didn’t know about the jump bar!), that worked. I have avoided grouping dynamics before because once dynamics are grouped, I have to ungroup them if I want to modify any start/end points. So I was hoping to be able to align without grouping.
Two follow up qs:
Why was the align dynamics function not working?
Perhaps you could let me know the idea behind Dorico’s concept of grouping dynamics, when should dynamics be grouped, and when should they not be? Is grouping the only way to align in this case?