As far as I can see, the setting of the timing gap between flows is project-wide whereas there are many situations where it would be useful to vary the gap between flows. Above all when one movement leads directly into another but you still want a slight gap and a separate flow for it. Is there some way to do this in Dorico I might have missed?
No, there’s no way to have different gaps between different flows in any settings. You would need to do this manually. The easiest way would be by adjusting the time track in play mode, and you could also shorten some of the played note durations.
Thanks, Dan, I feared that would probably be the case. In that case, I’d put in a feature request for this being one of the things you could set with each flow.
IIRC, Daniel once said that the ability to add an attacca at the end of a flow was in the works down the road. To me that implies that there will eventually be a way to have some flows proceed without a break and other observe a silent gap between flows.
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yes, that could be useful as well.
I don’t really get how you can adjust the time track between flows as there’s a fixed number of seconds gap? In Sibelius you could sneak in very fast or slow tempi between the last note of one movement and the first of the next but of course it works in a completely different way
What I mean is to lower the tempo of the last bar significantly, and shorten the played duration of the final note so there’s silence at the end of the bar. It’s not technically silence between the flows.
Another option is to add “silent” flows. For example if you want 2 seconds of silence between two of your flows add a new flow at the end of the project, create a time signature of 4/4 (since Dorico’s tempo default is q=120 that bar last exactly 2 seconds. With different combinations of tempo and time signatures you can get whatever duration you wish). In layout options tell Dorico not to show Tacets . Once you have the duration you want (tempo und time signature), uncheck all players from the silent flow and in the flows panel move it to the the place where you want the gap.
yes, I expect “silent flows” is the only way to do it, even though it is rather fussy. In the overwhelming majority of cases I will want one or two short breaks against a default of something like 8 seconds so anything which tries to simulate an increased length like what I understand Dan is getting at (and indeed similar to what I sometimes did in Sibelius), is not what I’m looking for here.
I found another way to do this… It’s a long workaround, but it works well in a large work that has mostly attaccas between flows, so your timing between flows is set to zero.
Overview: Add another bar to the flow — give it a slow tempo — hide it.
Here’s how:
- Add another bar after the final bar of your flow. (Keep your final barline on the now penultimate bar.)
- Select the rests in the new final bar.
- Go to Notation Options (Shift Command N on Mac)
- Select Barlines under the left-hand categories
- Choose “No Barline”
- Assign a tempo to the new bar that gives you enough time between your flows (Q = 20)
- Select the last entries or rests in your now penultimate bar and turn on “End Voice” in the Properties panel. (This hides the rests in your new final bar.)
- Turn off “Metronome Mark Shown” in Property Panel.
- Go to the Engrave Mode, Select the Note Spacing Tool in the extreme left column.
- “Squeeze” the last bar toward the left until your staff lines are no longer visible.
This is not a very “Dorico Way” to do this, but, until Daniel and the team implement an attacca feature, it works.
(I think that I figured this out because I worked with Finale from version 1 until Dorico came out.)
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